Conception Bay

We met an interesting fellow at the camp in San Ignacio.  Jens Reuter pulled in last night and camped adjacent to us.  Only next to the Tacoma, he parked and unpacked his bicycle.  We had dinner and a couple of beers with Jens.  This man is living the dream.  Jens is from Frankfurt and was sitting in his home in Germany when he decided, "hey! I want to learn Spanish, and I want to see South America."  His solution was a bike ride.... from Anchorage to Argentina!  He quit his job and is devoting a year and a half to his quest.  I was thoroughly impressed (especially after seeing HWY 1).  I would have liked to have visited with Jens more but he was off to see the whales himself the morning we were leaving.  Here's a link to his blog (will have to do some translating) velomerica.de

After a quick shower and a nice morning watching the birds we headed back out towards the Gulf.  The plan was to find a spot on Conception Bay and be a beach bum for a couple days.  Rough life huh.

We did stop in Mulege to look around and pick up some provisions (BIMBO snack cakes, beer, fish tacos, the normal). 

It was sunday and the church was standing room only

It was just a short drive down to Conception Bay from Mulege.  We had done a lot of hard miles the last couple days and it was nice to have a relaxed day (not that I regret it, the roads were fantastic!). 

Conception Bay is a fairly well known spot.  It's a large and narrow bay which keeps it pretty sheltered from heavy swells and bad wind.  The far side across the bay doesn't see that much traffic.  Would be a nice trip to kayak and camp the whole bay.  Next time!

Selected a beach called El Coyote and nestled camp vagabundo back against a cliff and under the shade of a mesquite tree.  We had gotten pretty good at setting up and tearing down camp by this point. We could have tortillas on the stove, Pacifico open, and boats ready to launch in 15 minutes.

The wind was kicking up some waves that first afternoon, so we were content to sit on the beach and enjoy our Pacifico.  As the afternoon waned though, the wind stopped and it glassed out.  We were lucking out with our beach weather.

Not too shabby for sitting under a mesquite tree.

The next morning was still glassed over, and as you can expect I jumped in the yak and headed for the nearest island.

This island was considerably larger then the one at Alcatraz.  I was also noticing some new bird life!  Priority one however was to scale this island peak!  We found a nice beach on the far side of the island, pulled the boats up and hiked up the peak dodging the soaring Frigate Birds along the way.

Ok that's enough landscapes.  I scampered down the peak spotting a few common side blotched lizards on the way.  Back at the kayak, I began to slowly paddle around the island.  I saw something perched along the cliffs and tried to sneak in for a picture.  It took me a while to sneak up and realize what was huddling on the white wash.  Exactly what every secluded warm island needs...Boobies!  The blue footed kind of course.

Boobies are amazing birds!  If you have ever seen any nature documentary with a school of fish swarming out in open ocean with birds tucking their wings back and torpedoing into the water feeding.  More then likely those birds were boobies.  We would watch the birds feed from our beach on Playa Coyote as they hit the water at top speed like a missile.  Very cool, plus they have BLUE FEET!  This species is ubiquitous of Ecuador and the Sea of Cortez is pretty much the furthest north you can regularly see them.

I paddled around to a small rock out cropping and saw Brown Boobies too.  He's cool, but there is just something about blue feet.

I was able to sneak right up on some of the birds on the rocks.

Brown Pelican (starting to come into breeding colors)

These Brandt's Cormorants would almost let me come up and touch them.

Snowy Egret doing his egret thing.

Several cool birds around camp too.

Gila Woodpeckers had been common since Patchen's

 Verdins were bold and made themselves at home in our camp.

 Orioles just never make it easy! (Hooded Oriole)

 Grey Thrashers are an endemic species only found in Baja

 Vermillion Flycatcher

 and the ever circling batman shaped Frigate Birds

On the 8th I went out for one last paddle and we packed up camp.  Michael would be leaving us this morning.  He was headed back north to setup a pit for a motorcycle enduro in the next couple of days.  He was a great resource to have with us.

"Old Man and the Sea"

We reluctantly left Conception Bay and drove into Loreto for lunch.  I really like Loreto.  There were a few more tourists, but that seemed to be the growing trend the further south we went.  The town was just really nice.

 Lame pose!

From this point we literally opened up the map consulted a few books and tried to decide our next step.  We ended up turning the Tacoma towards Sierra la Giganta.  With a name like that, how could it not be spectacular?