Baja, Sierra Agua de Soda to Bahia San Rafael, April 23nd 2000.


On this morning we started out with three kilometers of spectacular cliffs and coves with rock gardens to paddle through. We averaged only two kilometers an hour because we were having too much fun and took our time. At one point I saw something bright hanging in the water from a rock. From a distance it looked like the tentacle of an octopus. Up close it turned out to be an unusual form of sea anemone. It was hanging half out of the water at low tide, which stretched it out a bit. Instead of a fringe of tentacles around the end it had a bunch of little yellow clusters, like pieces of yellow broccoli.

After a while we came to a large low point and picked up the pace to paddle around it. After that there was a long white sand beach that we had seen from the road while shuttling the cars. But at the end of the beach is a shanty town, a fishing camp. From the water we saw trucks, dogs, campers, and shacks with tarps for walls or roofs. Most of us did not want to have anything to do with this so we continued on.

Past the fishing village the shore was rocky again and the rock was full of little holes, like Swiss cheese rock. I don’t know if these holes were volcanic or created by some animal that carved them out. But as the waves lapped into these holes it made an unusual noise sort of like continuous gobbling of turkeys. We referred to them as the Talking Rocks. The rocks were steep at the water level and we had trouble finding a place in the afternoon to camp. After a long hard afternoon we found a beach past a bluff that had a little shrine on it. The shrine was an arrangement of four sea turtle shells surrounded with dolphin skulls and vertebrae. We found more dolphin skulls on the beach and added them to the display.


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