Punta Risco Colorado to The Hulk, October 22nd 2004,

In the morning while we were breaking camp, Don Fleming saw some animals jumping out of the water near our horizon. He thought that they might be spinner dolphins which we have seen off the Hawaiian Islands. After we launched and headed northwest along the shore, we heard a distant noise like popcorn popping. Looking around to see where it came from we saw the same animals jumping out of the water in large numbers. They looked smaller and closer than dolphins and we started paddling towards them to find out what they were. By the time we got close enough to identify them there were only one or two jumping at once. They were manta rays! Each one was a foot and a half across at the wing tips. They came out of the water moving very fast like they swam hard towards the surface. Out of the water most of them would flap their wings and orient themselves to land in the water with a loud PLOP of a belly flop. Although there was the occasional non-conformist who came out of the water and did a back-flip. We got close enough to get a few good pictures of them before they calmed down and stopped jumping. Later in the trip we saw other great schools of mantas jumping but never got close to them again.

On the whole I cannot say that there are a lot of caves on Isla Tiburon. Of course I am spoiled by having the world-class Mendocino coastline near where I live with thousands of caves and arches. But we did find one large slot of a cave on this day that we were able to paddle into.

Ahead of us there was a large peak that the yacht cruising guides call “The Hulk”. We don’t know what the local name of this peak really is, on the maps it is simply the farthest south peak in the Sierra Menor range down the west side of the island. When I met Ed Gillette in April, he had recommended a beach on Isla Tiburon with good hiking into the mountains. He hadn’t been specific about the location but pointed to the area around The Hulk. He said it was the logical place to come to ground if you were paddling from Isla San Esteban. We explored a bight between the two points closest to Isla San Esteban but never found a place that we thought was particularly nice. There was a big wide arroyo in the center of the bight that might have good hiking, but the beaches were large cobble. Out towards the second point the beaches became sandy but the arroyos behind them didn’t lead far into the interior of the island. We became tired of searching and settled on one of these sandy beaches on the far side of the bight.

Don Fleming had carried a parafoil, a tarp designed to shed wind and provide shade, in a bag on his deck for this whole trip. We were planning on taking a layover day to relax so we set the parafoil up along with our tents.