by Ann Hazard
Since my 20s I’ve fantasized about living in Mexico—not just for a few months out of the year—but for good. I’m perennially envious of those expatriates I’ve met in Baja (and elsewhere) who’ve sold everything in the States and just up and flown the coop.
Why do they do it? They do it for a million different reasons—but mostly because they can’t help themselves. Something deep inside an expatriate relaxes once he or she finds that perfect spot on the planet. The simpler lifestyle, closer to the whims and moods of Mother Nature, beckons. Instead of being stuck inside a cubicle, a car or a condo ... you can live on the beach, or within sight of it. The lack of pretense beckons too. In Baja you can reinvent yourself. You can be whoever and whatever you want to be—as long as you’re cool about it. It doesn’t matter if you were a banker, a truck driver or a drywall hanger in your previous life. In Baja, you’re accepted for you. The labels are left behind—with the three-piece suits and the pantyhose.
The expatriates I’ve known over the years have something else in common. They’re almost uniformly eccentric—in one way or another. Check out some of the synonyms for this word and you’ll pretty much have a rundown on the cast of characters you’ll find living in the outposts of Baja. How about this: kook, nut, oddball, rugged individualist, renegade, nonconformist, freak, maverick, and weirdo. Expatriates all pretty much march to the beat of their own inner drummers ... and they like living somewhere where their idiosyncrasies are not merely put up with, but applauded.
One of my favorite expatriates is Steve Chism. He’s about 10 years older than I am and lives in Los Barriles, near the Hotel Buena Vista Beach Resort where he’s worked since 1981. He has (at least) eight dogs. He has really long gray hair and a really long gray beard. He’s wiry, he’s funny and he’s a walking encyclopedia. He spends a good part of every day during fishing season in a little shack right on the beach in front of the hotel, repairing fishing gear and renting masks, snorkels and fins, jet skis, ATVs and kayaks to the hotel patrons. Most of the time, he’s reading. He has a library in that beach shack that boggles the mind. It includes vintage Baja books, maps, and books on the area’s history, its geography, birds, plant life and fish. He knows them all inside out.
I met him early (make that way too early) on a cold, blustery February morning in 1982. I was with my boyfriend at the time. It was my first trip to Cabo and it was super windy the whole time. But we wanted to go fishing and my dad had told us about this new hotel, the Spa. He said to go in and ask for Steve, and for sure we’d get a fishing boat. There were no phones in Buena Vista until 1995, so they had no clue that we were coming. In those days, all reservations were made through a stateside office and the information was snail-mailed to the Valdez family in La Paz. We could’ve called their stateside number before we left, but my dad assured us that just mentioning his name would open all the right doors and grease all the wheels that needed to be greased. So, on that recommendation, we got up before dawn and made the hour-long drive to the East Cape. We got there in time for breakfast. I found Steve.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Togo Hazard’s daughter. He said you could get us a boat.”
Steve gave me a withering look. “Who?”
I back-peddled. “Togo Hazard. He’s a good friend of Chuy’s.” Another one of those looks. I kept on. “You know, the owner of this hotel. My dad comes here once or twice a year with a huge group of construction guys to fish.”
Third withering look. “Sorry. Never heard of him.” He turned and walked away.
Boy, did I feel stupid, but I wasn’t giving up. “Wait,” I said, tugging at his arm. “Can we get a boat anyway?”
It was a lousy day for fishing, so of course we got a boat. I’ve never been on seas as rough as those—ever. Thankfully, I didn’t get seasick, but I couldn’t sit down either. I had to stand up, my legs braced against the side of the boat, and I had to hang on with both hands. I had to use the tiny head in the cabin at one point. Just getting down in there was a challenge. Sitting on that toilet was like an “E Ticket” ride (back when they had E tickets) at Disneyland. The fish were not biting. We were desperate to catch something, however. Our capitán—captain—took us to the north end of Bahía las Palmas—Las Palmas Bay—and let us troll right offshore. My boyfriend caught a needlefish—skinny as a pencil, less than two feet long and good for absolutely nothing—not even bait. But it was a fish, right?
I’ve gotten to know Steve
a lot better in the last two decades. Now we laugh about that first 
encounter.
Over the years, as the hotel grew, he’s worn a lot of different sombreros.
He ran the boats for a while. After that, he helped check guests in and
out. I can vouch for the fact that he is the person most responsible for
transforming an expanse of naked sand into the lush oasis that is now the
hotel grounds. I saw him planting purple, pink and red bougainvillea, hibiscus
and oleander several years’ back. I saw him coordinating the workers as
they planted coconut palms, aloe and grass. Over the years fountains sprang
up—some with dramatic metal sculptures of flying fish, some with cherubs.
Steve found his niche. This was and is a place he could study, work and
create beauty from nothingness. These days, the hotel is magnificent, with
a swim-up bar and plenty to offer guests like me, who come for something
other than world-class sport fishing.
In the off-season, during the winter, Steve and his expatriate buddies go four wheeling. Sometimes he goes solo; sometimes they travel in groups as large as 20. Most of the time they have a destination in mind. As Steve told me, “Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. We’ve been to ranchos that have existed for 200 years or more and operate much the same as they did back then. We’ve seen tame deer, quail, playful raccoons and a flock of ostriches. We’ve also been to gold mines, Indian cave paintings and kitchen midden sites, and seen more streams and waterfalls than you’d believe exist in these mountains.”
These guys have traveled
up and down both coasts of Baja Sur and through the mountains that 
separate
them. As he said, these mountains are surprisingly full of water. There
are stone pools big enough to swim in year-round. Palms and jueribos—similar
to cottonwood trees, line the banks of these streams. There really are
orchards and farms latticed along the mountainsides where families nurture
livestock and grow tropical fruits, just as their ancestors have for generations.
And all of this in a land that looks from the air to be utterly barren
and devoid of life.
My favorite of Steve’s Baja stories is the one about the ladder. The way he tells it, he and his buddy, Dewaine took off late one afternoon and headed up an arroyo toward the mountains on their ATVs. When they couldn’t drive any further, they got off and started climbing up through a field of boulders. After picking their way through a dense palm grove, they found themselves in an orchard. There were oranges, tangerines, grapefruit, papaya, avocados, guava, mangos and sugar cane. And even more amazing—there was a drip irrigation system! They helped themselves to a couple of grapefruits. Dewaine picked a dozen or so to take home and left behind a half-empty bottle of tequila.
They visited the orchard off and on throughout the winter. Each time, they’d take fruit and leave a bottle of tequila, whiskey or vodka behind. According to Steve, “One day, Dewaine went by himself. He ran into an old man up on a rickety wooden ladder picking fruit. He introduced himself, told the old man what he’d been doing over the past few months and offered to pay for the fruit he’d taken. The old man told him that he was welcome to take as much fruit as he wanted. His family couldn’t eat it all, and they had no way to get it down the mountain to market. He didn’t even have a ladder tall enough to get the fruit off the top branches.
“The next time Dewaine went stateside, he bought an 18-foot orchard ladder. The following December, a few of the guys moved the ladder up to the orchard and propped it against a tree so the old man would find it.
“In late January, Dewaine told me he thought maybe the old man was dead. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because I haven’t seen him all winter and I’m the only one using the orchard ladder.’” Steve chuckled. “One day he went up there and ran into the old man. He was on top of the rickety old ladder picking fruit. You have to understand. This old ladder wasn’t just rickety; it was damned dangerous! My buddy asked the old man why he wasn’t using the new ladder. ‘It’s a fine ladder,’ he said. ‘But it isn’t mine, señor!’”
There’s another punch line to this story too, believe it or not. One night (whether it was before or after the last incident, I don’t know) Dewaine was at Mañana’s Pizza Parlor in Los Barriles having dinner. The waitress came over to him and shook her head at him. “I see you’ve been to my grandfather’s again,” she said.
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“Because he’s drunk.”
© Ann Hazard, 2002. No part of this
article may be reprinted without permission.
This story is featured in Ann's newest book,
Agave
Sunsets.