25 January 2006
Isla Passavera, Bahia Chamela
We celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary today, and had an especially fine time. We woke up to 13' of crystal clear water in the anchorage where, with the almost all sand bottom, it's the nicest swimming pool anchorage on the mainland. It starts getting bouncy in the swell after the wind dies at sunset each night, but I think it's well worth it especially when we have it all to ourselves. In addition to our school of 8" Pacific bumpers, as of yesterday afternoon we also have three to four 2 1/2' crevalle jacks on the prowl. John calls them "the boys," and sometimes they make quite a racket when they slam into the hull trying to get the smaller fish. It's amazing how much time we can spend just gazing into the water waiting for a glimpse of them as they pass by our hull.
After the morning radio nets we hopped into our inflatable double kayak and paddled out to some rocks on the ocean side of Isla Colorado to watch a blow hole. There was a long low swell running so we had to be careful not to get too close to the rocks, but other than that it was relatively calm two mile round trip. We paddled back to Nakia to get shoes so we could go ashore for a short walk. We hadn't been on Passavera before and it's quite a popular roosting area for boobies, frigates, pelicans, and gray headed vultures. We passed 10' from a booby which appeared to be nesting on the ground, and managed not to disturb her too much.
After an early lunch we spent some time reading, and then threw our snorkel gear into the dinghy to go for a ride while we left the generator running on Nakia to recharge the batteries. There was a blow hole near the mainland shore which was pretty spectacular even from a distance yesterday afternoon so we went there first for a closer look. Then we checked out a potential anchorage which we may try tomorrow in hopes that it might be better protected from the swell. Finally we stopped at one of the beaches over on Isla Colorado for some snorkeling but the visibility wasn't very good there. When we got too close to shore the sand was so stirred up that it was like snorkeling in fog. Out by the rocks and more exposed to the surf the organic matter in the water was so thick it seemed like we were snorkeling in a snowstorm. So there you have our "winter weather" report.
We had planned to go into a beach we'd visited last year, but at the last minute John suggested the one next door since it looked like it had a sandier bottom for walking in through the surf. After walking around the small sandy beach we heard strange bird noises coming from the trees above the rocky shoreline. We could see pelicans roosting, then what appeared to be nests, and then finally we made out the white, plucked turkey shapes of baby pelicans! Once we identified one, we could see that there were probably about a dozen in the area in various stages of development, but all looking completely helpless and awkward. What a wonderful and unexpected anniversary gift that was!
Linda and John