Isla San Marcos & Exploring

Our early morning wake-up was announced by the soft voice of our Expedition Leader over the ship’s speaker as she roused us from our slumber to start the first day of our journey here in the Gulf of California.
 
Day started with an early morning hike, the perfect time to explore the desert. The wide open mouth of the arroyo ahead of us was resplendent with typical desert flora of the central gulf islands. Palo verde and mesquite trees, cardon and cholla cacti are some of the species represented here. Great blue heron and osprey nest here and we could hear the shrill piercing whistles of this fish-eating hawk. An unusually high number of reptile species relative to its size, thrive here. The scrambling vines of the beautiful passionflower covered almost everything in its path. Orb weaver spiders, silken webs stretched across branches of shrubs, glittered in the soft morning light as they waited patiently to snare an insect. Many replace the entire web daily, spinning a new one in the early evening in about an hour.
 
And so with heads full of information, we headed back to the ship for a well-deserved breakfast. Afterwards, we relocated to a different part of the island for some water activities which included kayaking, snorkeling, and scuba-diving and leisure time on the beach.
 
The Gulf of California has much to offer to the land explorer but below the surface of the water, it’s teeming with life. Strong upwellings of cold nutrient-rich waters attract many species of fish to this region. The divers experienced this sharp fluctuation of water temperature as they descended into the shallow turbid waters offshore from the snorkeling beach. The water column was thick with the presence of mysid shrimp and other crustaceans that the fish surrounding us love to feed on. Round stingrays sifted through the sand picking up small crabs and other invertebrates. The regal king angel with its golden tail and the even more curious Cortez angelfish kept our pace and accompanied us as we explored the seafloor.
 
After lunch, Carlos Navarro, our Undersea Specialist, amazed us with his most informative presentation about the biodiversity of this wonderful Mexico, the land of my mother.
 
We then continued with our exploration of el otro México (the other Mexico) as we turned north towards the upper gulf and the Midriff island region.