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Guest Article: Baja at sea level
by Kari Bodnarchuk -
an award-winning freelance writer and photographer.
Brought to you by the
HoustonChronicle.com January 18, 2008
Sea of Cortés,
Mexico — "Dolphins at 2 o'clock," said Melissa, a fellow paddler, and we
all glanced over to watch four gray dolphins come splashing by, arcing out of
the water, flipping, and slapping their tails playfully on the ocean's surface.
A flock of pelicans soon followed, flying single file just inches above the
water, riding the air currents on their way stage right.
"OK, cue the whales,"
joked Rob, another kayaker.
As if in a comedy
sketch, whales soon appeared, spouting a misty funnel of spray in the distance,
just to the right of the chiseled brown hills at the base of the Sierra Giganta
mountains. This scene repeated itself daily as we kayaked around Mexico's Sea
of Cortés, though sometimes we spotted a fin whale, rather than a blue
whale. Or maybe a great blue heron or osprey stood in for the
pelicans.
The day my friend Cathi called to suggest a "girls'
getaway," temperatures in New England — where I lived at the time —
registered as much as 30 degrees below zero. I was game. She wanted to do
something active and outdoorsy, requiring little thought, preparation or extra
gear, and preferably a trip she wouldn't do with her kids, ages 2 and 5. I
wanted something a little more adventurous, in a spot where temperatures were a
good 100 degrees warmer than at home. Baja fit the bill on all
counts.
We weren't big on guided or organized trips, but sea
kayaking around an unfamiliar area as wonderfully remote as Baja's offshore
islands was not an activity we would have tried to do alone.
Seven of us had signed up to spend a week paddling
around two uninhabited islands in Bahía de Loreto, a newly established
national marine park. This would be a wilderness adventure, we were told —
no showers, no civilization (we saw only a few fishermen, two other kayaking
groups and a lone tour boat all week), and we would carry a week's worth of
supplies in our kayaks.
The outfitter, Sea Kayak Adventures, would provide all
camping and kayaking gear, plus guides who, it turned out, could field even our
silliest questions and also whip up the most mouthwatering meals — a mix
of Mexican and U.S. dishes. We kayakers, in turn, were expected to pitch our
tents, wash our dishes, paddle and have fun — quite opposite the
high-stress, rigorous pace most of us usually experienced.
The paddlers in our group ranged from 26 to 52 years
old and had flown in from St. Louis, Denver, Boston and Wisconsin, as well as
Vermont and Oregon. We had a recreational therapist, two writers, a former
submarine officer and three "computer people," including Rob, who confessed
that despite living at the foot of the Rockies, the closest he gets to nature
is looking at a scenic screen saver on his computer. Several of us were
experienced kayakers, while others had never paddled before, but there were no
prerequisites.
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The trip began in Puerto Escondido, half an hour south
of Loreto, the oldest settlement in Baja and once the capital of California,
when this Spanish-ruled area stretched from Baja to San Francisco. (The town
still has a 300-year-old mission to explore.) Loreto lies 600 miles south of
the U.S.-Mexican border, and it maintains an easy pace. It has roadside vendors
selling silver jewelry, Mexican blankets and other handmade crafts, a few small
hotels, one supermarket and several outstanding hole-in-the-wall restaurants.
It's less than three hours by air from Houston.
After a safety talk, during which we learned basic
paddling and rescue techniques, we set off in our two-person, 21-foot kayaks.
Each fiberglass boat weighed about 200 pounds, had specially designed
foam-padded seats and adjustable backrests (a big plus after a few hours of
paddling), and was named according to its vibrant color: Mary Kay (bright
pink), Winterfresh (light green), Piña Colada (a dusty yellow), and so
on.
That first day on the water, we kayaked alongside Isla
Danzante, where the jade-colored water was so translucent we could see hundreds
of sea creatures below us: starfish, orange sea horses, sergeant majors and
parrotfish, plus mounds of coral. A few feet offshore, the water turns deep
blue and plunges 1,200 feet, making it an ideal spot for a mammal the length of
a Boeing 737 to feed the blue whale.
Off the east coast of Baja, Bahía de Loreto
national marine park encompasses about 800 miles of coastline and offshore
islands, including the two we called home for six days, Isla Danzante and Isla
Carmen. This area was formed when tectonic plates split apart, cracking open
mountains and severing a part of Mexico from the mainland. This left behind a
1,000-mile-long finger-shaped stretch of land known as Baja California and one
of the earth's youngest seas. That was about 25 million years ago. Later, as
the area was split open along the San Andreas Fault, intense volcanic activity
repeatedly sent lava flow upon lava flow, forming the mountains seen here
today.
Jacques Cousteau once called the Sea of Cortés
"one of the world's aquariums." It is considered the richest body of water on
the planet, biologically speaking, because it has more than 3,000 species of
marine life. It's a bird-watcher's paradise, too, and heaven for anyone who
needs a stress-free escape or is simply in search of good waterborne adventure.
My compadres and I spent two to five hours on the water
each day, paddling by cliffs where white trees (palos blancos) grew out of
cracks in the volcanic rock, past valleys full of towering cordon cactus and
sage-colored scrub, and around rocky headlands where birds perched on rocks and
held out their wings, like a mother's welcoming arms, to let them dry in the
sea breeze.
Although the Sea of Cortés can be choppy, we
had four days of glassy or just slightly rippled seas, resembling nothing more
than a corduroy surface. The calm water helped preserve our strength and also
made spotting wildlife easier. As we kayaked along Isla Carmen, past sand and
coral beaches, blue-footed boobies and ospreys soared overhead. We spotted a
manta ray with a 6-foot wingspan just floating on the surface, a green sea
turtle about twice the size of my kitchen sink, dozens of blue and fin whales
and three strange logs sticking out of the water. Lino, one of our local
Mexican guides, identified these as the head and flippers of a sleeping sea
lion (another good reason to go with a guide).
For lunch, we stopped off in wineglass-shaped bays with
names like Honeymoon Cove, White Beach and the Aquarium. Here, we snorkeled
around angelfish and wrasses, and explored tidal pools where we found hermit
crabs the size of a baby's fingernails. Or we walked along rock ledges that
lined the shore, occasionally spooking big, scarlet-red crabs that went
clicking across the rocks as they scurried away. Some had simpler ideas: "OK,
today I'm working on tanning my thighs," someone said, and that's about as
ambitious as our goals were by midweek.
At night, we sat on the beach in our camp chairs and
rested after a day of paddling. This required dipping tortillas into the
ceviche bowl and watching the sun dip and the moon rise simultaneously. Often,
there would be a repeat of the day's matinee: pelicans skimming the surface,
dolphins swimming past and the occasional, familiar poofing sound of a whale in
the distance.
Those of us with extra energy played Frisbee, while
others went for a walk. And some took advantage of the on-board library: In a
red dry bag, our guides had packed books on whales, birds and area history.
A natural bonding goes on after the sun sets, the
"tequila sunrise" comes out and seven strangers and their guides sit on a
beach, staring at lunch bags filled with white sand and burning candles (our
pseudo campfire, since fires were recently banned in the marine park), and talk
about everything from geology to relationships to pedicures. Then the evening's
real entertainment began: name games, brainteasers and a much funnier and
wackier version of charades.
Several of us slept in spacious MSR tents on the beach.
We were given three-person tents for doubles and two-person tents for singles,
meaning we had plenty of room to spread out. Others, however, chose to fall
asleep under the shooting stars and bright moon, spreading their tarps on the
sand and their sleeping mats and sleeping bags on top. With temperatures in the
40s or 50s at night, my beach-sleeping compadres did don fleece hats and
jackets.
By the end of the week, we'd shared adventures, secrets
and lots of laughs, kept talk of work to a minimum and enjoyed the simplicity
of living in the outdoors for a week with nothing more than the gear we could
stash in our kayaks.
Cathi and I fully thawed out from the subzero New
England temperatures, Rob captured dozens of photos for his new screen savers,
and we were all recharged and ready to get back to kids, jobs and cold-weather
lifestyles.
After six days on the water, covering about 37 nautical
miles, we returned to Puerto Escondido, the sheltered takeout where a van would
be waiting to whisk us back to civilization. As we paddled the last few miles
from Isla Danzante to the mainland, a pod of more than three dozen dolphins
crossed our path and put on a final show, flipping, leaping and slapping their
tails on the water's surface, while pelicans flew overhead waiting to scoop up
morsels of fish stirred up and left behind by the feeding dolphins.
Click here for Kayaking Tours at Loreto Bay, Sea of Cortez,
Baja description
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