Espiritu Santo 2012
by Mike Thompson, 1/5/2013
This year we decided to do another winter paddling trip but to be a bit more adventurous, heading down to Baja, Mexico. We signed up with Mar y Aventuras (Sea & Adventure), an outfitter based in La Paz, for a 4-day excursion to Isla Espiritu Santo, an island nature preserve in the Sea of Cortez. Jane and I flew down from Seattle the day after Christmas, catching our first glimpse of the island from the airplane window just before landing in La Paz.
Upon arival in La Paz we checked into the Posada Luna Sol hotel and then had a great dinner at the nearby La Costa restaurant, anticipating the beginning of the trip the next day. The steamed fish at La Costa, with tomatoes, onions, green olives, bits of cheese, and jalapeños, was beyond delicious. (We took a week-long break from our vegetarian ways while in Mexico for this trip.)
The next morning we picked out equipment (snorkeling gear, sleeping bags/pads, etc.), met our guides and fellow campers, and learned about what lie ahead.
Next we loaded the gear into two vans, drove just north of La Paz to the beach at Pichilingue, loaded the gear into two motor launches, and headed out for our campsite on Isla Espiritu Santo.
Espiritu Santo is truly a desert island, even in December at the end of the rainy season. The island is mostly made of volcanic rock, with the occasional layer of sedimentary rock sandwiched in.
At camp we found two shelters set up, one to eat meals in and one for cooking. For sleeping there was a 3-man backpacking tent set up for every two people. The kayaks (nice fiberglass boats in excellent condition) and a couple stand-up paddleboards were already there. Also set up was "el baño", our self-contained camp toilet featuring a panoramic view!
Carlos gave us a "Kayaking 101" paddling lecture/demo, which was welcome as many of our fellow campers had done little if any kayaking before. Then we all set out for a short paddle around the bay before dinner.
Next we learned the evening routine with which each day at camp concluded. Promptly at 5:30 PM a shout of "Happy Hour!" went up, and in the dining shelter appeared a large cooking pot full of Margaritas or Piña Coladas. After a half hour or so of drinks and conversation, a wonderful Mexican dinner was served up in the adjoining kitchen tent. The meals were terrific! Forget about that freeze-dried stuff you've eaten while backpacking - we were treated to excellent, authentic Mexican food and wonderful selection of fresh fruit at every meal.
The biggest surprise of all was how much Jane and I enjoyed the company of the other people on the trip. Within two days it felt like we were one big, happy family of seventeen. It was a very interesting group of people, with which we enjoyed some really terrific conversations around morning coffee, at meals, and of course at Happy Hour. I think the kids, of which there were seven, made a huge addition to the fun. They were up for anything including the paddling and snorkeling, inspired a lot of the fun activities like tide pooling and frisbee on the beach, and were as nice a group of youngsters as you could every hope to get to know.
- Fredric and Aline, with children Camille, Nicolas, and Eva: The Chevaliers are from France but have been living in Mexico for two years, where Fredric's job has brought them. All speak at least three languages, including English with a beautiful French accent.
- Tobias and Michele, with children Sophia and Gabriel: They live in Seattle, though he's originally from Germany and she's from New Orleans. Michelle generates more energy than many small hydroelectric projects, and was generally the life of the party at Happy Hour and dinner.
- Dale and Adi, with children Giselle (aka "Gigi") and Cooper: They're from San Diego and Dale's a surfer, so he and I hit it off right away. Son Cooper, age seven, got to be a good buddy of mine. Daughter Gigi is absolutely the cutest and brightest seven year-old girl on the planet. She should really have her own TV show, if not her own cable channel. Disney is blowing a golden oportunity here.
- John and Julie: Great, fascinating young people from New York, by way of China. Jane and I had the most wonderful conversations with them about education, and they taught Jane a neat math card game named "24" that the 4th graders at Lake Serene Elementary will soon be playing. John and Julia both went to elementary school in China before moving to the US, she graduating from Penn and he from MIT. Have you been a little worried about the up-coming generation of Americans? If you, like Jane and I, had the good fortune of spending a day or two with John and Julia, you would come away feeling a lot better about the future!
Equally wonderful were our guides, Carlos and Alba. Both had endless enthuiasm, patience, energy, and warmth. Outings were organized and led with no stress or pressure, and the camp (meals, boats, tents, etc.) was always in perfect order. Of the other three or four support people who prepared the food, washed the dishes, anchored, loaded, and drove the motor launches, Jose Luis was my favorite. Quiet, polite, and very expert with the boats, with his tall, thin frame and sea-weathered face he would be a perfect fit for the cast of a movie remake of any of the books that John Steinbeck wrote about the Sea of Cortez.
The kids all fell for Carlos and Alba, who led them on numerous tide pooling expeditions. They searched out hermit crabs scurrying around in borrowed shells, turned over rocks to find baby eels, and combed tide pools for octopus left behind by the dropping tide. After our snorkeling excursions they pulled out field guides and led the kids in identifying the many fish we had seen. It was the best marine biology field trip that you could ever hope for. Since Espiritu Santo is a nature preserve, the fish have lost most of their wariness of humans. The snorkeling was reminiscent of the Hanauma Bay marine preserve on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, except that the sea life of Espiritu Santo is larger in size, and the sea birds more varied and plentiful.
Because I don't have an underwater camera, you'll have to use your imagination to picture the outing that was the highlight of the trip, which was our snorkeling expedition to Los Islotes. Los Islotes consists of some huge rocks that jut out of the water about two miles north of Espiritu Santo. It's home to a colony of sea lions, as well as to many species of the birds found in the Sea or Cortez: pelicans, cormorants, frigate birds, gulls, and buzzards. We made one attempt to get to Los Islotes in the motor launches the second day we were in camp, but were turned back by high seas caused by strong north winds. We made a second attempt the next day when the winds weren't quite as strong, and were able to make it out to the shelter of the south side of the rocks.
We all donned our wetsuits and pulled on our masks. I got into the water and then helped Jane get in. And then I looked down and was absolutely stunned by what I saw. Ten feet below me was a huge, undulating, silver cloud consisting of tens of thousands of sardines. Holes opened in the cloud as cormorants swam through it, hunting for a meal. Near the bottom, twenty or thirty feet below, swam fish of all kinds including big grouper and parrot fish weighing around ten pounds, and trumpet fish three feet in length. There was so much life around me that I felt like I was inside a living organism, rather than just looking at living things that were swimming in the sea.
Then from the rookery several sea lion pups came out to play. They swam through the sardine cloud, which morphed to form holes around them, and out to meet us. They peered into our masks, swam close around, and bumped up against us. When I offered my hand to one it opened its mouth and took my hand in its teeth, mouthing it like a puppy would without biting down hard. We played for several minutes, the pup softly chewing on one hand while I stroked it with the other. When I dove toward the bottom my new friend would follow, spinning around me and jetting to and fro, probably wondering why I couldn't swim any faster. We spent an hour in the water with the sea lion pups with a mom or (huge!) dad occasionally cruising past below, just making sure that everybody was playing nice. Dale Smith shot some video of one of my dives with a sea lion pup with his underwater camera, and he posted the footage on YouTube.
I have had the good fortune to witness many beautiful things in the mountains and waters of the Northwest where I live, and the many places around the world I've berm able to visit. But I have never had such a powerful feeling of the variety, vitality, and beauty of life on the Planet Earth as I had during our time in the water at Los Islotes. It felt as if I was present in Genesis 1:20, just after God said, "Let the water teem with an abundance of living creatures, and on the earth let birds fly beneath the dome of the sky." On the boat ride back to camp everyone was quiet, I think both because we were all trying to absorb what we had just experienced, and because we knew this was our last full day together and soon we would be going our separate ways.
