 |
|
|
Just as well, I was thinking, probably better not to know. Besides, if there were a real problem around here, someone would have said something. Right? Definitely…unless…come to think of it, the boys up north by El Rancho de Chicho didn’t mention anything until I did…es mala suerte hablar de tiburónes aquí. It’s bad luck to speak of sharks around here. The paddle out at an unfamiliar break, especially a remote one with no one else in the water – and for who knew, ten, twenty miles in either direction along a wild coast? – is a subtly unnerving endeavor, for several reasons: unseen, possibly dangerous bottom conditions like sharp rocks or metallic debris in the impact zone; urchin-covered shoals to fall onto after an ill-timed maneuver; the knowledge that there is no one to come to your aid should you find yourself in trouble; a long ride to a Third World hospital in case of serious injury, if there’s anyone to carry you there. All that, plus a generalized apprehension of the unknown below – a primal fear. But your overriding concern stroking out alone at a remote break is sharks. Or, rather, a shark. One big, voracious brute that maybe has had a lean time of it offshore and is jacked up and pissed off and very hungry and is now on the hunt for easier inshore pickings, and possibly drawn from the deep by the pelagic blood trail of the sea-dumped offal of his later thresher cousin. Shark. The word itself has an almost onomatopoetic ring to it, the sharp, lean sonance being closely akin to the animal itself. Say it aloud: SHARK. A mean, jagged sound, cruel and malevolent and severe in utterance. And the word “attack” follows so easily in its wake. Surfers have sundry nicknames for sharks: The Man in the Gray Suit, Mack (as in “Mack the Knife”), Old Toothy. These terms function, with uneasy humor and subtextual intimacy, as euphemisms, a way to avoid voicing the common, scarier moniker. But the most apt, implying as it does ultimate dominion and power and the violent abuse thereof, is my personal favorite: The Landlord. The Landlord is out there where you’re blithely headed, somewhere, count on it. And the rent due him, my hapless friend, just might be you. I know: Statistically, it’s more likely you’ll be struck by a lightning bolt than taken by a prowling tiburón. But what statistician’s tally includes the eight men known to Chicho, offed by sharks just up the coast? By what means are the attack/fatality numbers gathered for Baja, or any remote coastline where men go to sea daily? By no means, I’d venture. Poor Chicho is running low on leathery, callused fingers in the count of friends lost; he’ll soon need his toes to keep up. And speaking of the lightning bolt theory of fate, isn’t a paddle-out just down the beach from where those eight men had been slaughtered the 4th doom-tempting equivalent of climbing a lone oak tree and waving ga three-iron at an ion-bloated, crackling thunderhead rolling across a flat-prairie golf course? Would you do that? If it is indeed
bad luck to name that sea-dwelling devil, as Chicho, Miguel, et al. believe,
how much more dangerous must it be to pooh-pooh his menace? No, speak not
of how safe you are out there on the edge of the abyss, with limbs like
live bait dangling.
I was hyperbolic here, admittedly, but my fearful ramblings reflect no untruths; and anyway, who would negate the incessant badgering of the mind? In reality, the lurking shark is almost certainly illusory – almost – an irrational yet potentially debilitating fear, an accompaniment of all the rest. So you do your best to put the fear aside, and successful or not, you paddle on out there and get on with things. The following is a list of articles Allan has written for the magazine:
Allan is selling his stunning house in Costa Rica, if you are interested in buying a great house in Costa Rica Click Here To contact
Allan by email Click Here
|
The
Caribbean On $25 A Day - 