Lost in the Loveliness--aka lost should be a keyword in my life

 

Springbrook National Park

I backed against the mossy wall out of the waterfall’s spray, as a group of hikers edged by. “The trail up ahead is closed.” I said, beaming. “We tried the left fork too. It’s also closed off,” I added, as I tried to stifle my crazy-lady Oh. My. Gosh. Waterfalls-make-me-happy grin while relaying the disappointing news.

  

Evan and I continued back to the map and tried to sort out where else to go on the crisscrossing trails. Despite the fact the sign had one of those handy ‘you are here’ arrows pointing at a section of wiggly line, I kept suggesting: a) sections of trail we’d already explored and discovered were closed due to cyclone and flood damage or b) paths that weren’t actually connected to the trail we were on. 

 Having no sense of direction and a grave inability to read a map could be seen as a liability in a travel-based lifestyle. When it comes to real world travel—where it actually matters if when travelling from ‘A’ to ‘B’ you end up at ‘C’ after a long detour through ‘I’m-pretty-sure-this-is-the-wrong-town’—I need to compensate. But here, where I could pass the same waterfall three times and still react with the same giddy awe that most people reserve for the first one or two times they see something wondrous, it wasn’t much of a problem.

Gorgeous landscape and the only real risk aside from getting lost was the Giant Stinging Tree a, "Australian rainforest tree that protects itself with fine silica hairs on its leaves that are coated in a neurotoxin which can cause pain for up to 6 months at a time."

 And so we wandered. Every so often Evan pointed out when I was going to head off on a trail I’d already traversed and when we got back in the car to head home he carefully turned on the GPS and aimed the screen more directly at himself. I simply relished the view.

Walking on Land

 The fantasies start round about day 12, best as I can tell. When you’re on a long passage, after a while all you can think about is walking on solid, unmoving, sweet-smelling earth (that and sitting in a solid, unmoving, sweet-smelling restaurant and drinking an ice-cold beer…). Barb and I would talk about it on the radio—how once we got into harbour we’d go for daily morning walks and how we’d find hikes, lots of hikes. The cold drinks were a given.

Happily the Marquesas Islands may have been created with hikers in mind. The snorkelling isn’t fab, but the hills are steep and are crisscrossed with intriguing footpaths which once linked various tribes to each other in trade and, occasionally, warfare.

This morning we got up early and headed into the market (which starts at 4:30am!). After loading up on lunch fixings we headed home and roused Maia and Sasha then headed back to shore to meet Dino (Sasha’s Dad) and the folks from Architeuthis. Then we set off on a hike to the headlands.

The trail is that little cut in the cliff face--look close and you will see little people

 The start of the trail was dry and grassy—and seemed almost savannah-like. But then we were in the jungle. The trees grew dense and wildly around us—and bird song echoed through the lush and humid green. As we hiked up the switchbacks we talked about Herman Melville’s book, Typee (which was set here) and wondered if the ridge he first climbed to escape the whale ship was the same we were now climbing.

 We crossed dry stream beds (it hasn’t rained in a week—so many of the little waterfalls are dry) and edged along cliff faces. I was near the back of our group so I could hear the gasps and cheers as the folks at the front broke out of the jungle and came out to the headland.

 It’s simplistic to say it’s gorgeous here. It’s more of a fairytale than that. The trade winds blow soft and warm over vistas we sailed across an ocean to see. And when we looked downward: at giant mantas swimming in clear water, and outrigger canoes slicing through the waves, and islands outlined in puffy clouds, and verdant cliffs fading into the curve of distance I think we all ran out of words, and simply cheered.

Captive Dolphins and Saving Wetlands

Tetakawi seen from Estereo del Soldado

Today we continued our exploring. San Carlos is turning out to be one of those places where the more we experience, the more we like it.

there was some effort to explain natural dolphin behaviour throughout the show

 Our first stop was Delfinario Sonora. I have to admit I’m not that interested in captive dolphin shows—we’ve seen (and heard) so many amazing things in the wild that heading to see performing animals doesn’t hold much appeal. The difference here though is the Delfinario’s main purpose is Dolphin Assisted Therapy (DAT) a rather out-there (but massively popular) therapy for children with central nervous system disorders.

I’m reserving judgement on the therapy, but I have to say that watching a dolphin show with a hundred or so Mexicans who have never seen the creatures before was electrifying. The faces of the people around us made it clear that they were in awe. The show itself was fine—the dolphins seemed healthy and content, the staff was excellent and the facility was gorgeous. It’s just, well, you know—when you’ve been woken at dawn by high pitched squeals and come out on deck to witness your very own Sea World—it’s hard to go back…

I haven't actually seen this happen in the wild though

 Our next stop was Estereo del Soldado, an important migratory bird wetland that contains Mexico’s northmost mangroves. Director Mauricio Cervantes gave us a tour, and I have to admit it only took me about 10 minutes to fall in love with the soft spoken man's spirit.

 I think he warmed to me when he realized I actually care that the modest 300 hectare marsh contains three of Mexico’s four (some say five, but that’s controversial) mangrove species (red, white and black). And by the time the first three White Pelicans in several years arrived, and we both lost track of what we were talking about to gaze at them in wonder, it was clear we were kindred spirits.

Cervantes though has done something I would never have the capacity to do: he’s waded through years of bureaucracy and his legacy includes not just the preservation of Estereo del Soldado but also the recent preservation of the 200 million hectare Marismas Nacionales in Nayarit http://www.whsrn.org/site-profile/marismas-nacionales.

Saving something in Mexico though is not the same though as having the ability to protect it. It was clear after just a few minutes that Cervantes is given nothing to work with. He has a cement shell of a building that he someday hopes will be a visitor centre. His greenhouse—where he once grew native species in the hope of rehabilitating a landscape that was heavily abused by locals (Cervantes hauled 2 tons of garbage off the site when it was first protected)—blew away in a hurricane over two years ago.

His dream (after re-establishing the mangroves and letting some of the most damaged land come back) is to offer interpretive kayak tours through the estuary and have labelled pathways where visitors can learn about the unique eco-system. For now though he’s content with the thousand or so student who take workshops at the wetland each year (including the local eco-tourism students).

Cervantes and his tree

 We finished our tour at a tree he told us he likes to visit—whenever the difficulties of wetland conservation overwhelm him. It’s a very old tree and it grows in a heavily damaged area of the wetland, its entire trunk is scarred with names and initials, some of its branches were hacked off. But yet it grows.

He told me the tree is symbolic, a reminder, that despite the damage we have wrought, life continues.

And so it does. Last year there were no White Pelicans in the wetland but this year, so far, there are three.

Nacapule Canyon Hike

In the language of the Yaqui people nacapule (pronounced knock-ah-poo-lay) means earlobe. It’s also the name given to a rare fig tree that has generous knees like a Cypress tree and to a canyon that I read about in a tourist brochure.

Places that we read about in tourist brochures are often out of reach for us—for two reasons: they are either too far to get to by foot, or bus, from our boat, or they cost too much for our non-tourist budget. Then there is the fact that wild places that are populated by tourists sometimes have the magic scrubbed out of them—they’ve been made so accessible that the essence that made them captivating is gone.

But because I’m doing a story on San Carlos and need to see the things that tourists see I pay attention to the tourist brochure. And this morning we found ourselves following roads north out of San Carlos. Our guides Fernando and Miguel drive us through the suburbs, then across an arroyo and through familiar desert. Ahead of us is the Sierra Aguaje Mountain range, a string of rugged volcanic formations, where black, red, and rust-hued strata fold over each other in graceful tucks and pleats.

As we grow closer to the mountains our destination becomes clear: a deep ocher-coloured cleft carved into the cliffs. We park and Fernando leads us along the trail to the canyon, pointing out ironwood and jasmine, chichinoco squirrels and swallowtail butterflies. Miguel explains how rare and fragile the sub-tropical ecosystem of the canyon is as he leads us deeper into the desert oasis.

Along the way we pass a bit of graffiti and a few burned palms and Miguel explains that locals are only beginning to have reverence for the canyon. He explains that for the Yaqui people the canyon was sacred—that between the year-round springs-for water, plentiful wildlife-for food, large trees and obsidian rock-for tools, the ancient people found all they needed here.

We continue to make our way up the canyon, following a trickle which gives way to deep tea-coloured pools filled with rare frogs and swimming snakes. The air (which can be unbearably humid in the summer) is comfortable and cool. We scramble over blood-red rocks, through palmetto thickets and up a small cliff—until we find ourselves in the heart of the canyon where the graceful Nacapule fig grows, its bark wrinkled like elephant's but silky to the touch.

It’s hard not to fall in love with a place like this—a place so mystically beautiful I want to keep going long after the trail turns more rugged than we’re comfortable with. So we sit for a while and soak it all in. Then we head back down the trail, leaving nothing behind and collecting the small bits of garbage along the way so the next hikers might understand that this a cared-for canyon, a sacred place that can provide us with everything we truly need to thrive.

San Francisquito

it's easy to ignore bad weather when this is the view...

Once you leave Santa Rosalia it's almost 80 miles to Cala San Francisquito, the next good anchorage. Making it either an overnight, or a very long day passage. The other detail that you need to factor in, is the further north into the Sea you get--the weirder the winds, the stronger the currents and the higher the tides. We pretty much ignored this detail, and when the boat hit 12 knots while sailing upwind in current riled seas that had 30 knots blowing across them, I started to wonder if a big heavy monohull might be the more comfortable way travel in conditions that changed seemingly every few minutes.
A few hours later, when we should have been sailing downwind at 6+ knots, but were crabbing across a channel at just under 3 knots, I found out from the folks on Hotspur that they had, had just as wet and uncomfortable a ride as we had. Strangely it made me happy to know none of us were terribly comfortable on the beautiful trip..
Today though—I've pretty much forgotten any discomfort that came with getting here. We're tucked into the calm little inner bay with Hotspur and two other boats. The air temp is a few degrees cooler than Rosalia and the water is clear and blue. On the night we arrived, which was Maia's birthday, there were fireworks on shore. We ate cake and drank Sangria while the sky lit up.
You could pass days in a place like this and lose track of the hours and then the weeks. This morning Meri and I set off on one of the dusty roads past the three or four buildings that make up the settlement and walked until we hit a long exposed beach with crashing surf. On the way back we passed a pile of oyster shells—and admired the mother of pearl interiors and wondered about the black pearls they may have contained. Later in the day Evan and I set off for a dive with Terry and Dawn from Manta and learned to recognize black coral and how to negotiate a strong current. Tomorrow I plan to hike along the ridge that borders the anchorage until I reach an old stone fence that had been a mystery to me until Dawn told me what it was for.

the stone fence looks close to the anchorage--but it took almost an hour of hot hiking to get to it

I think this cow didn't make it

 The fence is strange and out of place. Built painstakingly on the side of a steep hill it was once a cattle enclosure. In the early days of the settlement, before there were roads, they raised cattle around here. Boats would come for the cows, but they were too big to make it very far into the bay. So the farmers would drive the cattle along the ridge and down into the fenced pen, and from the stone pen they somehow were driven straight downhill another 30 or so feet and into the water—there the waiting boat would lift them by slings into its hold.

My guess is the cows didn't like it. But the old stone fence is still beautiful.
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Teach Your Children

The geological history of Baja California is a complex one. In the Mesozoic era the North American plate collided with the Pacific plate causing the mountains to rise. The North American continental plate was thicker so the Pacific plate went under it and formed a subduction zone, complete with lava spewing volcanoes.

If your eyes are beginning to roll back into your head, and you catch yourself snoring, I don’t really blame you. Except for a special few, geology isn’t that sexy a read. But we’ve discovered something while sailing through our giant classroom; if you get out into the environment, you get curious. When you get curious, you ask questions. And the answers, which might seem dry and uninteresting if you’re given them before you ever get a chance to be inquisitive, well, they become fascinating.

It was with this in mind that we woke all the kids early this morning and marched them into the desert. As they shook the sleep cobwebs from their heads, Evan told them how the Pacific plate (which the Baja and all land west of the San Andreas fault are part of) began to slowly drift north and tore the Baja peninsula off of the Mexican mainland. Then about how 5 million years ago the sea rushed in and the Sea of Cortez was born. And then, when the last ice age ended, the sea rose dramatically and the islands, including the one we were hiking across, were formed.

Maia and the kids from Hotspur and Third Day learn how the rock they are sitting on was formed

Last year we used a BC correspondence program for Maia. It was flexible and comprehensive, and it gave us enough structure that we didn’t have to think about what to teach while we were still sorting out the boat. The downfall of the program was it required us to mail back large work packages every month (a detail that became more and more difficult) and it also required that Maia get online for a certain portion of her work.

This year, we’re going with geography based education. This means, when you’re in the desert, you learn about the desert (while still learning math and English on the side). Learning this way also lends well to group field trips and multi-age learning. The little kids learn to distinguish igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks and get a brief overview of plate tectonics, while the older kids can go more in depth.

Carolyne was full of questions and interesting facts (although she didn't need to raise her hand...)

The key, for us, when we’re reinventing the educational wheel, is to make good use of every resource we can. We love it when other cruisers offer to teach skills (be it slacklining or marine biology). And I’m always on the hunt for exceptional books and websites such as this one: http://www.oceanoasis.org/fieldguide/index.html, which is all about the Sea of Cortez.

The result, we hope, will be a broad and exciting education that teaches Maia to think critically and to work hard at what she does. The unexpected by-product looks like it’s going to be my own enhanced education.

 Who knew that Baja California and the part of California that’s west of the San Andreas fault is eventually going to tear off the continent and become a very long island? That should make for some pretty awesome cruising…

Snakes!

A month or so ago our friend Meri from Hotspur mentioned she had bought spare snake bite kits, just in case she encountered cruisers who didn’t have them. Evan and I were slightly surprised by the offer because, unlike Meri, we haven’t really run into many snakes here, actually any snakes... But as Meri shared tale, after tale of snake encounters and near misses, I listened and then bought one of her spare kits.

There’s something vaguely disconcerting about hiking in a region that has 15 different species of rattlesnakes, plus another 30, or so, other types of snakes of varying levels of deadliness (although some have cheerfully alliterative names like the Espiritu Santo Sandsnake or the Partida Norte Nightsnake so as not to worry you.) But if, like me, you come from a place that doesn’t have much in the way of poisonous snakes, it’s hard to know how afraid to be.

When I think of rattlesnakes, I think of old John Wayne movies: The lovely damsel riding through a peaceful arroyo, only to be struck down by a rattler the size of an anaconda. Not even their name helps dispell the image of death. The Baja California Rattlesnake (the most common species around here) is Crotalus enyo in Latin. Crotalus comes from the Greek crotalon, meaning a rattle or little bell. The name enyo refers to the Greek mother of war. So basically the snake is showing up for war, with bells on. And the Crotalus atrox, or Western Diamondback Rattlesnake, which is what our snake sort of looks like, ranks as one of the most dangerous snakes in the world (uhg)...

Like every scary animal that can kill us, rattlers have an image problem. They are easy to wipe out and several species are verging on extinction. But there are very few people who are interested in saving a snake.
I knew all of this, vaguely, when Meri, Lori (Third Day) and I went for a hike this morning. We decided to beat the sun and headed into a San Marcos arroyo for a pre-coffee hike.

There was no trail. But we made our way into the island's interior, marveling at the changing geology and and the stunning vistas. On the return trip we saw it all in reverse, but were as fascinated as we were on the way in. We saw humming bird nests and more lizards than we could count. We admired the rugged, gnarled trees and watched the light play on the rich red rock. We were making a plan to bring our kids back to see it all, when I just missed stepping on a rattlesnake.

Lori saw it though, and screamed. Then she made her way past it. Then we all looked at the snake, which looked back at us and Meri tried to sort out how to get past it.
“Will it chase us?” I asked, as it began to uncoil itself. The answer, it turns out, is no. Rattlers are shy and non-aggressive (except for maybe good old C. atrox...). And it seemed our rattler had finished sunning himself and simply wanted to move to a shady spot. “You should be taking pictures!” Meri told me as I backed away. Her suggestion snapped me out of my moment of fear and I became fascinated by the beautiful creature.

We watched him, for a while and discussed that this would have been a good time to be carrying our snake bite kits, and then we carried on.
Enriched.

Tears, Shrines and Stories...

Before we came back into the Sea this summer I shared my old memories with Behan from Totem. Her family spent last summer in the Sea and as we compared highlights—her's from last year and ours' from 14 years ago—I was surprised by how many things were the same. She had stories of the same hikes, told of the same experiences in the same dusty towns, and caught the same fish on the same reefs.
I have to admit I was surprised—when you're living something that seems so rich and new, you want to think it's a unique experience. And it's not like we're in Disneyland; where we all get tickets for the same ride. We're in a diverse landscape with endless options.

San Jaunico (and us!!) 14 years ago

 But something happens in places where people go year after year. Experiences get passed along at the dock, and at potlucks, and gradually a story develops. Even without guidebooks we learn where the best hikes are, which bakeries make French-style bread, which islands we shouldn't miss, and where to dive to find clams (to see only—they are illegal to take if you are not Mexican...)

The cruisers' shrine in San Jaunico. I need to find the picture of our contribution...

Sailing through the Sea is like following a plot line. Today's story took us back to the same cruiser's shrine in San Juanico where we left our boat name on a wooden plaque in 1996 (this time we left it on a unique piece of bone.) We gathered more obsidian from along the same trail—but now we know they are called Apache tears and even come with a legend. Last time they were just nice rocks... And we showed Maia how to dive for chocolate clams and then pointed out to our neighbours how to read a potentially Chubasco laden sky (something we were shown on a similar evening when we were last here.)

Just a few of the Apache tears (aka obsidian) we found on the trail.

I'm no longer disappointed in knowing that someone came before me, and that I'm simply following the threads of a well-known story. Instead it motivates me. I want to find new things, or rediscover old moments that are no longer part of the tale. And maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll get to add to the collective narrative and make it richer for whoever comes next.

At anchor in La Ramada

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com