Isla San Francisco, Gulf of California, Mexico
The wind had picked up at around 1400 hours, and the rest of the night trip north to Canal de San Jose was a little rough. Sunrise illuminated the eastern scarp of the Sierra de la Giganta on the mainland peninsula of Baja California, at a place called Cabeza Mechudo (Mop Head), where we saw lovely layers of different volcanic tuffs in green, interspersed with light brown. This green tuff has the difficult name of clinoptillolite. As soon as we had our fill of the formidable views, we slowly turned and sailed to Bahia Amortajada next to San Jose Island, where we unsuccessfully attempted to anchor. So we left the area and went further north looking for marine mammals. We promptly found two humpback whales that loved to breech! They eventually disappeared from our view, and again we went north. After a very interesting lecture on seabirds we lunched and were soon at our afternoon anchorage, Halfmoon Bay at Isla San Francisco. There we did different hikes and snorkeled, observing very interesting fish, and seastars and urchins. Our hikes were among the desert plants, many in bloom. Woodrat nests were also seen among the very spiny sour pitahayas and the horrendous chollas.At the end of the day, we had a delicious bar-be-cue on the beach, after which we heard a story of the Maya-Quiche Gods of Guatemala.
The wind had picked up at around 1400 hours, and the rest of the night trip north to Canal de San Jose was a little rough. Sunrise illuminated the eastern scarp of the Sierra de la Giganta on the mainland peninsula of Baja California, at a place called Cabeza Mechudo (Mop Head), where we saw lovely layers of different volcanic tuffs in green, interspersed with light brown. This green tuff has the difficult name of clinoptillolite. As soon as we had our fill of the formidable views, we slowly turned and sailed to Bahia Amortajada next to San Jose Island, where we unsuccessfully attempted to anchor. So we left the area and went further north looking for marine mammals. We promptly found two humpback whales that loved to breech! They eventually disappeared from our view, and again we went north. After a very interesting lecture on seabirds we lunched and were soon at our afternoon anchorage, Halfmoon Bay at Isla San Francisco. There we did different hikes and snorkeled, observing very interesting fish, and seastars and urchins. Our hikes were among the desert plants, many in bloom. Woodrat nests were also seen among the very spiny sour pitahayas and the horrendous chollas.At the end of the day, we had a delicious bar-be-cue on the beach, after which we heard a story of the Maya-Quiche Gods of Guatemala.
