| There are many scary situations that you don't
like to think about when you are traveling in Baja California. One of those
situations would be getting stranded in the middle of nowhere. Well, on
one of our trips, this situation very nearly happened with me and my 2
friends.
I was driving on the Bahia San Luis Gonzaga road, at about 1 pm on Friday, February 21, 1992, with my friends, Rob Stark and Robert Eastman. I had never been on this road before, and it was putting my Acura Integra through a rigorous workout. However, all seemed OK as we reached our destination, Playa de Costilla. A collection of American vacation homes dot this otherwise lonely beach, located some 7 miles south of Puertecitos. Although unfamiliar to me, Rob had camped on this beach before, and he had warned us to "watch the tides". There is a strange phenomenon that occurs along this stretch of coastline - the extreme tidal flow. Tide fluctuations of 20 feet or more have been recorded here, and many areas which you could walk to at one point in the day, could be covered with water in a matter of hours. See picture Since we had decided to try to swim here, we pulled off the main road and onto the hard-packed sand of Playa de Costilla. It was low tide, so I parked my car way up the bank of the beach, beyond the tide line. Rob and I had brought wet suits, with plans of braving what we figured would be the chilling temperatures of the February sea water. Robert did not have a wet suit, so he settled for wearing shorts and a shirt. Once we had changed into our suits, a problem arose. With our car so far from where we wanted to go, what would we do with the keys? The car had an alarm, so if anyone tried to break in, we would hear it. But where would be a safe place to hide the keys to our vehicle? Normally, we would dig a hole near one of the tires, and bury the key there, hoping no one would find it. For some reason, we did not like that idea this time. We unanimously decided to unhook the car door key from the chain, lock the rest of the keys (and the alarm button) inside the car's glove compartment, and take the car door key with us into the water. Rob tied one end of a long black string onto the key, then tied the other end of the string onto his wet suit, and dropped the key into the small pocket he had on his suit. The water was cloudy and very cold. Not very good snorkeling water at all. After about 1/2 an hour, I decided to get out of the water. Robert asked if he could borrow my wet suit, so he could snorkel. I swam out to Rob to get the key to the car, so I could change into my shorts and shirt, and give Robert the wet suit to use. Once I changed, I locked the car door and, with the key still in my hand, went into the cold water in shorts, about ankle deep, and handed Robert my wet suit, along with his snorkel and mask. Robert changed into the wet suit at the water's edge. Neither Rob nor Robert took too kindly to the waters cool temperature or lack of visibility, so within 30 minutes, they were out. As the three of us walked towards the car, one of us asked for the key. None of us had it. I thought I had given it back to Rob, but Rob didn't have it. I didn't have it, and Robert had never touched it. I retraced my steps, from changed out of the wet suit, to giving the suit to Robert, to everything I did afterwards. We realized that I must have carried the key into the water, and dropped it somewhere in the ocean! It was about 3 pm now. The sun was slowly setting, the tide was slowly rising. Where water had been at our ankles before, now it was at our knees. The three of us scoured the ocean floor, looking for any shiny object. I checked some rocks that I had climbed on after leaving Robert the wet suit. These rocks were now nearly 1/2 submerged in water. Robert and Rob searched close to the area where we had initially entered the water, and where we had done most of our snorkeling. Minutes passed. Then an hour. It was close to 4:30, it was getting darker, and the tide was getting higher. The rocks I had climbed on were beginning to cover. I was panicking. Options began to roll through my head. Knock on one of the doors of the vacation homes, ask to use a phone, and call my wife to drive down from Los Angeles and bring us a spare key? What if there was no one in these vacation homes? We hadn't seen anyone. What if there were no phones here? We would have to ask for a ride into Puertecitos or San Felipe. That meant someone would have to stay behind with the car. We got so desperate, we even contemplated breaking my car window, just to get in, with plans on spending the night inside the car. Then, we would head out the next day on foot, back to Puertecitos. What else could we do? The search continued. Suddenly, as I searched close to the rocks one more time, I heard Robert talking to Rob: "I found it." "What did you say?" I yelled. "I found it!" Robert yelled back. It seems Robert was just staring at the sand under the water, when he saw what he thought was seaweed. He kicked at this thing, and the key appeared! It ends up that the "seaweed" he kicked at was the black string Rob had tied to the key, in order for him to tie it to his wet suit. Robert found the key very close to the area where I had stopped to give him my wet suit. Therefore, we believe that as I gave him his mask and snorkel, the key fell unnoticed into the water. When I gave him the wet suit, the water was 1/2 way between ankle and knee deep. Robert found the key in waist high water! That shows just how high and fast the tide can rise here. That was by far the closest we have come to catastrophe while in Baja. I learned that sometimes you can be too careful while on trips, and that the simple things are always the easiest, and usually the best. One thing definitely changed - I now have a hide-a-key for my car! |