Photo Story of Our Cedros Visit

Our friend Barry, who sailed with us down Baja to Cedros Island put together a
photo story movie of our trip there. Check it out.

http://www.bushwacker.net/abacus/2012/Cedros%20Island.wmv

Currently Elaine and I are in Turtle Bay, about 35 miles south of Cedros. We are
relaxing and resupplying before we begin to head south again in a few days.
Yesterdays success was laundry !! Today we went beach coming at the little
visited south end of the bay. We found fantastic shells and whale bones. On our
way back we saw dolphins, seals and hundreds and hundreds of seagulls, pelicans
and cormorants. A very nice day.

Our Anthony Bourdain Moment

One of Elaine’s and my favorite TV shows is Anthony Bourdain’s  recently concluded series No Reservations. It is equal parts travel and food show, two of our great passions. If you haven’t seen it, look for the re runs on the Travel Channel

On the show, Tony travels to countries all over the world and explores food as a window into culture. In a typical episode Tony visits a cutting edge restaurant, a traditional restaurant and has a meal with a local family. Below is a summary of our amazing  fish and lobster meal with our new friends Victor and Carolina.

The other day, here on Cedros Island, our guide Jose took us on a drive to the southern tip of the island. After tide pooling on an awesomely beautiful stretch of absolutely deserted beach on an amazing bay, we found ourselves at the end of the road at a seasonal fish camp called Wiley. All along the Baja, fish camps are remote, rugged and often quite rough collections of “houses” on the shore near a decent boat landing. Fisherman live in the camps from weeks to months at a time to allow them be closer to the fishing grounds. Sometimes, like here on Cedros where the camp is connected by road to the main town, the families will join the men at the camps.

So here we are walking around this fish camp. We say “Hola” to any people we meet but there is not much more interaction than that. It is interesting to see how these folks live but we are pretty much seeing only what we can see from the outside. As we are coming down from a small bluff, Jose comes up to us and says a local fisherman in a house just down from the bluff wants to know if we would be interested in having some lobster. Our initial reaction was “no thanks”. For me the reaction was part, I’m not hungry, part not wanting to have these hard working people taking their time and resources to serve us and part OK, what’s the scam? Luckily, our better brains kicked in and we thought when a local offers their hospitality, you say sure.

We followed Jose to a pretty nice (relative to the others) 2 room “house” with a small covered patio and a sweeping ocean view that people in La Jolla pay millions of dollars for. There we met Victor, a barrel chested lobster fisherman, Carolina, his adorable wife and their 2 sons Victor Jr. and Jasael. Initially it was a little uncomfortable with all of us (except Carolina) standing on their patio. We felt a bit like we were invading their space, since Victor and the family spoke no English and our Spanish was barely existent, so communication was pretty difficult. With Jose’s help in translating, our mangled Spanish and some sign language, things started to warm up.

About that time, the door to the house opened and out walked Carolina with a plate containing 4 of the nicest looking breaded fish filets you have ever seen. She placed it on the table with limes and mayonnaise and told us to dig in. Being the chow hound I am (and of course not wanting to offend our hosts) I grabbed a piece and took a bite. Holy moly was my reaction. The fish was absolutely fantastic. Fresh and flaky on the inside and crunchy (from the corn flake breading we learned later) on the outside. I can say without hesitation that any restaurant in the US would be proud to serve this fish.

Just as we were coming back to our senses from the fish experience, out walks Carolina again, this time with a plate of 6 lightly fried and seasoned lobster tails. Wow !! Having broken the ice with the fish, we (I J) quickly went at the lobster. Holy Cow. We were all like Rachael Rae or other TV food show hosts trying to express how amazing the lobster tasted, ummm, OMG, yummo, etc. It was crazy good! A few moments later Carolina bring out 2 more fried lobster tails. At this point we were getting full (it was still midafternoon and we had lunch earlier) but it was so good we went at it. Just as we were finishing and feeling really good about everything, Carolina walks out with another plate, this time with 6 boiled lobster tails and a homemade mayo-lime-chili dipping sauce! You are kidding me right!? You people are killing us with kindness.  Suffice it to say that we put on our big boy (and girl) pants and went at it. Once again our taste buds were treated to one of the best tasting things any of us ever had.

As special as all the food and “conversation” was at Victors and Carolina’s, surprisingly it is not what I will remember most from our experience. After all the food was gone and the sun started getting low, it was time for us to say our good byes. As were leaving, we are thinking to ourselves how we can ever repay these kind and generous people. All we really had to offer was a visit to TARDIS so we told them that on the following Sun, they should all come by, and we were as earnest as we could be hoping they would come. They said they would and we headed home.

Come Sunday, we get a call from Jose. Indeed Victor and Carolina were coming. Apparently the kids bugged them enough that they said yes. I asked Jose if he was coming but he said he was busy and to just go for it. About 2pm a panga (local Mexican fishing boat) with the family arrives. Unlike when we first met, we were all much more comfortable with each other. After the 15 min obligatory tour of the boat, we all settled into the main salon for fresh baked chocolate chip cookies (from a pack L) and drinks. Even without Jose being there, we were able to express ourselves and tell simple stories to each other and laugh.  We all played on the boat a bit, taking lots of pictures and having Victor Sr pull out the jib and re-roll it.  He is a big man, but he said it was hard work.  After an hour visiting, they pulled away in the panga and went back to the shore.  We stood and watched as they walked up in to the town, still waving our goodbyes.  It was an unforgettable visit with our new friends from Isla Cedros.

Oooops - Blog Posts Lost Due to Wrong E Mail Address

We finally had internet the other day and I noticed that my last two blog posts were not there. After investigating, I found that I sent the updates to the wrong e mail address - ooops. Here they are and hopefully I'll be able to post one or two more soon as we have been having a fun and interesting time here on Cedros.   

 

Bahia San Quintin to Isla San Geranimo 

Made a short 6 hr hop from San Quintin to Isla San Geranimo. It is a small  island but it offers pretty decent protection from the wind and swells.

Today's big news was we caught our first 2 fish of the trip. Both were pretty  decent sized Mackerel but we released them as the meat on Mackerel is reddish and best sited for smoking, not barbecuing. One pretty cool thing was as we were about to pull the fish aboard, several dolphin made passes right at the stern, checking out the Bonita. It was quite a surprise to see the dolphins appear the way they did. Thankfully they did not try and take the fish as I didn't want to deal with a hooked dolphin.

Tomorrow we have a leisurly morning before we head out at 12 or 1pm for a 24 hr passage to Isla Cedros where we plan on spending a week or more hiking, kayaking etc. More on our passage and Cedros in the next blog post. 

 

Arrival At Isla Cedros 

This morning, we arrived at Cedros Island, our first major destination of the  trip. Think Catalina Island but much further south, about the same size and  shape. 

Almost 4000 people live on Cedros supporting a fish cannery and a salt off  loading port. Other then the 2 villages on the south end of the island, it is  uninhabited. The island, along with its sister islands, Natividad and the San  Benitos host lots of wildlife. Other than enjoying about 20 miles of smooth water behind the island, most cruisers pass right on by. In the course of our research for the trip, we found a guide who does eco tours of the islands so we booked 4 days of excursions on and around the island to explore all there is to see. Currently we are anchored inside the harbor breakwater and are looking forward to a nice calm nights sleep. 

Tomorrow at 6:30 am we (Elaine, Barry and I) will head over to the Islas San Benitos, 3 rocky islands that host a large colony of elephant seals, lots of bird rookeries and some nice hiking areas. We need to head out early before the wind comes up since it is a 2 hr trip in an open boat, up wind, to get to the island. It should be an exciting day. 

Getting to Cedros involved our first overnight passage. We left Isla San Geronimo at 1pm and arrived at Cedros 8am the following morning. It was an uneventful trip (best kind) under a beautiful full moon. It was nice that while not shorts and t shirt weather, it was not too cold for the night watches.

One cool thing that happened at San Geronimo was some fisherman came buy and wanted to trade for live lobster. They drove a hard bargain and after coughing up 3 sodas and 3 cookies, we had 3 beautiful lobsters. Within 20 minutes we were  sitting down to a nice lunch of FRESH lobster salad sandwiches - Yum !!    

Bahia San Quintin

Arrived yesterday afternoon at Bahia San Quintin, a lovely bay and lagoon ~100 mi south of Ensenada. We are the only boat here on this side of the bay and there is only one other here about 4 miles across the bay.

Today was a layover day so we could explore the lagoon and adjacent sand dunes. We started the day with home made pancakes and breakfast sausage from Tip Top Meats, our favorite German Butcher. After cleaning up we put the dink in the water and headed in although it was not immediately clear where "there" was as the lagoon entrance was a little hard to see but we made it.

Our initial thought was to head to town at the top of the lagoon which we could see in the distance. Elaine waved Hi to a passing boat and some nice Gringo fishermen and women came by thinking we were in distress. After assuring them we were OK, we asked how far to town and they said 10 mi. Not wanting to spend all our time motoring we turned around and found a nice beach backed by sand dunes and wet lands. We walked around barefoot for an hour and a half exploring. We saw vultures, several types of ducks and sea birds, crabs, a long billed curlew, millions of snails and more. Although there was some garbage here and there, we had miles and miles of empty area to explore that looked like it did hundreds of years ago. It is days like this of totally disconnecting from the world (except for this blogging :) ) that are the reason we chose to go slow on the Baja.

Here are a couple of pics of our day today :

Passage to Colnett

It feels great to finally be underway - and to have no where to spend any money !!

It took us about 11 hours to reach our first anchorage, Cabo Colnett. The seas were a bit on the big side but shaped well and from behind so it was a reasonably comfortable ride. The wind was light so unfortunately we motored the entire way. The anchorage is behind a beautiful table flat headland that looks like a 2 layer cake. The headland forms a large bay with few signs of life. We were the only boat there. It was a tad rolly overnight but we all decided spending the night was preferable to motoring all night.

Cabo Colnett is pretty interesting because a joint Chinese/Mexican Company has plans to turn the entire bay into a port that eventually will equal LA/Long Beach in size !! The plans were put on hold due to the economic downturn and there are no signs of any work on the project. It is hard to visualize a mega port in the beautiful, tranquil bay we just spent the night. Luckily we had the opportunity to be there before the project gets underway.

Currently, we are underway to our second anchorage in Bahia San Quintin. It is a beautiful bay with a lagoon and several volcanic cinder cones to explore. Our plan is to spend 2 night. More on San Quintin later.

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Happy Thankgiving !!

Heading up to the Thanksgiving Buffet at the hotel with Barry, Elaine and Frank and Rachel to have our "Last Supper" before heading south tomorrow at 5:30am. Elaine and I have so very much to be thankful for and our friends and family are at the top of that list. We hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

 

By the way, start checking in on our SPOT Tracker page as we will be on the move. We will post blog updates as time and internet permit.

 

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0TkEvBj4ybuhly4nzzX2fnG32y9aMlJth

Chores and Awesome Lunch !!

Our friend Barry arrived yesterday and the preparations for our departure from Ensenada are accelerating. While Elaine stayed on the boat today and did chores, Barry and I headed downtown to get his immigration paperwork, have the boat checked out of Ensenada and to do some provisioning.

Of course we had to get some lunch and today's stop was at one of the fresh seafood carts on the side of the road. They specialize seafood cocktails and in cevice which is raw seafood (usually fish) "cooked" in lime juice and mixed with onions, cilantro and tomato. It is typically served on a tostada with hot sauce. We had a traditional ceviche, a mixed mussel and scallop ceviche, a clam ceviche and a mixed seafood cocktail (squid, mussel, scallop, clam and shrimp). It was all incredibly fresh and amazingly tasty. And the best part was it all cost $14 !! Below are some pics. Sorry about the quality, they don't so the experience justice. The food was so good, we were 3/4 finished before we remembered to take pics.

Tomorrow, we will do our final boat prep then head up to the hotel for their Thanksgiving Buffet with our friends Frank and Rachael then its off into the wild blue on Friday morning. We have a Mexican Cellular Internet Dongle so hopefully we will able to make quick posts but if the cell service is too sparse or too poor, don't worry if you don't see and posts or e mails until the 28th or 29th when we get to our first "major" stop at Isla Cedros.