The sea on fire--paddling at night in Loreto Bay

Thursday 3/28/13

Today it seemed too hot to paddle.  I had planned to launch early for a long paddle, but it just didn’t seem like the thing to do.  I had a late breakfast at the nearby “lunch tent.”  It took them a while to prepare the fish I ordered, since they were so fresh they had to be filleted, and the batter mixed.  Meanwhile, I played soccer with their daughter Michelle, and we talked some.  I tried to get her to talk some English, since she said she studied it in school.  But she was very shy.  About all she could or would do was recite the colors of the rainbow in English.

For $4.00 (50 pesos), I got a plate of four strips of batter-fried fish, with refried beans.  Plus a communal platter of shredded lettuce, limes, salsa, cucumbers, and guacamole (the limp green puree they serve here).

It was excellent.  While I was eating, Michelle’s three smaller cousins came up and gathered around me.  Of course, they didn’t know I didn’t speak Spanish.  They chattered away excitedly.  Since they seemed to come from the lagoon, I asked them if they had caught any crabs (congrejos).  They chattered away at high speed, all taking at once.  “Congrejo this, congrejo that, a congrego bit me, a great big congrego, and so on.”

I first ate at the ‘lunch tent” a few days ago.  Smelling some delicious food, and following my nose up the beach, I discovered a small “lunch tent” not far from the trailer.  A small group of people were gathered around the tent.  I asked one if you could eat there, and he said I could.  I asked him what food they had, and he explained that the best thing was a giant cheese burrito.  So I ordered that.  It turned out he knew what he was talking about, because the food tent was run by his family.

It was a small sun canopy, over a large gas stove, plus a charcoal barbecue area.  In the rear was a cooler and food preparation area.  About three women were inside cooking.  There was a small plastic table to one side with a sun umbrella overhead, and four plastic chairs.

The head of the family was Juan, 60 years old.

Over the course of several conversations, I learned that his grandfather had slept around a lot, and had 30-50 children (I don’t remember exactly).  But Juan claimed that his grandfather had supported every child, unlike many fathers today.  This led to a discussion of machismo, and Juan (along with another young man in the conversation) asserted that too many men show “machismo,” and either abuse their wives or don’t support their children.  But the law is catching up, and now men go to jail if they abuse or don’t support their family.  Juan had quite a few brothers and sisters in his immediate legitimate family of origin.  And he himself had, I think it was about 7 children.  So there were about 50 relatives total on the beach at different times during the holiday, including his 12 grandchildren.

Juan was friendly, often wearing just his Bermuda shorts or bathing suit.  He had a lined face, deeply tanned, and a white mustache. He was a lion of a man, like many older Mexicans. While talking to you in a very relaxed way, he’d rub his belly with his hands, or scratch his back with a stick he picked up on the beach.

His daughter, who was doing much of the cooking, works in reception at the Loreto Hospital.  She’s taking an internet course towards a degree in public administration and political science.  She showed me photos on her phone of a whale shark that they saw.  She has visited many of the islands around here by boat.

About 3:00 pm, I decided to go paddling, and got off by 4:00.  I crossed in 25 minutes to Danzante, where I found a quiet, deserted cove for a bath and a beer, seeking the shade of a nearby pinnacle.  The water was surprisingly cold.  But if I floated on my back, I was exposed mostly to the top 2-3 inches of sun-heated water, and it was tolerable.  The salty Sea of Cortez is so buoyant that, if I put my arms behind my head like I’m lounging on a sofa, this counterbalances, my feet so they don’t sink.  I can float like that indefinitely.  As I bob, I can hear a myriad of sea creatures making snapping and popping sounds, like a vigorous frying pan at work.  But I’m afraid I’ll get sunburned, so I quit after 5 minutes, and retired to the shade and my beer.

At the start of my paddle, in the sky I saw a huge, thin cloud the shape of a crab, with claws extended.  Gradually, it was replaced by a solid thin overcast.  The air was hazy, and heavy.  The smooth, gently undulating water seemed heavy, almost syrupy, viscous.  Row after serrated row of grayish-blue mountains faded into the distance, like layer after layer of paper cutouts.

Along the E side of Danzante, there’s a moderate amount of wildlife.  Lots of small fish below, everywhere.  Sometimes little ones jump. There’s a great blue heron (possibly one of ours) fishing every quarter mile.  They squawk with great annoyance as they take wing.  There are pelicans hanging out on rocks with nothing to do, and occasional pairs of large gulls, who are beginning to show courtship behavior, including an occasional copulation.  One large male just stood on the back of the female, not getting into the mood sufficiently to finish the act.  It shows you how light birds are—that the male just stands there, and the female hardly notices.

There are also groups of small red-eyed grebes fishing in groups, an occasional cormorant, raven, osprey, and sometimes even frigate birds or boobies overhead.  Along the shore, there’s an occasional pair of oystercatcher birds picking things apart very carefully and skillfully, or even a spotted sandpiper.  In the little tidal potholes (some the size of a cereal bowl), you can see little fish about 1/3 of an inch long.  When they see you, they move very fast, then stop on a dime and hide among the pebbles.  Around sundown, you can hear a few sparrows singing.  I saw swifts gathering around one cliff.  Back from the beach, quail whistle.

Away from the water’s edge, I saw a lizard catch an insect.  I heard a cricket sing, far up on an apparently barren cliff—but there are plants clinging to the rock.  Whenever I land my kayak, I am immediately greeted by many large wasps.  They seem to explore anything new, and visit the kayak before I even come ashore.  Soon, there are as many as 20 flying around and investigating all parts of it, and me.   I have to keep waving at any approach, to scare them away, as they are pretty cautious when they realize you are “alive.”  Once you get used to them, they are no trouble.  There are no biting flies, but a few small ones that are not very annoying.

I haven’t seen any ants—so ever-present elsewhere.

Then I crossed to Isla del Carmen, an island at least 15-20 miles long, with small mountains.  It’s very jagged and barren.  The crossing was no more than a mile, and then I headed north along the west coast.  I was looking for a shady cliff, but the orientation, toward the afternoon sun, was bad for shade, and I found none.  I set my little sail, since I had a tail wind, but it failed after a while.  Finally, I found a small bay about an hour before dark, and stopped for a brief exploration and stretch.

I headed back with less than an hour of daylight left.  But I wasn’t worried, because it was almost perfectly calm, and I knew my way.  I figured it might take up to three hours, and I was right.

The sunset revealed a little purple, and then the light slowly faded.  Moonrise won’t be for at least an hour.

The light slowly faded, and the shadows became darker, trending towards black. It was totally quiet.  Not a single engine sound, and since the shorelines were perhaps half a mile off, there was just the faintest whisper of gentle waves on shore, the soft, jet engine-like noise of a trillion pebbles rolling against one another.  Or the occasional call of a gull.

Eventually, it was almost totally black, though the sky was slightly lighter, so I could see the silhouette of the mountains and Danzante to navigate by.  What light there was purple, or a t ouch of deep red remaining from the sunset.  So it was easy to imagine that I was sailing on a sea of wine—that liquid black below me was really wine, so red it was black in the dim light.

It’s wonderful to be mostly deprived of the usual senses.  This makes you aware of new sensations, seldom experienced, almost never relied on.  I could smell the sea strongly, a distinctive, pleasant smell.  Amazingly, it varied from place to place, perhaps depending on which way the gentle air was wafting.  Once, when I crossed a school of fish, I even noticed—just before I saw them—the smell of fish.  It’s different from the more general smell of the sea.

After a while, I began to notice the luminous plankton.  At first they were faint, and I thought I wouldn’t experience the brilliance of last year.  But gradually, they grew brighter.   Of course, it’s partly due to your eyes becoming dark-adapted, and distracting light fading.  But also, the critters also seem to glow brighter as the evening deepens.  The amount of bioluminescence varies from place to place.  Of course, you don’t see it close to shore, where the crashing waves squeeze all the light out of the organisms there.  Sometimes it’s mainly present in the top inch of water.  In another place, I was amazed to see that, if you sit still in the water, the organisms flash spontaneously at all levels, some quite deep down.

Eventually, the bio-light became as bright or brighter than last year.  The individual critters were as bright, some brighter, then reflected stars.  As I paddled along, my bow wave became luminous, a least two curvy lines of light curling off my bow, almost like smoke catching the sun as it curls up from a cigarette.   I imagined that—in the far future as a starship approaches the speed of light, it will create similar waves of rainbow colors, a short of shock-wave in space-time.

When I dig my paddle deeply into the water and wave it around, it looks much like a greenish torch, flaming below.   The places where my paddle disturb the water a pools of light, that fade and disappear behind me.  When I hit the surface with my paddle to splash, the light sprays outward, creating a broad luminous area.   Even a single drop of water, dripping off the paddle, excites the luminescence.  Every now and then, an extra bright critter sticks to my paddle, and remains bright for a while.  I switched my headlamp on, but still could see nothing where the point of light had been.  This critter is so sensitive, that when I tap on my paddle, he turns on for a second, then fades.  Tap, and he turns on again.

It was so dark, I could see faint glows in the sky—one to the east, and one to the south.  I figured the southern one was the sky glow of La Paz. The eastern one—I didn’t know.  But it grew brighter, and eventually turned into the moonrise.  It hung there heavy and orange just above the horizon, visible through a gap in the clouds, then rose into the overcast.

Once I rounded the tip of Danzante, I could see the lights of Ligui.  There were a lot more lights.  The very gentle breeze was blowing from the beach. The first thing I noticed was the strong, very strong smell, of cannabis.  Now, it’s possible that there’s some special driftwood in Baja that smells like pot when burned in the campfires I could see.  Or, nearly everyone over 15 on the beach was lighting up a joint.  I’ll leave that up to you, dear reader.  But it wasn’t long before I heard a lot of laughing, whooping and hollering, wafting over the waves.

As I grew closer to shore, I noticed the beach was nosier than a truck stop.  A lot nosier—because there were about 10 generators running, and some ATVs, many without mufflers.  It seems no one in Mexico uses flashlights or lanterns.    From a distance, there seemed to be some “processions” of ATVs, but probably they were just traffic jams (or maybe that communal instinct).

As I drew close to shore, I was pretty amazed by the changes since I had left.   My trailer had stood alone, but now it was surrounded by tents and parked cars.  There was a huge tent where I wanted to come ashore.  I had to carefully select my spot, then figure my route among the cars to the trailer.  There was all kind of merriment, loud stereos, and laughter around, which continued until about midnight.