The Mooney 252 taxied up the runway, making for the little thatch-roofed hut that marked the only semblance of civilization in this southernmost town of the Yucatan, when the soldiers first materialized out of the jungle. They were dressed in camouflage fatigues, carrying M-16s, and they were pointing them at us. By the time my traveling companion Jimmie had jotted down his necessary readings, the Mooney was completely surrounded. The soldiers motioned us to disembark. They were mostly 18, not much more, with unfaithful beards, and not particularly well fed. The soldiers didn’t worry us; at least we knew now that the airplane would be safe. We had more important things on our minds. We had come to hunt for bonefish in this last great untamed wilderness of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, south of the now well-known fly fishing camps of Ascension and Spiritu Santu Bays, cramped against the second largest coral reef in the world to the east, Belize and Ambergris Cay to the south, and our destination, to the west – the vast uncharted bays and inlets, sand flats and banks, mangroves and palm trees and gin-clear waters of Chetumal Bay.
With only 350 official residents remaining after the terrible hurricane of ’55 in which 2,500 people died, with only a couple of restaurants, a fruit stand, a marine barracks, a dozen or so bed-and-breakfasts/small hotels spattered along the coast, with barely a beach and no distended cruise ship peer, today Xcalak is all but forgotten. Only the intrepid traveler from Cancun, who ponders what lies beyond that bay, just along that coast, and who then travels for five hours by unforgiving road due south ever gets to know this quintessentially Mexican town as more than a dot on the map.
As the soldiers in camouflage finished rifling though our own bags, a white pick-up truck arrived and a lanky narrow-hipped gringo with a baseball hat slipped from the cab like a spoonful of molasses. “I’m glad you had the sense to buzz the bar,” he said. “I’m Dean. Mike of Marina Mike’s had to go back to the States.” He motioned toward the Mexican Marines. “It’s okay, El Capitan. I brought beer.”
* * *
“The soldiers have been here in strength now for about a week,” Dean explained, as we bumped along in his beat-up Chevy pick-up over the broken coral road. It seemed that only the week before, some boat had either run aground, or dumped her cargo at sea for fear of being boarded: 40 bales, and each one carried 30 Kilos of cocaine with a local value of $200K – one million on the street. As the last town on the southernmost tip of Mexico, Xcalak is a main thoroughfare for smugglers making their way north from Colombia to the States.
“A week ago,” added Dean, “there were only a couple of beaten-up scooters in town. Now everybody’s got at least one.”
“How’s the fishing?” I asked.
Dean shrugged. “Well, that’s just it. No one really knows. It’s off-season. The entire east side of Chetumal Bay will only see one fisherman this week. And that’s you.”
* * *
Victor Castro had been a member of the local fishing union for more than thirty years when he decided to strike out on his own and become a full-time guide. “I had heard what was happening in Ascension and Spiritu Santu bays to the North,” he told me later on that night at Mike’s Marina. “Their camps are drawing fishermen from all over the world. I am getting ready. Chetumal Bay is twice as big as Ascension and Spiritu Santu put together. And it is the last place left, abutting Ambergris Cay to the south, another bonefish and permit paradise. Yet it is unexplored. I’ve fished these waters for 30 years and I’ve only just begun to venture deep into the Bay. I tell you, these fish have never seen a fly.”
* * *
The next morning at 6:30, Victor came by with a woeful tale. It was the conjunctivitis, the pink eye. It was sweeping through the Yucatan. More than half of the population was afflicted. “But I have a replacement,” he added with a puffy pink wink. “Jesus will be here in ten minutes with the panga. He is very strong. He can pole you around all day.”
“A half day,” I reminded him.
Jesus arrived with the boat and tied her up immediately in front of Marina Mike’s. The ocean was wearing whitecaps. There was a brisk wind that made the palm trees creak. It was not going to be easy casting. We got in the boat and roared across the choppy waters of the bay, heading due south.
There were a few clouds in the sky, nascent thunderheads, the high-stacked snowy clouds of the Caribbean, bruised underneath. As we skirted the town pier, I took in Xcalak: primarily one-story concrete dwellings, skinny mongrels standing transfixed on the beach, reclining fishing boats, a battered abandoned truck. This was Mexico to me – not Cozumel or Cancun. This sleepy little fishing village, where everybody knew each other, where gringos still earned a stare or two from the locals ambling by, where only the night before, a giant feral pig rooting around in the garden behind the hotel had awakened me from my dreams about New York. Only a line of modern windmills towering over the palm trees reminded me of the century. Then, suddenly, Xcalak was gone, replaced by coconut palm and mangrove, the land of the crab and the ant. The wind blew the salt spray into our faces as we swung around the coast. The boat slowed down through choppy water and we spied the cut the Mexican military had dynamited through the reef. To our right, a dredger sat lethargically on a barge, baking in the sun, slap dab in the middle of the canal leading to Chetumal Bay. Jesus gunned the engine and we headed further south, around a bend in the coast, then slowed down and made for shore.
A passageway opened up in the dense greenery, a seemingly natural canal. Jesus maneuvered the boat with ease along the Boca Bacalar Chica. “Sometimes,” he shouted above the engine noise, “we see manatee in here.”
Then we were through. The narrow passageway began to widen, to open up onto a blue lagoon, hemmed in on every side by coral outcroppings or impenetrable vegetation. Jesus cut the engine and began to pole. I was using a Scott, 4-piece, 8’ graphite fly rod, and a Crazy Charlie with weighted eyed, tied light in pink to match the vast expanse of sand. The water here was about 4 to 5 feet deep. We inched forward toward the lee of a mangrove island. I make a cast and wet my line, then stripped it back, laying it out carefully on the plywood deck behind me, fitted with Astroturf. I pinched the fly in my left hand, pulled down my cap, and started to hunt.
It took me a while to find the windows in the quivering water but when I did it was just in time.
“Bonefish. 3 o’clock,” said Jesus. He swung the panga closer.
“I see him,” I replied. He was alone and he was big. I lifted the rod, shot out some line, double-hauled on the back cast and let it fly. The line slithered perfectly through the guides, riding a little high against the wind, unrolled and settled with a graceless splash almost on top of the fish. To my utter and complete amazement, the fish did not spook. It simply looked and turned away.
And this is how it went, all morning. Of course, I lined my share of single fish, put down more schools than I’d ever care to admit, but most of the bones were generous to a fault. As Victor Castro had said, it’s as if they’d never seen a fly before. Without lodges and air-conditioned hotels, without flats boats and marinas, without ready access except for a grueling 5-hour drive from Cancun, and with only the occasional diver/fishermen to even begin to probe the vastness of Chetumal Bay, these fish pounced on my flies. They fought over them. They raced to be apprehended.
Jesus turned out to be a master with the boat. He brought us into the most sheltered islands, the most protected lees, and I switched over to a Gotcha. We tried everything: from sight-casting to cruising singles, to dropping flies in tonsures in the turtle grass alive with schooling fish. Within two hours, I had caught six bones, ranging in size from a mere two-pounder to one of nearly five. Anxious for my friend to catch a bone, his first, I let Jimmie take the bow. While not a fly-fisher, he put up a plucky effort with a borrowed spinning rod and pink shrimp jig. But Jesus had no live bait, and Jimmie had a hard time getting the jig out. Eventually Jesus felt sorry for us and we headed for a senota, a 30’ deep blue hole in the flat, carved out by freshwater aquifers. Over time, the upper casing of the underground channel collapses, linking the lagoon via submarine river to the sea. We caught jack and snapper on nearly every cast until our arms were sore.
As we made our way back to camp through the cut, we noticed a huge mud just downstream from where the barge was dredging. But the source was no machine. Not even in Belize or Argentina have I ever spotted such a school. More than thirty permit winged their way past our boat in a flash, mooning their sides at us, giving us the finger with their carbon tipped dorsal fins.
* * *
The next morning, Jesus and I angled out across the bay to the same cut; Jimmie had elected to stay behind. The weather had turned. The day before had been windy and clear. But a bank of rain clouds had swept in from the northeast during the night and the sky was pewter and pink. The wind had died and I was worried. Without the sun, our visibility would be next to nil, and with it our ability to hunt. Frankly, I didn’t fancy the idea of blind casting into dark spots the whole morning. Once again, Jesus didn’t let me down.
We made our way through the canal and deep into Chetumal Bay, threading through countless mangrove passageways, gliding along tranquil lagoons and flats for a good hour. Eventually, I heard the motor slow and felt the boat begin to settle. Jesus cut the engine and we drifted into another medium-sized lagoon. There was a large spit of land jutting out into the bay. Small mangrove plants and razor grass sprouted up from the sandy soil. The flat seemed to stretch on indefinitely, no more than a few inches deep against the bank. Jesus poled us forward. The water looked like mercury, impenetrable in the half-light. Then I saw the telltale sign of tailing fish. We could hear them in the reeds, nosing around for shrimp and crab, up and down the entire coast.
I spent the next 4 hours sight fishing to tailing bones. September may not be the premier time to fish the Yucatan but that morning Chetumal gave up twelve bones and I must have lost or lined at least two dozen more. Some say the bones here are less numerous but larger than their cousins to the north in Spiritu Santu and Ascension Bays. In my experience, they rival the fish of Belize, and they’re a lot less leader shy. My largest fish that morning was about 8 pounds, but 10-pound fish are not uncommon, and a thirty-bone day is considered only a decent outing.
I fished mostly Crazy Charlies and Gotchas in light brown or cream or pink. Crab patterns were more problematic. Given the stillness of the water, they often drew too much attention to themselves as they penetrated the surface, putting the fish down. At one point, as Jesus poled us into a narrow weedy bay no more than twenty-five feet across and fifty or so feet long, I realized that the inlet was alive with bones. There were four distinct schools of between six and fifteen fish, and several singles and doubles rooting around in the weeds. I began to pick up fish on almost every cast, moving from school to school, and although each hookup produced stinging runs down to my backing as they fled the inlet for the larger bay, although they often churned the waters to a froth, the remaining bonefish in the inlet never spooked. They simply moved about in nervous circles for a few moments, then settled back to eating. I was transfixed until Jesus pulled my sleeve and pointed. I hadn’t even noticed him draw near. I followed his finger and saw the telltale waving of a permit’s dorsal fin as it cruised casually around the opening to the inlet. I spun about and cast, backhand, across my left shoulder. In a second the fish would either enter the inlet or turn away, back toward the body of the bay. The loop unfurled clumsily and landed with a great splash only inches from the permit’s nose. I never saw the fish again. It simply disappeared, without so much as a wake.
We shifted over to permit fishing after that, cruising through vast lagoons and sandy bays, in deeper water now, perhaps ten feet or more. But despite our diligent efforts, the fish that had been so ubiquitous the day before – the authors of that impressive mud near the canal – eluded us today. We made our way back under a threatening sky. In the distance, lightning bolts clawed at the Caribbean, like stingers from the bruise-blue thunderheads above, celestial men-of-war. We floated in between two liquid worlds. We even enjoyed a small mud in a narrow bay as we headed back toward the canal; I picked up two more fish blind casting into the cloud. Then I gave up. I was tired. Despite those last two bones, the day had really ended when I had spooked that permit back at the inlet. I had known it even then. I laid my rod back in the holder and buttoned up my shirt. It had grown suddenly cold. The front was heading our way.
We raced the storm back through the cut, then north to Marina Mike’s. The storm won. We got soaked. And while I never did spot any bales in the mangroves during my stay, I was leaving Xcalak with a lot more than I’d carried in.
If you’re looking for the amenities of a fine fly fishing lodge, for tidy air-conditioned rooms, for experienced guides with well-maintained flats boats, for nightlife and shopping and restaurants too, Xcalak is not for you. But if you’re one of those people who – for some unfathomable reason – simply have to know what’s down that road, due south, along the coast there, pack your bags. But you’d better hurry. Cancun was once a place where you buzzed the bar to arrange for pickup at the airport. Already there are discussions about building a couple of large hotels and a marina just south of town. Victor Castro is buying another boat and Jesus is going to work for him full-time. A few miles up the coast they’ve put in a new cruise ship pier and a resort; they plan to transport 400 snorkelers a day to the Chinchorro Bank. As Jimmie and I headed back out to the airport to fly back to Cozumel and home, we noticed a cherry-picker stringing a power line along the road. Soon the entire town of Xcalak would be wired for electricity, 24 hours a day. “There goes the Yucatan!” Jimmie said.
September 2003