A Good Day for Parrot Fish

Cozumel, Mexico

The Mexican Divemaster asks how many dives I've done and I tell him probably over 1,000. He's about four feet tall and almost as wide. A few minutes later he catches me trying to put on my wet suit backwards and hoots and threatens to inspect my C-card. He's been diving two years and he tells me he has done about 80 dives. I started diving in 1964 (before air pressure and depth gauges or buoyancy vests).

It's getting harder as I approach 70. My age and extra weight, the strokes and the joint pains are all starting to add up. Strapping on 80 pounds of dive equipment and climbing back on the boat requires a lot more effort.

The first dive at 80 feet is on the Pallancar Caves. We swim in and out of caves formed by towering coral heads for forty minutes. Back on the boat we have a surface interval of an hour and then do a second drift dive along a lovely wall formation for another forty minutes at 40 to 60 feet. I see turtles and beautiful parrot fish and a grouper.

We were definitely bottom fishing on the Norwegian Dawn out of Miami. We got a 60% discount on the five day cruise. The cost per person was less than $50 a day before taxes, port fees, tips and drinks. The thing I liked the least was the ship's library which was only open three hours a day. I've had better food on other cruise lines. Notwithstanding, if I never dive again, this was a good way to end it.

Ghost Whispers

Lincoln, New Mexico

A trip to Wal-Mart for gloves and then another bike ride from Ruidoso — seventy miles to the Lincoln County Courthouse. The very small town of Lincoln is where Billy the Kid killed two guards and escaped. Ghosts whisper my fate in my ear as I walk, alone and slowly, up the same stairs as Billy to the room where he was shackled to the floor, awaiting the hangman. I look for bloodstains at the top of the stairs. Large legends for such a tiny place. It's almost unchanged since the 1880s.

This is not the dry, dusty place that one might imagine. It's rolling grassland with mountains and hardwoods that turn brilliant yellow at this time of year. The Kid was perhaps innocent, but was sucked into a feud between two rival shopkeepers. Both stores are still here like time stood still. An Irish immigrant and an English newcomer both wanted to sell cattle and other goods to the soldiers at the nearby Fort Stanton. The fort was established to control the Mescalero Apaches and make the area safe for settlement. Billy worked as a cowboy for the dead Englishman and became embroiled in the cycle of violence. The two large competing stores are still the main buildings in Lincoln, which seems to have a population of about fifty with no services other than the stores that have been made into museums.

I discuss Pat Garrett's book with the museum curator. She says it sucks and recommends Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life.

Near the closed fort, five miles from Lincoln, we find a lonely fenced graveyard with a large anchor. It has graves and crosses for thousands of Merchant Mariners. A sign says 'No metal detecting'.

We will be traveling though the Mescalero Apache Indian reservation on the way to the White Sands National monument, Las Cruces, Truth-or-Consequences, Elephant Butte Lake State park, Gila Cliff Dwellers National Monument and a ghost town named Mogollon. Then into Arizona.