Log from the Sea of Cortez

by John Flinn
San Francisco Chronicle
May 18, 1997

Punta Pulpito, Mexico - It's a warm, still, glassy morning on the Sa of Cortes, and the horizon, for the moment, vanished.

Beneath us the sea is a luscious, milky blue. Above, the balmy sky is precisely the same hue. Sea and sky join so seamlessly that our kayak seems suspended ina buoyant cloud of turquoise. It's a little disorienting, in a pleasant sort of way.

The only sound is the gentle slurp of our paddle blades in the water. Just ahead, a squadron of brown pelicans glides low in tight formation, so close to the sea their wing tips nearly brush the surface.

A pair of dorsal fins knifes through the water, and then two glistening gray dolphins arc into the air in perfect unison. Moments later two substantially larger fins appear, and as their owners leap out of the sea I yell "orcas!" - killer whales- but they turn out to be similar-looking pilot whales.

Off to our right a rasping geyser spouts from the water. We watch, breathlessly, as the long, gray, barnacled back of a minke whale rolls slowly and slides silently beneath the surface. Four days earlier, from the window of an airplane descending into the coastal town of Loreto, the Sea of Cortes and the brown Sonoran desert behind it had appeared to be harsh, sun-seared, lifeless places. But, as we were now discovering from the cockpits of our sea kayaks, nothing could be further from the truth.

Wrenched by the same tectonic forces that formed the San Andreas Fault, the 800-mile-long Baja Peninsula has been peeling inexorably away from mainland Mexico for 15 million years. The Pacific Ocean has rushed into the gap, forming the youngest of the planet's deep-water gulfs.

Sometimes called the Gulf of California and occasionally the Vermilion Sea-it is said to shimmer like pale blood at sunrise-the Sea of Cortes is a frisky young marine ecosystem, populated by an astonishing abundance of fish, crustaceans and mammals.

This, and the dazzling contrast with the craggy, chocolate-purple peaks of the Sierra de la Giganta that rise out of the sea, make it one of the world's best venues for the sport of sea kayaking.

The stretch of coastline north of the sport-fishing town of Loreto is fierce, silent country, populated by only a few somnolent thatched-roof fishing villages accessible by rutted, jouncy dirt roads.

Early one morning in March, at the terminus of one such road, we squatted on the gravel beach next to the nearly deserted village of San Nicolas and stuffed sleeping bags, tents and clothing bags into the hatches of our fiberglass double kayaks.

Kenny Howell, our head guide from Sea Trek, a Marin County based outfitter,heldup a paddle and demonstrated the proper stroke-an easy push-pull shouler rotation, rather than a muscular shoveling of water.

With the bushy blond countenance of a California-surfer dude, an encyclopedic knowledge of Baja's natural history and a fluid, almost poetic paddling stroke, he has been exploring these waters nearly every year since 1978.

Our group of 11 was mostly beginners, and Kenny explained that if we played it smart with the weather and sea conditions--which he had every intention of doing--we'd really have to work at it to get into any kind of trouble.

Our gravest danger, he explained, probably came from the various little things that sting, stick, prick, scratch and bite, both on land and at sea: scorpions that crawl into your shoes at night, stingrays that loiter in shallow water braided cholla cacti, poisonous puffer fish-the list went on and on.

By the time he'd finished, I was glad to slide into the protected cockpit of our hard-shelled kayak and shove off. My wife Jeri, in the seat in front of me, set the pace with her paddle. It was my job to match her stroke-if we clacked paddles it was understood to be my fault-and to steer with foot pedals that controlled a metal rudder.

Hugging the coastline, we paddled south around a rocky point where a drousy sea lion lolled near half a dozen scampering, shocking-red crabs. Above them, high on the side of the cliff, an egret perched vigilantly at the edge of a thatchy nest.

A "raft" of several hundred grebes bobbed in the water. As we passed these small gray seabirds they ducked their heads in unison and vanished beneath the surface. Thirty seconds later they all popped up together, as if they were one single creature.

Beyond the rocky point stretched miles of headlands, islands, bays, bluffs and peninsulas, all jumbled together into a surreal mélange. In brilliant desert light it was hard to discern where one ended and another began. At once I understood how this light and topography has been bewitching and bewildering mariners since the time of the Conquistadors.

John Steinbeck, who spent six weeks here in 1940 aboard a sardine boat collecting invertebrates with his friend Ed Ricketts ("Doc" from Cannery Row), found himself captivated by this same phenomenon.

"As you pass a headland," he wrote in "The Log from the Sea of Cortes." "It suddenly splits off and becomes an island and then the water seems to stretch and pinch it to a mushroom-shaped cliff, and finally to liberate it from the earth entirely so that it hangs in the air over the water."

Up ahead, Daryl Bespflug, another of our guides, waved from a rubber Zodiac raft with his daughter Cara, 13. In one hand he held a spear gun, in the other a dripping, 15-pound sea bass.

Each morning while we were paddling, Daryl would slip into a wetsuit and head out with his spear gun to gather dinner. Some days the catch of the day would be red snapper, other days sea bass or parrot fish (quite toxic in the Caribbean, but a tasy delicacy in the Sea of Cortes).

At night in camp, Daryl and our third guide, Miguel Valdes, would fry up the fish or perhaps concoct a delicious scallop stew or almeja borrachas-clams soaked in beer.

In addition to our fresh water supply, Daryl's Zodiac carried a bounteous supply of cerveza, Chardonnay and fresh avocados, which Miguel mashed into what was unanimously voted the best happy-hour guacamole we had ever tasted. We may have been traversing a fierce wilderness, but none of us had any intention of roughing it.

A little after noon we pulled up on a flawless gem of a halfmoon beach that Kenny called San Antonita. Because a notorious afternoon wind often whips up choppy whitecaps on the Sea of Cortes, standard Baja paddling protocol calls for being out of the water by lunchtime. As it turned out, we hit a window of unusually stable weather, and the sea was calm and flat almost every afternoon.

We spent the rest of the day snorkeling in our little bay, gawking at the undersea world of brilliantly colored tropical fish; starfish; goofy looking-but dangerous-puffer fish; aptly named stone fish and bat-like manta rays.

At night, after dining on Daryl's sea bass, we sat on coolers drinking quart-sized bottles of Pacifico beer and listening as Kenny, Daryl and Miguel told guiding stories. Surely one of the job requirements of a wilderness guide is to have an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes with which to regale clients.

On this occasion Daryl won hands-down with the tale of his Airedale dog who once swam out into a cover near Cabo San Lucas and, in full view of a dozen witnesses-including Kenny-bit a humpback whale on the tail. Not a story to gladden the heart of a Greenpeace activist, perhaps, but a pretty amazing yarn, we all had to admit.

Our five days and nights passed in this fashion, each blending into the next like the dreamlike headlands and islands.

One afternoon Kenny led us on a walk from the beach back into the Sonora desert, following a dry creek bed into a canyon teeming with life. In the cool shade between narrow red-rock walls, colorful flowers beckoned from every crevice: fragrant desert lavender, nightshade, daisies, bright red pega pegas and tiny purple orchid-like blossoms.

Massive organ-pipe cacti stood like prickly candelabras, distracting us just enough to brush into the braided cholla cacti at knee level.

Tracks of ring-tailed cats crisscrossed the dry creek bed, and everywhere were fresh piles of coyote scat. Kenny said these rugged, mostly roadless desert mountains harbor mountain lions, bighorn sheep, fox and raccoons, although they're rarely seen.

Late one other afternoon we shoved off from our beach camp and paddled a mile down the coast toward El Pulpito-"the Pulpit"-the massive, Gibraltar-like rock that dominates this stretch of shoreline. It was the golden hour, when the desert light turns cozy and warm.

Just ahead there was a flash and a splash and suddenly a pod of seven or eight dolphins was cresting out of the water in unison occasionally leaping five feet into the air. A few passed within a paddle-length of our boats. They didn't seem particularly interested inus, but neither were they wary.

There was a commotion in the other direction-another pod of dark gray dolphins, this one numbering 15 or so, splashing and jumping about. The two pods passed each other and for 10 minutes the sea around us frothed and churned with leaping dolphins.

When they had receded out of sight we landed on a rocky beach and pulled our kayaks up above high tide line. Kenny led us up through prickly scrub and stickly chollas to a trail that switchbacked up to the summit of the Pulpit, 500 feet above the sea.

We reached the top just as the sun was dipping behind the Sierra de la Giganta. Beneath us the coastline stretched to the horizon in both directions, a jumble of purple jagged peaks blending into mythic-looking islands and idyllic coves. A similar view had intoxicated Steinbeck 57 years earlier.

"One remembers the old stories of invisible kingdoms where princes lived with ladies and dragons for company, and more modern fairy-tales in which heroes drift in and out of dimensions more complex than the original three," he wrote.

"The very air is miraculous, and outlines of reality change with the moment. The sky sucks up the land and disgorges it. A dream hangs over the whole region, a brooding kind of hallucination."

It was nearly dark by the time we descended to the beach and launched our kayaks into the water, now choppy with the evening breeze. The sea shimmered silver, and a band of golden-pink light silhouetted the sea cliffs. Above the dark peaks of the Sierra de la Giganta hung a thin, Cheshire-cat-smile of a moon.

Rising and falling with the swells, we paddled through the warm night, with only the beacon of Daryl's kitchen lantern guiding us home.