A Journey of Curiosity

The bow of a kayak leaves a crease in the gravel as it pushes back from the beach. Nine others slide seaward as paddlers tuck in legs, stretch spray skirts over cockpit coamings, and check moving parts. The paddlers glide along a coastal cliff, passing between rocks in a graceful slalom.

A small white gull paddles with folding feet to hide behind a miniature rock island. A white kayak sneaks up and pauses for a closer look.

“It has a dark dot behind its eye.”
“Bonaparte’s Gull?”
“Don’t see them much around here.”
“No.”

The kayaks glide on. Wild fig trees cling to rock walls with long pale toes. Cacti dig their roots into creases. Cliffs rise sheer. High above, the frigates lounge on crooked wings and watch as little darts of color stitch the rocky shoreline into a memory.

Rocks structure our world. They cradle our beds, define our landings, funnel the wind, hem the sea. Plants and animals, too, have relationships with geology. Shelter. Support. Mineral sustenance.

I am paddling the coast from Loreto to La Paz, along the Sierra la Giganta mountains, for 10 days with 9 other people including Anna, who has been so moved by the expressive geology that she’s on a mission to make a guide for paddlers. She has inspired me with her enthusiasm. We’re not specialists in anything except curiosity, but onward we go, asking questions, taking photos.

Along the edge of the sea, rocks expose themselves. In their breaking, eroding, dissolving, re-sorting, they show their weaknesses and demonstrate their strength. The sea opens to a page, and we try to read the stories of the rock—the crooked, massive, tiny, colorful stories.

Driving by Emotion on a Rational Grid

“We’re not going into business with you because we won’t make any money,” a wise and slightly greedy business person once said to me.

Business should be planned, structured. Numbers crunched into place. But I do what I do for a living because I love it.

Is this an infraction? I’ve been driving by emotion on a logical grid. I’ve never completed any market research or followed a 5-year plan. There are so many variables that I don’t really know how, and things keep changing about 1.5 years into the Plan.

But I do know that if somebody comes along who is passionate about an idea complimentary to what I’m passionate about, it can go a long way and be an enjoyable ride. Somehow, I’m still eating. Still camping out under the stars. Still playing on the sea. Still traveling, even too much sometimes. Still working with amazing people. Still finding myself completely blown away at where this circuitous route has led. Awash in thankfulness at the peaceful end of another day.

A waxing moon just past half-full centers itself between canyon walls. Lightening blinks on the eastern horizon. Waves pound and grind beach pebbles into sand.
Jim plays the harmonica. Santi accompanies on well-tuned kayak bungees and some kitchen equipment.

We celebrate Sarah’s birthday with chocolate brownies from the Dutch oven, and start a game of stacking rocks. Balancing a tower. Building bridges. Constructing castles. Two leftover birthday candles grace the turrets, but blow out in the breeze, their horizontal flames flickering for a moment like flags.

People drift away. I walk down a row of kayaks, colorful in the moonlight, checking that everything is secure. Cocoons glow down the beach, campers bedding down. Near the kitchen, the guides and I make our nests. After 9 years, Marcos’ Big Agnes pad has finally outlived the repairable stage. “Marcos, why does your tarp have a valve?” asks Santi. And we all giggle for a bit.

Loreto to La Paz. My first trip of the season. Marcos’ first trip with Sea Kayak Baja Mexico. The adventures don’t end when we get off the water.

Ten days of kayaking south. Five hours driving back. Fifteen minutes from the house, the clutch breaks. Marcos inserts a socket in place of the broken plastic, and limps it home. The next day, the mechanic across the street modifies a part he finds in town, replaces the broken one for about $25, and we’re shifting again. There are just some things that flow in Mexico. Living by heart, creativity, and hard work is one.

More road adventures

Feb 9, 2010 7:00am, sunrise in La Paz, Mexico. Ginni leaves Paradise, the hotel. She heads north to Punta Coyote to pick up kayakers. She drives an old pickup truck and trailer with a cooler full of lunch and beer. She leaves the highway on a marginally paved road towards San Juan de la Costa, then turns off on a dirt road towards San Evaristo. Trip odometer reads 245.5 miles at 7:39am.

At mile 245.8, she crosses the first running water hazard. It’s an arroyo that filled with recent rains and wiped out the road. It was bulldozed back into place, and several culverts were added, all fervently gushing towards the ocean. Refusing defeat, the water still reaches one arm over the road and scratches away.

Mile 246.8, a roadrunner crosses the road, looking cartoonish.

Mile 247.8 7:50am, 2.3 miles into the dirt road, Ginni notices in the mirror that something is askew. The rear upright on the trailer, isn’t. It’s about 25 degrees to the right. Ginni starts laughing, and comes up with yet another use for NRS webbing straps: tying together the trailer.

Mile 249.1 8:00am. The rear upright, again, fails to be. It is nowhere in sight until Ginni gets out of the truck to discover she has turned the trailer into a road grader by dragging the upright horizontally down the washboard dirt road. Ginni stops laughing. She is 3.6 miles into a 53 mile round trip on the corrugated thoroughfare. This new trailer configuration poses some technical difficulties for carrying kayaks back to Loreto, but there is time to figure that out. She straps the stantion flat to the frame of the trailer with more NRS straps, and drives on. She considers naming the trailer Humpty Dumpty, since it has just left a welder’s shop for the 3rd time in a year.

Mile 265 9:00am. First visual connection with Punta Coyote. Gigantic splashing out towards Isla Espiritu Santo of a breaching humpback whale. It repeats several times.

Mile 272 9:45am. Ginni arrives at Punta Coyote where there is a group of happy Dutch kayakers, but no welders. No matter. A little rearranging, more straps, and the trailer serves for 2 kayaks. The other 5 fit on the truck.

The kayakers pack up, help load the kayaks, have lunch, and the taxi arrives at noon. Ginni and the kayakers part ways knowing that the taxi can get the kayakers to the hotel much faster than the trailer is going to be moving back down this road. The kayakers thoughtfully leave some beer in the cooler as consolation in case the mechanical situation should worsen.

Mile 272 12:15pm. Ginni leaves Punta Coyote right behind the van. After the first curve, she never sees it again, nor even its dust.

Mile 283 1:10pm. Break for strap adjustments and a cold beer for the road. Why not? 10mph with nothing out here to hit except bumps, which are unavoidable, and still 2 hours before the highway. Ginni begins writing scenic descriptions and describing colors in the mileage log. “stripes of peach, jade, mahogany, brick. Sphinxes, melting pyramids, tan running into green.”

Cacti pass slowly. Distant colorful mountains hardly pass at all.

Eventually she writes,” I like being here driving mellow through the desert. No hurries. I can write whole sentences before looking to see if anyone is coming or if I’m still on the road or should bother to steer.” If one could read the handwriting through all the bumps, that’s what it might say. But it might also say “in that last herd of burros was a gray one with a cute face and long furry ears.”

Mile 296 2:14pm. There is easy road access to a sandy beach with shade huts just north of the mining pier of San Juan de la Costa. A future takeout for the kayakers? “If it’s an alternative to driving this road,” writes our heroine, “I can begin to see the scenic beauty in a mining operation.”

Mile 298.5 2:25pm Pavement! 3:00pm Highway 1! Now, just 5 more hours to Loreto.

Life: it’s not always the adventure you planned on, but it’s always an adventure!

Just in Time

It was one of those trips that fills the soul. Sometimes an ephemeral magic happens that connects people in a certain place at a certain time in a special way.

A 7-day circumnavigation of Isla Espiritu Santo near La Paz, run by BOA and led by Rafael and myself. Seven clients, including one teen, came together from Ontario Canada, and 4 more, including 2 teens, randomly came from the same town. One gal came from my home state of Washington.

Kayaking in a commercial trip along a desert island is a unique blend of opposites. Wildlife and plants. The populous, wiggly marine life juxtaposes sparse, stoic plants. The geology tells of coming together and ripping apart; of layers building on layers, pink smooth sandstone, red volcanic flows, round brown rocks impossibly holding formation up a cliff. It tells of pushing, tilting, and slowly eroding, making its way into the sea. White sand beaches nuzzle into deep red coves. White sand coming from coral and shells—pieces of the sea washing onto the land.

People. A kayak trip usually self-selects hands-on, outdoorsy, active people. Independent, yet willing to participate in a group and hire leaders.

Anthropology. The ancients left paint on the cliffs, shell piles on the hills, hollows ground into flat rocks, and rock enclosures in the bays. They lived on what they found here. Whole lives. We carry an obscene amount of food and luxury for just 7 days, and get resupplied halfway through. But through some alchemy of grace, we can walk their trails and feel their presence.

It is the balance of opposites that holds tension on the thread on which we spin.

Guides. Rafa likes to sleep late, set no times, and siesta after lunch. He doesn’t mind launching at 4pm and making dinner in the dark. Anytime we get somewhere, we are “just in time”. When will we go? When we are ready. When will we be ready? After we eat and clean up and pack the boats. When will lunch be? When we’re done making it. There is sound logic in this.

I’m a sunrise connoisseur. A pack-in-the-action kind of person. I’d rather chop veggies than sit and watch somebody else do it. I really get excited if somebody wants to learn something like kayaking, stars, plants. I’ll go all day without sitting once.

It is the straining of opposites that frays the thread until it breaks and the spinning beads go bouncing between the floorboards. This did not happen. A light finger on that thread knows when to release its tug and preserve the singing tension. Just in time. Through it all, that ephemeral magic played, and filled my soul.