I’ve been to Mexico five times now, but this is the first time I’ve driven across the border. And I have to say, it was anticlimactic. Probably the build up was more interesting than the actual crossing.

As you approach the International Border on the I5 freeway heading south out of San Diego, California, you see signs alerting you to what is coming. One finally says “Last US exit before International Border.” We took that one to make a few final arrangements.

But let me back up for a second. I should explain who “we” is. There are three of us. Dr. Matias Nochetto, an Argentine doctor I have worked and traveled with for several years. The third is Mary Luna from ReefCheck in Los Angeles. She is of Mexican descent. She picked us up at the airport and is driving us south. They are both fluent in Spanish. I’m not.

As I said, we took the last exit before the border. We bought gas, exchanged money (with a surprisingly good exchange rate) and most interesting of all bought Mexican Auto Insurance to cover our car while we are in Mexico. I was truly surprised how many companies were selling this insurance. Within a block of where we stood, there were at least half dozen companies. There was even drive through Mexican Car Insurance place where you approached a drive up window.

After that experience, we crossed the border. And it was mostly a nonevent. We went over a good-sized speed hump and we were there. There was a check-in station for people with “Something to Declare” but since we had nothing, we could have moved on without stopping. Except, Mary also knew we were supposed to get Visas since we were heading into Baja California Sur. The funny thing was, I didn’t realize we were actually in Mexico yet and asked that question. “Are we “IN” Mexico?” The Visa process was entertaining though. We went to one person, filled out a form, took a second form to the “bank” and paid our $22 each and then went back to the first man to receive our Visas; I half expected the first man would have taken his lunch break while we were gone. The amusing part was he never actually looked at our passports. We could have put any name down on the forms and no one would have known the difference. Right up until we got into trouble, of course. And during the course of the trip, we passed at least six military checkpoints so it was probably best.

From there, we drove together to Ensenada to meet up with a driver from the diver cooperative who would take us the rest of the way, about a 12 hour trip.

Baja is all low desert; scrub, desert flowers, cactus and dirt. That’s about it. The first three hours of the drive were pretty unnerving. The road was narrow, people were passing and it was stop, slow and accelerates through a series of small towns. After that, the road took off and we were able to make good time. It was still winding though, with no guardrails or roadside shoulders. We actually passed a semi truck that had wiped out. I am sure the drive lost attention for a second and dropped a wheel off the road. He was never able to right himself and laid it out, spilling his load. Not sure what happened to him as we rubber-necked past.

Around 830 pm we stopped at a little roadside diner. I love these places and they are all over Mexico. The US Health Department would have a conniption with them, but they are interesting. The food is authentic, hot, good and cheap. After a good, filling meal where we watched a Mexican dance competition on TV and got waited on by three generations of the family, our driver “Chacka” climbed behind the wheel and we took off again.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I have absolutely no idea what time it was, I realized we had stopped. I had been stretched out across a seat in the van so I sat up and asked what was going on. I was told “Someone hit a horse and we are going to help them pull it off the road before someone else hits it.” Not what you want to hear as you wake up. It turned out someone in a truck had hit a stray horse and killed it instantly. Fortunately, the animal was off the road so we didn’t have to do anything.

We hit the road again and finally stopped for a couple hours and we all slept around 430 am. We woke up with the sunrise and took off again. As we arrived at the water’s edge, a boat was waiting to take us to the island, a short ride away. All in all, about 14 hours travel time from when we left Ensenada to when we arrived at Isla Natividad. A long, long way to go.

This trip is a counterpoint to my recent travels to Honduras where Matias and I are working on a project to help local harvesting divers dive more safely and avoid injury. Here in Baja California Sur, we are visiting with, and learning about a group of divers who have been doing essentially the same work as the divers in Honduras. This group, however, uses a diver’s cooperative that oversees the diving, the harvest and the distribution of that harvest. I’d like to see what we can learn from this group and possibly apply some of their lessons to the divers in Honduras.

More to come later..

Throughout much of the developing world, pay as you go cell phones have revolutionized lives. I’ve seen it in Africa, South America, and the Caribbean where nearly everyone has a mobile phone. They have literally leap-frogged over years of development.
Telecommunications providers in these countries have found it is easier to build cell towers than it is to string land lines. That makes perfect sense. And, with the ability to sell cards with “minutes” on them, users can recharge their phone whenever they run out.

While the ability to communicate is (probably) a positive advance, around me I see evidence of a negative one, too. Water quality in a place like Puerto Lempira, Honduras is low so bottlers are purifying and importing water and soft drinks. Obviously, access to clean water is a good thing. But what is truly troubling is the amount of plastic trash on the ground and in the water. This is a beautiful lush rain forest. The water just a few yards from homes is filled with fish and shrimp for the taking. Mangoes literally fall from the trees (I was nearly hit several times yesterday).

But, this plastic trash just stacks up and gets thrown in the water and nothing is done about it. As we first approached Kalkira, I saw piles of bottles floating in the water.

Leaving the village, Elmer pointed out a sign that says, basically, “Put Trash in Its Place”. But, the trash can beneath it was overflowing with plastic bottles and the ground around it was covered. Just after I took a picture of it, a boy grabbed a rake and piled up all the bottles—and then burned them. And this was literally feet from the water. I don’t even want to think about the chemicals he released into the air and then breathed as he tended the fire, and what else leaked straight into the water.

Elmer suggested that the ships that deliver cargo to these villages could then pick up the bottles and take them to La Ceiba for recycling. (He is going to recommend this to a friend who owns a boat making deliveries to La Moskitia) I would like to see the soft drink bottlers (Coca-Cola was the primary brand) take responsibility and work to clean up this trash. They are making plenty of money selling Cokes and Dasani water here, they need to reinvest some of it for the future of the people and the environment..

I don’t know how many times in my life I’ve watched a documentary where an explorer rides up some remote river with local guides to see something or meet someone. And just as many times as I have seen that scene, I have thought “Man, I wish that was me.”
Yesterday, it was.

After Elmer and I arrived in Puerto Lempira, we quickly met with the head of the local association of disabled divers. He told us about a village of divers, called Kalkira that was just a 20 minute boat ride away. Once we arrived at the village, we met some divers (all disabled to some degree themselves) who said they had a boat and could take us to visit some other divers.

The water was a brackish mangrove with birds circling in the air, people fishing and rowing canoes. We had a motorized boat, but just as many boats on the water were small hand-dug canoes with two or three people in them, carting produce or people around. As we moved up and down the waterway we saw kids swimming in the water, women washing clothes by hand on washboards and men fishing for camarones (shrimp) using light weight thrown nets.

The trip wasn’t all about me getting to pretend I am an explorer, though. It was very productive and we met with many different divers—some injured and some not. But a big part of this trip was to meet the divers where they lived and understand those conditions. In many ways, they live as they have for hundreds of years. Their homes are built on stilts to protect their belongings and families from flooding rains and storm surge. They have no electricity and no sewage—only wells to provide fresh water.

Puerto Lempira and Kalkira were both tremendous places to visit and the images will stay with me for a long time. The issues facing the divers living in these remote places, disabled, are difficult and harder still to see. But, at the same time I saw a tremendous spirit among these men. They are doing their best in spite of the challenges.

In the next post, I will address two conveniences of the modern world that have changed the lives of the Moskito Indian—for good and bad..

The day started out early. 4 am. Elmer picked me up at 4:30 to go to the airport for a 6 am flight. I carried on my camera bag and my backpack so they searched my backpack and didn’t allow me to bring my mosquito repellent. No clue why. It is the La Moskitia region…professional courtesy? And I couldn’t have more than 4 AA batteries so they took 2 away. And so it goes.

I was #13 and Elmer was #14 to board. But, there were only 5 people on our plane. Again, no clue. The hour-long flight to Puerto Lempira was uneventful and the land below was mountainous and beautiful although my vision was obscured by the haze and the aging acrylic window. Elmer said he thought it was an old Russian plane.

We landed on the smallest airfield I have ever seen. I have seen some small ones, but this was still surprising–like something from the third world. Oh. Wait. Dirt runway. Shacks for the “terminal”. And soldiers to meet us and check our ids—they wanted to make sure we weren’t drug smugglers. You would think they would check the people leaving, not arriving, but it wasn’t a big deal.

We grabbed a taxi to go to our hotel. Imagine my thoughts at this point. No paved roads. The smallest airport in the world. What is the hotel going to be like? I had pretty much resolved that it was going to be basic before we got here, but my imagination was really spinning. Hot water? I was hoping for that.

As we pulled up I was pleasantly surprised to discover a very nice place. We got to choose between air conditioning all day, or from 6 pm to 6 am, or fans. We chose the middle option, although at 4:30 as I write this, there is no electricity anywhere in the building so had we paid for the extended air conditioning, we wouldn’t have it. The court yard outside the rooms gets a very nice ocean breeze making it a very comfortable place to sit.

One of the more amusing things about the place, the only paved road anywhere in Puerto Lempira is 50 feet of pavement in front of our hotel. That’s it. Nowhere else. Elmer said the owner of the hotel used to be the governor of this state. So, I guess he has connections. He also has his own water treatment/bottling company.

Ironically, hot water in the rooms is the only thing it doesn’t have.

Quick addendum: I have now flown back to La Ceiba. The security at the airport leaving was pretty amusing. There were a couple 20-year-olds with M16s standing around, but not much else. We walked across the landing strip to the “terminal” and hung out. Then boarded the plane and left. No one checked our bags or anything. Well, that is until we got back to La Ceiba. I guess the odds on anyone carrying anything dangerous on board the plane are pretty low, but they wanted to make sure we didn’t bring anything into the city. Very funny. Just sit back, close your eyes and trust they know where they are going..

As soon as I posted the first post for today, I regretted it. It was too general, too simple and really didn’t explain why I was here or what was going on. There is only so much I can cover in a “blog” without it turning into something else, of course, and I plan to write this up for another publication or two when I get home. That said, I think I can add some more detail to explain the “purpose” of this adventure.

Since the mid-1960s, Moskito Indians from the La Moskitia region of Honduras and Nicaragua have been diving for lobster. In the beginning they dived without scuba, freediving, and were very good at it. But, as is somewhat inevitable, they had to go deeper and deeper so they began using scuba. Even then they have had to move deeper and deeper to continue their harvest.

In short, their diving has evolved well beyond any recreational or commercial limit into the extreme—and extremely dangerous. Often, these divers make 8 to 12 divers (or more) a day for 12 days to 100 feet or more. Simply put, that is insane. One of the greatest mysteries of this is why these divers don’t experience more problems than they do.

Dr. Elmer Mejia has been treating these divers for nearly 20 years, starting out as a hyperbaric technician, then a nurse and now as a physician. Today I showed him a video produced about 15 years ago in Roatan. He is in it. He remembered the people and the situation. Dr. Mejia does his best to treat these divers and restore their health and function. Sometimes he is successful, other times less so. But, he has dedicated his life to serving this community and trying to make a difference.

These extreme diving exposures often lead to severe paralysis and sometimes death. Today, Dr. Mejia treated a diver who had come to the chamber paralyzed from the top of his abdomen down. He can now walk again, but he is unable to urinate on his own. He has to wear a catheter. On the boat before he ever made it to the chamber, this man had to insert his own catheter—he used kitchen grease as the lubricant. Dr. Mejia is continuing to treat him and work with him to restore him to normal function. He is fighting the residual affects of the diving injury along with a serious urinary tract infection at the same time. We can only hope for the best. If he returns to his home in La Moskitia, he’ll probably only live a couple more years. Continuing to use a catheter, finding sterile materials and such, is nearly impossible.

So, that ultimately is the purpose for this adventure. We are going to travel to Puerto Lempira to visit with some of Dr. Mejia’s former patients and see where they live. I want to understand their quality of life. It’s important we all understand the price these men are paying to harvest lobster for American dinner tables and “all-you-can-eat” buffets. As Divers Alert Network, my employer, evolves we are looking for ways to use our expertise in diving medicine to help underserved populations like this one..