El Bipo

What's a Bipo? A truck with large tank that hauls water. A tanker. Since we got here this season, there's been a medium to large size one of these contraptions regularly plying the Agua Verde road. I don't think I've been on it once without encountering this lumbering vehicle. Ha! These inventive Mexicans. I couldn't figure why the road seemed to be getting better, almost like it had been graded. But then Marcia and I encountered this water machine, its hood raised with its driver pouring agua in the radiator. And when we slowly creep around and past it, we see that it's pullin' a rather large impliment tire. A second life for another wise used up chunk of rubber, or whatever they build 'em with now days. It's dragging was quite effective.

Yesterday, Chayo and Camacho and me, we're workin' our way towards the highway. Kickin' up huge dust cloud, here came that bipo barreling towards us. There really wasn't much room for me to pull off the road but I did bring pickup to a halt, it pulled as far to edge as possible. This is on a curve and this bipo's driver seemed not to have backed off the throttle at all. Bringing that cloud of dust it goes barrelin' by, two guys in the cab with the driver hollerin' somethin' that seemed insulting, whoosh, as they flew past. We all sorta asked at once, "What did he say?" But mostly his utterance had been drowned out in the racket of that passing.

Camacho thought it was an insult, fer sure. Chayo and I had found it inaudible. Chayo then tells me that the driver was Jorge Gutierrez's, the disgraced and now replaced ejido chief, brother. "Barbon!" is what Comacho thought he'd heard. "What's barbon?" I asked. They tell me it's something like "Chinga tu Madre," the only words that Gutierrez has ever chance to utter to me. Chayo and me shared a laugh.

"What's the deal on the constant water hauling?' I asked. This was a Robi operation things, something for his "Potemkin Village," I was pretty sure of that. But I really didn't know.

It was for Robi's swimming pool, Chayo answers. There we were in drought ravaged desert, and here's this truck haulin' load after load of water, at least 60 k. round trip...to fill a swimming pool, which seems foolishly wasteful in and of itself; Robi the environmentalist he claims to be. "Damn. How much water did it take?" I found myself questioning. "No!" I didn't understand, Chayo comes back. They have to keep filling it because it leaks away just about as fast they get it full.

"It leaks away!" I laughed incredulously.

"Si!" For over two months they've been trying to fill it but it keeps leaking away.

"Is anybody swimming in it?' I had to question. "No!" Nobody was swimming in it. I know, sounds illogical, don't it? I mean, the wear and tear on the truck, the amount of fuel expended, to fill a swimming pool that leaks...in the desert, with the Sea of Cortez and a beach so close at hand.

"A decoy pool," is what came to mind. Robi must have some sucker on the line, him having to show his grand ideas in full swing. What else could possibly be the rational to keep filling a leaky pool? Maybe, I thought, he's taking aerial photos: "Look! You can wallow in your decadent luxuries here at Marina San Cosme." And I think this bipo, which looks to have at least a thousand gallon capacity, is making more than one trip a day.

"Hee Haw!"

What else can ya say?

Then, too, it brings one to thoughts of the rancho well he's sucking dry in this farciable drama.

A quick up date on Martin. This Martin is the fella that, last year, told me that what I was writing about Robi and his grand ideas was 40% incorrect. He was very pro Robi in our one and only conversation, seemingly angry and hostel towards me for even suggesting that this grand investor was up to no good.

Martin had bitten on Robi's hook, and for a very long time now Robi has been, or has supposta have been, building an ego erection for him, the casa highest up, over there in the eco destruction zone on Punta San Cosme.

Well, Martin was supposedly showing up at San Cosme for a stay of some days. Sunday, the day before that bepo encounter, he did arrive. And after a short visit with those at San Cosme, he drove over to his casa's construction site, which he only visited for a very brief time, and, Varoom! he and his Humve went wheeling back up and outta the area; him not stopping again at San Cosme (where Alejo was holding mules ready for his use), or saying a word to anyone as he passed by goin' up hill.

I can't help but wonder if he still is so high on Robi, and still thinks me to be 40% off?

Email: david@dondavidonbaja.com