Larry's version - Part II

For all the beauty of the islands just off La Paz, Isla San Francisco moves the bar a notch higher.  The Island sits very close to the mountains on the Baja between Loreto and La Paz.  These mountains are BIG and they rise right out of the water and soar to incredible heights.  With all the colors and layers of Caleta Partita, these mountains are a marvel, and inspire you to stare and become hypnotized by the mere mass and majesty of the range.  Some of the peaks are high enough that there are clouds around the top, and I have been told that it is not uncommon for it to snow at some of the higher elevations.  And sitting within a few thousand yards of these incredible mountains is a jewel of an island, San Francisco.  

I had been to San Francisco once before and was not as startled by how beautiful it was as was Edie.  Until you are very near rounding the point, you cannot see the bay, so it seems like all of a sudden this expansive bay opens up unexpectedly, and leaves one with few words looking at clear green water and white sandy beaches.  The bay is long and crescent shaped with rocks on each end.  Near the middle of the bay the land is flat behind the beach and reaches across the island to another bay on the other side of the island.  So depending on the direction of the wind you could receive protection from fetch coming from almost any direction, but simply changing anchorages from one bay to the other.

Yes, the water is this beautiful!

On each side of this opening across the island are massive, rugged, and rocky hills, not quite as big as mountains, but still a challenge to hikers.  With my bad ankle, and the desire to watch a movie on the television and have popcorn for breakfast, I declined an invitation from John and Nicky to scale the slope and take pictures of our boats.  But not to be outdone, Edie accepted the invitation, and I volunteered to take them all ashore in the dingy, and come back and get them later.  I could see the hikers all the way up the slope to the top from the comfort of my padded deck chair and that was good enough for me.  I even had a morning beer to celebrate the success of the climb.  Edie made some incredible pictures of Milagro sitting at anchor, one of which she uses as the background picture on this blog. 

They hiked down the ridge line all the way to the flats where they had intended to visit the salt marshes.  In the old days fishermen would camp in this bay, and mine the salt to preserve their catch.  The salt marshes are not used for that today, but Nicky told us how she had gathered salt from these marshes last year, and put them in special containers and given them as gifts.  The salt has a pinkish color, and is said to be very unusual.  But unfortunately this year, there has been more rain than even the old timers have ever seen, and the salt marsh was a lake.  Otherwise some of you may have gotten salt for your Christmas present.

The water in this Bay was absolutely clear, and even though we anchored in about 25 feet of water, we could look down and see the anchor on the bottom.  There were fish all over the place, and we could see little schools setting up around our propeller and rudder.  I think they are called sergeant majors and are little tropical fish often seen in aquariums, and they came by the hundreds. 

Bill helps with hooka

Getting ready to dive

The water was warm and very inviting, and inspired me to, at last, try out the hooka system that I had installed on the boat several months ago.  The hooka, compressor which I bought on ebay, is an oiless compressor which had previously been used to supply air to a dentist chair. With Edie’s help we pulled the hose up from under our bunk to the cockpit locker and I was ready to dive.  We dug out mask and fins and, with the instruction from Bill, I took the plunge.  I held onto the ladder until I got the hang of breathing, and bounced around a bit, to reassure myself that I could get back up if I turned loose of the ladder.  Finally I let go, and with more effort than I had expected went under and to the bottom. 

The Sea of Cortez is the second saltiest major body of water in the world and salty water causes you to float.  So I had to wear a big weight belt in order to even go under the water.  In the anchorage there is little plant life, the bottom is scoured by the dragging of numerous anchors and chains, and I did not expect to see anything of any consequence in this area.  But the closer I got to the bottom, the more little fish I could see, and all sorts of little creatures scurrying around.  Edie describes it as, the water was so clear that you could see a crab walking around on the bottom from the cockpit.

I understand that the real sights to see underwater are near the rocks at each end of the bay, and around the point on the west end of the island.  Brian and Carrie on the sailing vessel Copernicus, a couple hailing from Canada that we had met in La Paz, came to visit and told diving stories about the area.  Edie and Nicky had found a skeleton of a moray eel on the beach when they went kayaking and shelling, and were telling Brian about it.  Brian said that he had been searching the area for a moray eel reported to be near 10 feet long, and friendly to divers.  I told Brian to be sure and take a lot of pictures, because I had no intention of getting to know that eel personally.

Agua Verde

After a casual 4 days of enjoying San Francisco, our entourage decided to work its way north toward Loreta, with a stopover in Agua Verde.   Agua Verde is a popular anchorage about 50 miles north of Isla San Francisco.  There is a large bay complete with a village and a tienda  that has fresh vegetables sometimes as often as twice a week.  The bay is fairly protected from the northern winds, at least in the protected cove to the north.  Because we needed phone and internet service for some necessary business, we decided to only stay the night at Agua Verte, and make for Puerto Escondido (Loreta) in the morning.  Voyager and Seychelles wanted to stay over and visit the sights around Agua Verde.  Seafood can be purchased directly from the fishermen as they come in for the day,  and the area is famous for prehistoric cave paintings that I would love to see.  Edie and I both pledged to come back for a longer visit. 

We were sitting calmly at anchor there in Agua Verde when a gentleman came by in a dingy heading to the village.  He was a Canadian named Ian from the sailing vessel Kasassa.  We had often been told about the people we would meet when we are out sailing; how friendly everyone is, and interesting.  Ian stopped by just to say hello, and welcome us to the anchorage.  You’d think by the way he greeted us and talked to us that he was a one man resident welcoming committee.  Turns out he had been there for 4 days with no other people around, then 3 boats show up together so he wanted to talk. 

Ian suggested that we definitely wanted to hike in the hills surrounding the bay, that the views were outstanding and we certainly shouldn’t miss the grasshoppers.  It turns out that with all the rain that the Baja had received this season the grasshoppers were somewhere near plague level, and if you walked in the hills that you could scare up amazingly large swarms of grasshoppers, so thick that the cloud that spews up when you walk through them actually blocks out the sun.  I was really sorry to have missed that.  Although this is probably a once in a lifetime occurrence to see a plague of grasshoppers, our business in Loreta took precedence.

It has rained so much in the Baja this past year than even the old timers could not remember a wetter time, and as a result the desert has changed.  Things are green.  I have become accustomed to the desert being brown, and it is hard to conceive that brown could be beautiful, but it is.  Now that it has rained some 26 inches in the last few months, there is grass growing everywhere.  The mountains are green, the desert is green and plant life shows a vigor that is very healthy and sturdy.  Stories have been told for months now about driving down the Baja and encountering massive clouds of yellow butterflies that totally dominate the area.  The stories tell of such a build-up of butterflies on one’s windshield that one had to stop and scrape them off to see to drive.

There is a frog found near a town called Centenario, just outside the city of La Paz, that is legendary among those who know about it.   It is said that the frog sleeps about 15 feet below the surface of the ground, and only wakes up and comes to the surface when the conditions are extremely wet, and the ground becomes saturated.  It has been such a long time since these frogs have been seen, that even the stories of the frogs had almost been forgotten.   But now the frogs have written a new chapter in the memory of the residents of Centenario, one that will likely be remembered for some time to come.  A story that will be passed down though many generations of Mexicans to come.