Layover Day near Punta Mendenares, April 7th 2007.


We were exactly on schedule according to the float plan that I had written so long ago. However, that float plan had us arriving in Loreto the day after Easter. I figured that the Mexicans would not have sobered up from the big beach-going celebration they do on Easter and I wanted to give them another day before we arrived. Since our float-plan had four extra days for emergencies and we had not used any of these, I suggested that we hang out here on this pocket beach for an extra day.

I got up early in the morning and spent several hours making water and doing experiments with my desalinator. If I had spent 45 minutes a day making water I would still have had 10 liters in reserve but I had gotten a little behind. We had been winded in on our second day and I had not wanted to put the intake of my desalinator into the turbid water then. I had cooked dinners for the group on several days and not had time those evenings. Don Fleming joked about how this trip was “work, work, work” all the time. We got up early to pack our gear, paddled all morning and half the afternoon, set up camp, some of us cooked dinner or made fresh water. The sun seemed to go down before you had time to get all your chores done. I brought several books to read but didn’t make it through the first one. Did I really volunteer to do all this? Am I having fun yet? This was a day for me to catch up on my reading, hiking and water-making.

At low tide there was a shelf of rock that extended around the points at both ends of our little cove. It was possible to hike for miles up and down the coast while the water was low. The rock shelf was full of little pockets of water that made for excellent tide pooling. Our cove and a smaller cove south of us (for those who were shy) had warm water in them for bathing. In the afternoon I climbed up behind our beach and saw that there was a small arroyo that circled from a small beach north of us down to a large gravel beach south of us. I hiked down to the saddle of this arroyo and followed it south. Then I hiked back to camp along the rocky shelf doing some more tide pooling and looking into a large dry cave that had bats squeaking up in the roof.


All text and images Copyright © 2007 by Mike Higgins / contact