It’s strange traveling around by boat: you have your home with you so it doesn’t feel like a holiday because there’s all the normal shopping and cleaning and maintenance and admin and bank stuff and other unexciting day-to-day stuff to deal with, but even though you’re in your home, you’re also a tourist in somebody else’s and you’re rarely anywhere long enough to feel like you really get it, like you have any real insight into life in the places you’re visiting.
The imposing, bird-covered Monument rock at Ensenada El Candelero on Isla Espíritu Santo is surrounded by fish, crabs, and red seastars clinging to the rocks. After a drift around in the dinghy watching all the life thriving in the shallow water, we headed to the beach to follow a trail to a dried-up waterfall. The island is managed by CONANP (National Commission of Natural Protected Areas) and has six authorized paths for hiking, accessible from different bays. This was one of the easy ones, a 40 minute round trip according to the leaflet we were given when we bought our permit to enter National Parks on our boat, and suitable, we hoped, for a young sailor to work his land-legs. Continue reading “Water, water, everywhere? Family walk in Isla Espíritu Santo”
We anchored yesterday here in Bahía San Gabriel, on the south west of Isla Espíritu Santo in the Sea of Cortez, and woke up this morning to a bay full of clouds and colour. The boat was covered in dew, the air was wet with morning mist, and sun beams shone through the grey hanging over the hills. 
Magnificent Frigatebirds circled overhead along with a few Turkey Vultures, at the shore there’s a Great Blue Heron, and on the water a group of maybe a hundred Least Grebes (I think, definitely some kind of grebe) moved around tightly packed together, ducking under, then chirping their way back into view. As the sunlight got stronger, cloud reflections and wind ripples on the water swirled into gently shifting patterns of blue, white, grey and green, smudgy like an oil-painting. Continue reading “Birds, cactus, and friends: exploring the Baja Peninsula and Sea of Cortez”