Carmen Island
Winds and currents were in our favor, letting us arrive at Carmen Island earlier than expected; the extra hours were fully filled with different activities, such as scuba diving, deep water snorkeling and kayaking. As we entered Salinas bay we had a welcome committee of bottle-nose dolphins and pilot whales that gently stayed side by side to the good Sea Voyager.
After Carlos Navarro presentation about Mexico’s biodiversity, almost everybody on board took the Zodiacs to explore a shipwreck in the middle of the bay. Equipped with snorkeling masks and flippers we could see how fish have already colonized this human artifact, transforming it into a reef of colorful species.
After lunch we followed a new Lindblad Expeditions tradition, the LEX forum. We talked about fish: namely, "where have all the big ones gone?" Most of our guests attended and actively participated with comments and questions. If it wasn’t because there were many other activities planned for us in the afternoon, we could have talked forever as we were inspired with thoughts and ideas for making this a much better world.
Off we went, to kayak, to swim, to walk along the beach and to explore a ghost town that today has two people and two dogs only, but which at the beginning of the 1900’s used to be inhabited by more than three hundred souls. Their business was salt mining. There is a “fossil estuary” that was exploited until around 1980. At that time it became impossible to compete with the largest salt mine in the world, Guerrero Negro (also in Mexico), so people abandoned Salinas.
But the houses are still here. Some are close to two hundred years old; they were made up of coral, and of volcanic material. Carlos takes us through this mysterious town, telling us stories of its past, and also sharing his own accounts, as he himself lived in Salinas for a complete year in 2001. There is the old prison, the store house for the salt, the little kiosk. We are transported to the past in the company of Carlos. We enter the tiny church of Salinas, inside everything is neat and white. A beautiful Virgin Mother that came all the way from El Carmelo Mountain in Italy, dressed in gold, faces the sea, the Vermillion Sea.
Winds and currents were in our favor, letting us arrive at Carmen Island earlier than expected; the extra hours were fully filled with different activities, such as scuba diving, deep water snorkeling and kayaking. As we entered Salinas bay we had a welcome committee of bottle-nose dolphins and pilot whales that gently stayed side by side to the good Sea Voyager.
After Carlos Navarro presentation about Mexico’s biodiversity, almost everybody on board took the Zodiacs to explore a shipwreck in the middle of the bay. Equipped with snorkeling masks and flippers we could see how fish have already colonized this human artifact, transforming it into a reef of colorful species.
After lunch we followed a new Lindblad Expeditions tradition, the LEX forum. We talked about fish: namely, "where have all the big ones gone?" Most of our guests attended and actively participated with comments and questions. If it wasn’t because there were many other activities planned for us in the afternoon, we could have talked forever as we were inspired with thoughts and ideas for making this a much better world.
Off we went, to kayak, to swim, to walk along the beach and to explore a ghost town that today has two people and two dogs only, but which at the beginning of the 1900’s used to be inhabited by more than three hundred souls. Their business was salt mining. There is a “fossil estuary” that was exploited until around 1980. At that time it became impossible to compete with the largest salt mine in the world, Guerrero Negro (also in Mexico), so people abandoned Salinas.
But the houses are still here. Some are close to two hundred years old; they were made up of coral, and of volcanic material. Carlos takes us through this mysterious town, telling us stories of its past, and also sharing his own accounts, as he himself lived in Salinas for a complete year in 2001. There is the old prison, the store house for the salt, the little kiosk. We are transported to the past in the company of Carlos. We enter the tiny church of Salinas, inside everything is neat and white. A beautiful Virgin Mother that came all the way from El Carmelo Mountain in Italy, dressed in gold, faces the sea, the Vermillion Sea.
