Goodtimes in the middle
of a sea of blue.
Brian taking pictures
from his inflatable yak.
Several times I'd
be cruising slowly through the water and I'd scare something ahead of me in
the water. Really big boils would happen right in front of the boat and I
never did see what the heck was doing it! With the calm water, who knows what
could have been basking near the surface. Glad no big shark fins came out
of the water, I'd have fainted and fallen right off the damn SOT!
Once I got over near Punta Final, I got out on a small cobble beach to walk around. I also needed to adjust my shorty wetsuit. Ended up cutting the neck, arm and leg seams a little to loosen the damn thing up a bit. That's what I get for buying important gear for 40 bucks. I need to get some custom wetsuits of different sizes for different water temps. Always more to buy…
We all worked our
way along the beach back toward camp. I kayaked up pretty close to a female
frigatebird that was standing on a rock. First time I've seen one not in the
air.
Brian got some great photos
of both male and female frigatebirds.
Near the beach camp
at Punta Final we ran into a man and woman in two long touring kayaks. They
were from Salt Lake City Utah and were looking for some other kayakers that
they were supposed to meet in the area. I mentioned to them that we saw several
kayakers at Campo Beluga north of our camp. We floated near some large rock
outcrops protruding from the water and chatted for 20 minutes or so. The man
I was talking to worked for the Forest Service doing water-use permitting
and we talked for a while about our jobs, life, the bay, etc.
While we were casually enjoying the bay, it turns out that our good friend Chris (www.bajataco.com) and his wife Sharon were passing through the area trying to reach us on the 2 meter. We had planned to possibly meet up with him the next day on the way to Bahia de Los Angeles so we were not expecting him to pass through. I guess I need to get a handheld 2M for just this scenario! ;-) Sorry we missed you Chris!!!
We finally ended up back at camp close to 1pm after kayaking for several hours. We had a late lunch and packed up and headed south. This was the point in the trip when I started to really relax. The thing I love about Baja is that you can get into such remote places and life just slows down. There isn't any urgency, no phone calls, no work, no stress, no nothing. The only connection to the world back home was the Sirius satellite radio. We kept switching between classic country, bluegrass, and reggae! Life was rough! Goodtimes would follow pretty close in the Jeep because the satellite radio receiver I have (Sirius Starmate Replay) transmits on FM so you tune in to listen to it. It works a good 4 or 5 car lengths away, so we had a 2 for 1 deal going on!
We stopped at Coco's corner for a quick cold cerveza. Goodtimes and I both opted for a cold one, but Brian wanted a Coca Cola instead. Coco said to us: "Dos cervezas u uno Coca Cola for the seniorita!" That little jab was funny as hell. Brian got owned by Coco! :)
We made good time back out to the highway and aired up. Goodtimes forgot his hose for his compressor so we both filled up with my CO2 tank. Speaking of forgetting things, he also forgot a bottle opener and a flashlight! Make a list next time buddy! Back on the highway his Jeep was getting some really bad "death wobble" between 50 and 60, so we bumped it up to 65 and made good time to the Bahia de Los Angeles road. We thought we might be able to catch up with the large group from The Expedition Portal (www.expeditionportal.com) that had went down a few days ahead off us. They were on an extensive 2 week trip to land's end and we thought it would be fun to share a campfire one night.
Once we saw the bay we
stopped for a few pictures and tried to raise folks on the radio. No luck
on the radio, but the sun was starting to set over the bay and it was gorgeous!
I'm not very good
at stitching images together, but I tried. This is the view of Bahia de Los
Angeles.
We drove out to Punta
La Gringa to camp because we didn't want to pay to stay anyplace in town.
The camp spot had a nice view, but there were a quite a few other campers
into the same vicinity and one yahoo had a generator that ran for a few hours.
The wind kicked up for the first time on the trip so we made camp up and went
to bed rather early. Got time to read and work on my journal.
