National Parks

I’m writing this morning from our most-populated anchorage since leaving Cabo on November 27. We are now in Playa Pichilingue just north of La Paz. The water is calm in this protected bay. I look to the south and see an active port, to the north an uninhabited guano-covered island. We’re on the edge of human development with fine sand beaches to the north, and a city of over 250,000 people to the south. We’re still surrounded by pelicans, cormorants, magnificent frigatebirds, and a few turtles, but now with the addition of the sounds of vehicle engines echoing off mountainsides, and views of boat traffic, a hotel, and a small RV camp by the beach.

For the past few weeks we’ve spent most of our time in Mexican National Parks. We’ve enjoyed amazing wildlife and landscapes from our cockpit, while diving and snorkeling, and while hiking around the rugged mountain desert terrain. After Cabo we anchored in Los Frailes (inside Cabo Pulmo National Park), Ensenada de los Muertos, and three locations within Isla Espiritu Santo Archipelago National Park. Ensenada de los Muertos was our one stop outside of the parks. Muerto in Spanish means dead person, but it is also the name of a type of mooring system. A line and buoy are attached to a permanent weight buried in the sediment. The weight is called a muerto. This cove used to be a place where supply vessels for nearby silver mines and salt pans would tie up to the muertos to load and unload cargo. That is where the cove got its name. There is no town in the cove, but there is a boat ramp, a few homes, and a small resort. It’s a well-protected, well-known anchorage for cruisers. It’s just busy enough to support one restaurant on the beach where we enjoyed cold drinks and excellent fish and shrimp tacos.

Diving has been an absolute treat throughout our anchorages. Depending on the location, we’ve been diving right off S/V Surface Interval or from our dinghy. The joy and ease of diving from our “patio” into our backyard can’t be beat. We also joined a dive shop boat one day to get to a few locations where we could not anchor our own boat or dinghy due to park protection rules. We’ve seen some amazing creatures underwater including sea turtles, porcupine pufferfish, octopus, spiny lobsters, green moray eels, snowflake eels, garden eels, scorpionfish, Cortez round spotted rays, and bullseye electric rays. Every single dive has also included large schools of fish, and a nice variety of smaller reef fish. We’ve spotted some coral, but typically only in the shallower water at the start or end of a dive. One of our most memorable dives was off Isla Ballena, part of Isla Espiritu Santo Archipelago National Park. It was a somewhat shallow dive, meaning we had a lot of sunlight illuminating our dive. We were both swimming along when it suddenly became very dark. Within seconds we realized what was blocking out the sun – it was a massive bait ball, possibly sardines or herring. We were surrounded by a frenzy of thousands of small silver fish darting every which way, and yet moving in unison as if they were one organism. It was incredible. It felt like being suspended inside a blizzard; a blizzard of living swimming fish. We both floated neutrally buoyant amidst the chaos and watched the fish swirl and dart around us. And then, just as quickly as they came to us, they left. This happened not once, but twice during our dive. It was magical.

On our surface intervals, we’ve seen so many great sites from the comfort of our cockpit. We’ve seen whales breaching and fin slapping, a large pod of dolphins hunting through our anchorage in Los Frailes, massive schools of fish surrounding our boat, mobula rays leaping out of the water, magnificent frigatebirds dive bombing into the water to catch fish, and sea turtles popping up for a breath. As it turns out, sea turtles make a very distinctive sound when they pop up for a breath. Upon the approach to our anchorage in Ensenada de al Raza at Isla Espiritu Santo, we noted marker buoys in the bay warning boaters to slow down because it is a sea turtle feeding area. Once we anchored and all was quiet, we started hearing them. A sea turtle exhaling and taking a fresh breath sounds like an exasperated person sighing. Hhhhheehhhhhh…… Once you recognize it, you start hearing it all around and can look towards the sound to spot the turtle. When conditions (sea state, wind, and shoreline) allowed, we explored beaches, mountain tops, and dry river beds along the way. We also spent a few days hunkered down behind a cliff on the north side of a bay at Isla Espiritu Santo for protection from a strong northerly blow. The constant wind speed was in the high 20s, and gusts were well into the high 30s. We even saw a reading of 45 knots for one gust. We were safe and secure onboard, and our ground tackle did its job of holding us in place. It was a good time to bake sourdough bagels and plan for our next adventures.

Next stop: La Paz