Cruising the Sea

4-7-13 – Puerto Escondido, Baja California Sur, Mexico

Isla San Francisco (This picture may look familiar to anyone
who has Shawn and Heather's book!)

We are back to cruising the Sea of Cortez, free from the dock and all the horrors of marina living; like a quick walk to good beer and a burger, hot showers, endless water, fellow cruisers hanging around the dock always ready for a “dock safety meeting” (ie happy hour) and the security of knowing that our house will not float away at night.  I suppose being in the marina for a little while wasn’t that bad.  During our last outing into the sea we explore Isla Espiritu Santo and Isla Partida so  this time we took the fast track to Isla San Francisco, the next island North, skipping Espiritu Santo and Partida, and now, nine days later, we find ourselves in Puerto Escondido.  With our time waning we made some quick stops at the highlights in the area.  The days seem to run together, one beautiful anchorage after another, listening to the various nets to hear the weather on our little SSB receiver, taking a hike to overlook the anchorage, paddling around the clear water and watching some incredible phosphorescence after the sun sets.  Isla San Francisco, San Evaristo, Los Gatos, Agua Verde and now Puerto Escondido.  Rather than bore you with the hum drum of our everyday life at every anchorage, I’ll take Agua Verde and just multiply it by however many days we have been gone to get an idea of our life up in the sea.

AW is the closest boat, in our little cove

When we arrived in Agua Verde the swell was running into the anchorage making most of it uncomfortable, so we tucked up, way up, into the North lobe of the anchorage.  Being the new cruisers on the block our general theory is don’t be the closest boat to the beach.  We actually developed this theory way back in Santa Cruz, but that’s another story.  Well this time we were the closest to the beach in order to get out of the swell and avoid the other boats already anchored.  We were close enough that we feared we would get tangled in the pangas stern anchors that kept them off the beach, so pretty close.  The weather turned quite nice and this turned into an opportunity as I could easily paddle us to shore in the dinghy as opposed to putting the engine on, so that was a bonus for us.  As per the cruisers guide book, there are some cave paintings “close” to Agua Verde.  What they don’t say and what close means they don’t say, but we met a guy.  A guy who had been cruising the sea for 13 years and he knew where to go.  It’s a good thing I have lived in Nevada and have received directions like “turn left at the third fork in the road, just past the cattle guard, go a little while until you see the wash on the right and then the best campsite is on the left”   That’s sort of how his directions sounded.  Mind you this would have been a good time for Google Earth, but alas no cell/internet service available for two days in any direction. 

Agua Verde cemetary

Step one, paddle to shore and fend off the unclaimed beach puppy who seems to think our dinghy is a good place to pee every time we come ashore, follow the trail up the hill behind the little house on the sand spit up and over the hill to the cemetery.  Keep following the trail until you come to an arroyo that looks like “a freight train came thru”.  

The freight train arroyo

Walking down the beach

Follow it past the date palms out to the beach.  Go left to the end of the beach and look to your left.  You will see to “eyes” in the hillside, not the close hill, the one back a little.  There is a trail here, don’t follow it.  Go back up the beach a little and follow the trail around the back of the hill.  On your right there will be a trail that leads up the back of the hill and to the caves.  Hard to believe but his directions were spot on and we found the caves and the cave paintings with no problem.  I did no forensic detective work on the paintings, so they may have been made by some kindergarteners last week, but I doubt it. 

The cave paintings

Hanging out in the caves we had a little snack and thought how perfect they would have been to live in and overlook the channel, looking for whales to eat or fighting off your enemies.  Just speculating, I have no idea what went on there.   The only downside, like all cave dwellings, would be rolling off the front porch into the cactus covered desert below. 

View from the cave

Step two, is getting back.  He told us, when you head back towards town, look out into the valley behind you and find the truck tracks in the dirt flat.  Get on those and follow them thru the desert until you get to the main road, turn left and follow this into town.  This part of it wasn’t that hard.  Although it’s a little interesting walking thru a desert valley in Mexico, at least 3 hours from any sort of paved road with no one in sight wondering what sort of critters will jump out and get you. 

Crossing the valley - Can you see the road to town in the distance?

You know they have rattleless rattlesnakes here in the Sea of Cortez?  That’s just to scare you, they are only on one little island.  We found our way back into town and then followed his directions to the spigot at the pink house on the left, just after you enter town to fill our water bottle up.  Yes, there are only a couple of water spigots in town, gravity fed from a holding tank that is fed from a diverted spring somewhere up in the mountains.  More of a novelty than a necessity for us, but still interesting. 

The little village of Agua Verde

So we had checked out the cave paintings and were back in town.  I was craving a cold Fresca so we stopped at the little tienda.  Little may be giving it more credit than it deserves, it’s’ maybe a 10’ by 10’ room.  Although fairly well stocked for being a three hour drive down a dirt road from the main highway, which is who knows how long from the next real town.  Hard to believe with all that remoteness, they still had a cold Fresca, kept cold on blocks of ice brought from forever away; since there really isn’t any electricity here to keep a refrigerator running; for 13 pesos.  Cold Fresca in hand we set out to find Ramona, the goat cheese lady.

Just to prove there really are goats here

Agua Verde is also known for their goats and hence goat cheese.  Ramona is known to make the good stuff from local goats milk.  She lives on the far side of town and once again the directions are interesting.  Once you find the kindergarten building, the one with Winnie the Poo and The Little Mermaid painted on it, right next to the little blue jail building, go between them and head South down the trail.  Cross a wash and head towards the goats.  Scare away a couple of cute little pigs and walk between some houses.  Now you are on the other side of town.  Then just ask for Ramona, everyone knows her.  Once again we did just that and we found Ramona roasting coffee on an open fire under her ramshackle lean-to of a house.  She was more than happy to sell us a kilo (2.2 pounds) of goat cheese for 50 pesos. (about 4 dollars)  Somehow she figured out we had come on either a kayak or a sailboat and asked us about it.  We told her our amigos on the other boat had sent us and she understood who they were. 

After that it was a fairly straight forward walk down the beach, around the rocks at low tide back to the dinghy, wipe off the pee and paddle back to the boat.  All that before lunch.  Now we had fresh goat cheese and tortillas, sounds like goat cheese quesadillas for lunch. 

Later on the wind changed direction and put us conspicuously close to the beach so we hoisted the anchor and moved to the South side of the anchorage to gain some more protection from the wind.  This operation went off well and gave us some new scenery to look at for our last night at Agua Verde.  

The pyramid rock - our new scenery this night

A sundowner/anchor down (we did set the anchor again you know) dinner, watch some phosphorescence and stars and bed.  It makes for a full day and now we have a lot of goat cheese!

Sunrise from the North lobe of the anchorage