Cristien Echeverria has been an active BASK member for years. He has been threatening to return to his native country of Chile soon, when he finishes getting his degree. Apparently he is very close to doing this so a goodbye party was scheduled to give him a happy send off. Cristien's favorite paddle is to paddle to Angel Island from Horseshoe Cove so this is what we did.
We paddled around the east side of the island and stopped at the Chinese Internment Camp on the north side. This is an area of the island where “undesirable people” were incarcerated, sometimes for years, while looking for flimsy excuses to send them back where they came from. This facility was used exclusively for Chinese people applying for US citizenship. We went on a tour of the buildings which are now a museum of shame that we hope will teach people enough history to prevent ugly things like this from happening again. Jenning Gee was on this paddle and she spearheaded the effort to get us to go through the museum. We learned that her father had spent time in these buildings as a young boy!
In typical BASK fashion we had a big spread of potluck food on the picnic tables down by the beach. ("Paddle Someplace Neat, then Eat" is one of Penny Wells’ mottoes for BASK). Then we paddled the rest of the way around the island and back to Horseshoe Bay.