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Friday, August 4 Everyone was worried about being too hot that night in the desert and it turned out to be quite cold and damp. Many people brought only a sheet or light blanket for sleeping under, and they were freezing all night and didn't sleep too well. Jeff and I had sleeping bags and were warm and cozy and had no problems at all sleeping. I saw five shooting stars and then fell asleep. |
In the morning before we left, we took a little walk to a secret place.
After we had breakfast and loaded up the vans and we were on the road again.
We stopped along the way to walk up a dry river bed, well a seasonal riverbed actually. We saw some palm trees that were growing there because of the little oasis of watershed.
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Mexican Blue Fan Palm |
Mexican Fan Palm |
We then climbed a hill to a place I've named (to myself) Cave Of Dreams. Here,
it is speculated, young men came to have their rituals of manhood and these
are their visions.
After we left the cave we walked a bit farther up the riverbed and found a pond. An interesting thing I saw at the pond was a little bat who stays out during the day. It was drinking water out of the pond by swooping down and getting quick sips on the wing. |
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We got to Bajia De Los Angles and the field station just after noon, unloaded the vans, and had lunch.
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Our cook was an amazing local lady, Alajandra, who cooked for us every
day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Was she ever awesome! Wow! We celebrated
three, yes, 3, birthdays while we were there and she made a cake for
each one. |
After lunch, people arranged their stuff a little, men’s stuff in one
room and women’s in another. There were more women than men and fewer
shelves, so I'm blaming that on why the women's side was so messy. 
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men’s |
women’s |
Then everyone put on suits and grabbed their snorkel gear to get out into the water and swim and do some snorkeling. One thing that kind of worried me about the snorkeling was the fact that we were warned to shuffle our feet on the bottom to walk out to where it was deep enough to swim. It turned out there were sting rays laying camoflauged on the sandy bottom and if you shuffle your feet it warns them and they flit away. Ooooookay. That made me just a tad nervous.
This was my first time snorkeling and I have to state here that putting your whole face and most of your head into the water and then breathing just isn’t natural. I began by standing in waist deep water and bending over to put my face in the water and practice. After about half an hour, I got brave enough to swim a little. I saw a really tiny pointed shell about 5 feet down but was too chicken to try and dive for it. I felt I was getting a bit tired and so went shallower and as I was swimming toward the beach I saw another interesting shell. I actually got brave enough to dive for it and discovered a hermit crab living in it. Hello little fella. I dropped it and watched it sink back to the bottom and since I dove once with my snorkel, I felt I could do it again so turned around and went out deeper to try and find the first shell I’d seen. Trying to find that little shell was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Oh well, maybe next time. On the way back to the beach I also saw a little flounder. If you don’t know, the flounder fish swims on its side and has both eyeballs on the other side of its body, looking up. A very strange looking fish. That was it for me for snorkeling for the day. It’s amazing how exhausted a person can get doing something that is kind of scary. When everyone got back to the station after swimming different people were talking about the fish they saw and what kinds they thought they were. The one I heard about the most was the Panamic Sergeant Major. Here I was just barely getting my face in the water and breathing at the same time and the others were discussing the different types of fish they’d seen. I don't have any fishy picture becasue our camera isn't an underwater one and we didn't have one of those special baggie things you can seal your camera into. So, whenever I mention a fish, you will just have to google it.
Dinner was at 6 and we had a short lecture at 8 about how the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California) was formed. Then everyone put out cots on the beach to sleep on for the night. At most, all anyone needed was a sheet to sleep under. The stars and Milky Way were amazing to see because there wasn’t any light pollution.
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This picture is actually our second sunrise, but it shows our cots on the beach. During the day, at high tide, the area where the cots are is under water. |