In the morning we pushed forward to Costa De Cocos, a fly fishing oasis surrounded by turquoise waters based out the small village of Xcalak. Our plan was to meet up with Trapper Rudd, a saltwater fly fishing fanatic who has spent years exploring remote fishing locations around Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, much less the rest of the world. Before we started our expedition across Mexico we contacted Trapper for guidance after watching a YouTube video of him wrestling with Jurassic snook in some remote location of the Yucatan to seek out some fishing insight. Well…one thing led to another, and it was blatantly obvious that he was as nuts as we were when it came to adventure fly fishing. Soon enough a plane ticket was purchased and Trapper was going to fill a seat in the Gheenoe and join us for a leg of the expedition.

When we arrived at Costa De Cocos, owner Dave Randall was there to welcome us in with ice cold Pacifico’s, a shower, and lobster mango pizza! After the hellish long drive across Mexico the 3 of us thought that we must have died along the way, possibly in the Walmart parking lot in Los Mochis, to have ended up in such an unbelievable place. That night we drank beer, studied satellite maps, and prepared for over a month of exploratory fishing around the Yucatan.

In the morning darkness we made plans to explore one of the larger lagoon systems in search of Snook, Tarpon, and BIG Ass Cudas. We made it to the beach put-in as the sun was hitting the horizon and pulled the Gheenoes off the roof of the truck. We climbed our way through the overgrown mangrove canals, which eventually opened up into a huge network of lagoons. The water was calm and clear and it didn’t take long at all to spot schools of cruising Snook, and lots of them!

We could feel the air getting thicker as we descended into the Jungles heading towards the Yucatan. Our first destination was far south from the bustling tourist trap known as Cancun. The plan was to meet up with a buddy of ours and explore some of the remote lagoons that could only be reached by small watercraft. The Gheenoes would be perfect for this type of fishing and we were stoked to finally put them to use for what they are designed for, shallow water backcountry fishing!

When we hit the jungle fauna of the Yucatan we were immediately welcomed by street venders pedaling bags of fresh pineapple along the highways. It seemed to be our lucky day as the fields had just been harvested and there were truckloads of fresh pineapple available and we couldn’t go another km without a sample. We decided to try something new and purchased 3 pounds of pineapple covered in chili pepper, which surprisingly tasted unbelievable! 2 hours later it felt like we had hot lava in our chests and almost died of acid indigestion.

We drove as far as we could, until nightfall and blurry vision made us stop a few hours short of our destination. The town of Escarcega is considered to be the entrance into the land of the Maya and our last stop before the coast.

By now the Our Lady of Guadeloupe festival was in full swing with flashing lights and loud sirens from the support trucks along the highways lasting into the night. We didn’t want to stop in any of the larger cities after what happened to us in Los Mochis, so we decided to shoot for Cordoba as the next town we would overnight in.

Everyone we spoke with told us not to drive at night in Mexico, so we thought it would be a good idea to give it a try. That night was one of the toughest drives I think I did on the trip. We drove across some of the shittiest pothole covered roads in Mexico and over a gnarly mountain pass with tweaked out semi truck drivers.

We reached Cordoba around 11pm and quickly found one of the best taco joints in town. We tried a little of each type of taco on the menu, even the cow tongue was tasty. First time for everything…

Mexico City lies in the valley of the ancient Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan and has the third largest metro population in the world at 20,450,000. The size of this city was intimidating to say the least and fortunately for us there was no easy way around it. We plugged our destination into the gps with hopes of no navigational disasters along the way, which we all knew was impossible.

After a few miles down the highway we started seeing vehicle height warning signs. We could see a low hanging overpass coming up quickly in the distance, which would have easily ripped the Gheenoes off the top of the truck. We managed to merge over to the last exit before total destruction and we were now lost in the middle of downtown Mexico City with the only pleasant smells that of veg oil creeping in our windows.

We had a full day drive before we would reach Mexico City and the last thing we wanted to do was attempt to cross at night. We stopped in the small town of Atlacomulco and tried to find a place to crash. When this city was built they must not have had any other vehicles besides VW bugs and the size of the streets reflected that. Aside from the difficulty of trying to drive our Veggie Tanker down these micro streets there was some sort of festival that had the town in gridlock. It turned out that one of Mexico’s most important religious holidays had begun that day, “Our Lady of Guadalupe” and was getting into full swing with fireworks and celebration.

After reading up on the event we realized that for the next week we could expect to see people running along the sides of the interstate carrying torches followed by support vehicles, in honor of their patron saint. That night we finally found a place to crash that was one of the cheapest and nicest motels we stopped at along the way, best of all it had an Argentine grill attached to it!

The next morning we woke up to a frost covered truck that was too cold to start and a totally flat tire. The best part was that it didn’t seem to faze us at all, just another typical day on the road for us. Our ARB portable air compressor was put to good use that morning and got us down the road to a tire repair shack where they determined that our tire was fine but our wheel had a hairline crack in it. They rolled it down the road to their buddies welding shop. 30 minutes and 150 pesos later we were good to go.

We made fast tracks south and blazed through Mazatlan trying to avoid the street vendors darting in and out of traffic. The plan was to make it into Guadalajara that night so the follow day we could sort out our Passport dilemma. Up to this point we have driven a total of over 3000 miles, the majority of which has been burning veg oil and we’re still truckin. After a long drive into the night we found a reasonable motel on the outskirts of the city, tipped the security guard 50 pesos to keep an eye on our truck, and after a couple of Tecates we crashed hard.

Early the next morning we headed out in a taxi into the downtown area of Guadalajara. This was easily one of the more metropolitan cities that we had been through on the trip and although we would have liked to stick around longer to check it out we were just passing through. After two days and countless amounts of BS at the US embassy we were each holding a shinny new passport in our hands. We could finally hit the road again and gain more ground towards our Yucatan destination.

Our next major obstacle would be getting through Mexico City in one piece…

As we headed further upstream the lily pads became almost too thick to continue through and when we motored down we began to hear what sounded like sprinklers running all around us. What the hell were sprinklers doing up here?? At that very moment each of us realized that we were in the middle of what appeared to be an enormous marijuana plantation. Without question we turned our boats and ran our 9hp motors downstream as fast as they could go. We heard gunshots in the distance and decided to make our way back to the main area of the lake, which seemed to be safer.

The Bass Lake proved to be one of the more difficult fisheries that we encountered. Althrough, we did manage to get some quality fish with one tipping the scales around 11-12lbs. On our last day, as we were pulling away from the lake we meet up with a guide for Pro Bass Adventures and he explained that the big fish here don’t typically hold in areas that look like Bass would hold. When this lake was made they flooded out multiple towns and estancias, which created great cover for the Bass. Without knowing what’s below the water it’s almost impossible to find the big fish. There is no doubt about it, this lake holds some trophy sized bass and is definitely worth checking out.