What a way to kick-start a morning! Our Zodiac route is through tossing waves, propelled by a kinder-gentler version of the wind that regularly scours this coast. It has transformed the marine sandstone cliffs into a museum of forms: smooth sensual shapes, that look poured, carved, and for all the world like a sculpture garden rather than what this place really is -- stilled wildness. Among the fossil remains lying on the surface as if in a display case: is the perfectly preserved echo of a long-ago sea turtle. The wind has also, over the years, driven a treasure trove of flotsam onto the rocky shoreline -- sea fans by the hundreds, gorgonians, shells, mummified puffer fish, even the bleached-to-incandescence remains of whale vertebrae -- forcing the beachcombers into a tough decision between trolling the shoreline or hiking.
Following the trail into the arroyo, we hit places where we literally "walk the line".
With sedimentary rock, studded with shells and marine material on one side, and grano-diorite boulders literally inches away on the other, certain portions of the trail give us the most graphic depictions possible of the massive forces and fault lines that have created this magical island landscape. The organic forms that line our path up the arroyo are as diverse and lovely as any we've seen: torchwood trees with their bark in tatters, palo blancos hosting busy, thumb-sized bees, blooming milkweed, and fairy dusters.
One of the naturalists snares a black-tailed brush lizard…
And in exhibiting him gives us a Zen lesson in how the desert reveals its beauty. First he shows us the dusty, dun-colored dorsal side of this small lizard, then he flips him gently over — voila! a ventral side of a startlingly rich, variegated blue, nearly as shiny and iridescent as a hummingbird. Another naturalist showed us inexhaustible patience and ferocity in the tiny form of an ant lion -- the larval stage of a neuropteran that waits for ants and other small prey to fall into its sandtrap. Later, one of our fellow guests showed us the ant lion under the Sea Lion’s video microscope and did an impromptu, expert “recap.”
On Isla San Francisco we engage in a variety of rites to keep "last day" blues at bay.
Snorkelers head off to explore the cliff base. Another group marches across the hard white void of a narrow salt flat to a further shore and its rich tide pools. And a small band of formerly participatory guests simply say “Ahhh,” and succumb — to the sun and sand of the idyllic crescent beach.
If this were a movie, because it’s the final day, we'd roll the credits now.
Getting top billing would certainly be the marine mammals: The bottlenose and common dolphins whose antics have elicited screams of delight from us -- whether we viewed them from the ship's bow or at eye-level in a speeding Zodiac, in full sun or bioluminescent under stars. The sperm whales who graced us with their mystery and majesty. The fin whales who tested our powers of observation and discernment.
Among the seabirds, we gratefully acknowledge the cameo by the albatross on our first day at sea, who appeared as a harbinger of all good things to come. The Heerman's gulls, elegant and royal terns, and brown pelicans that astonished us with their grace and beauty, and stunned us with their numbers.
A big hand goes to the undersea cast -- the sea lions, fish, rays, sea slugs, corals and sea plants -- that made our snorkeling forays and our SCUBA dive so transporting. On land -- the boojums, the cardons, the agaves . And the land itself -- the unutterably beautiful topographies of the Midriff Islands.
And coursing like a soundtrack for our expedition -- the deep blue-black-turquoise-azure sea of the must-see-again Sea of Cortez.
