Waking up in Mexico

Cabo Pulmo 191111

The first day spent in a foreign country is always overwhelming. We awoke to a cacophony of birds. The house was crawling with hooded oriels, house sparrows, white winged and ruddy ground doves, cactus wrens, and gila woodpeckers. Amanda, our resident bird pervert was over the moon. eBird, the site where birders gather to boast about their sightings, indicated only a few people had investigated the site and submitted small lists of 20-40 species and she was determined to crush this record. Her goal was to single-handedly put Cabo Pulmo on the map.

Her list of birds on the first day was pretty impressive:

hooded oriole
northern cardinal
gila woodpecker
white wing dove
crested caracara (I liked this one)
ruddy ground dove
orange crown warbler
turkey vulture
cactus wrens
great egrets
snowy egrets
great blue heron
osprey
spotted sandpiper
yellowlegs
killdeer
mockingbird
shrike
sage thrasher
grey thrasher
kestrel
lark sparrow
house sparrow
costa's hummingbird
scott's oriole
pyrrolluxia
california quail
nighthawks
yellow footed gulls
brandt's cormorant
coots

We went on a short walk through the small town. It was mostly dive shops and rental houses. In 1950 the fishing village was running out of fish and decided to shift to tourism. The area around the town was designated a protected marine sanctuary.

Launching Boats 00:46 (11.4MiB)

We watched the young men launching boats with their SUVs. They were driving their trucks right into the water, using long floating trailers and sometimes pushing the boats in with their bumpers.

Back at the house we ate eggs, chilies, and tortillas and then headed back out to go swimming. The water was warm, though just cool enough to get chilled after 15-20min.

For lunch we ate tortillas, chipotle, jalapenos, beans, tomatoes, and one of the good avocados.

The house was one of a 4 house compound situated on the beach including a shed out back referred to as a toy box filled with snorkel gear, boogie boards, kayak paddles, and life vests. Outside they had a rack with two paddle boards and a variety of kayaks. The paddle boards were heavy and cheap and they only had one paddle. Amanda tried to use half a kayak paddle but only got fiberglass splinters in her hands. I found the one good paddle flexed too much to be useful.

00:38 (9.5MiB)

The moms walked down the beach to do some snorkeling and we joined them. There was a little coral and a variety of tropical fish.

Finally we decided to walk north along the beach to the ruined building and were caught in a brief rainstorm. There were wild/unclaimed horses grazing beside a little lagoon.

That evening we walked down the road to the little nature center and watched a presentation on corals given by a marine biologist who spends half his time living in Alaska. The talk was interesting, it was all about corals found in deep cold water but the guy was a bit of a jerk. He did a lot of boasting about his discoveries, achievements, and all the times he'd been on CNN. As he spoke, one of the nature center girls translated for the few Mexican children lined up in the front row. Americans outnumbered natives 5:1.

When the second video of his hour long talk refused to play on the laptop, he ignored the struggles of the nature center guys trying to play his corrupt file and paced impatiently back and forth on the stage. "Just hit play!" he said after they'd tried every media player on the laptop and even went off to load a cd with a copy of his videos. Shortly thereafter the power cut out and the talk was cut short before he could tell his most amusing anecdote about the time they found a freshly dead cow at the bottom of the sea, thirty miles off shore.

We headed out for dinner at caballeros and Kayla went home to see if Rian wanted to join us. Rian wasn't feeling well and spent much of the first week of the trip in bed. He was complaining of massive headaches and a sore neck. Our resident physician suspected it was viral meningitis.

At the caballeros restaurant, just two doors down from our place, I ordered 'pulpo' not knowing what it was and was pleasantly surprised when the waiter brought out a plate of octopus tentacles. The octopus was the best I'd ever eaten but I felt bad about it. The dinner was 1790 pesos ($92 before the tip) for six meals and beer.

Our home, like every other home in the area was made of concrete. The walls and roof, bathroom and kitchen sinks were determined when they poured the building. Most of the buildings in town had a layer of palm fronds over the roof and many of the buildings had rebar sticking up out of the corners. Like in Belize, I was told this was in case the home owner wanted to put another story on their house.

I liked the concrete construction. There are no creaking floors and even the heaviest footsteps are silent. There is less wood to gather water and termite damage; though concrete walls make it harder to hang a picture. I imagined if you wanted to do a really thorough cleaning you could take all your furniture outside and hose everything down. It seems safer in an earthquake too, though I had no data to support this theory.

I was curious to see how the ruined building at the end of the beach was failing. The concrete in the roof was rotting away, exposing the rusted rebar. Apparently concrete construction fails when water gets in and the rebar swells with rust (though this particular building could have just been constructed badly).

Most of the buildings had layers of palm fronds on the roof held down with a nylon net. The palm fronds on our building were tied to a wooden lattice that was rotten and falling apart. Some of the buildings only had these fronds, no concrete whatsoever and the underside of the leaves looked lacquered and clean unlike the top which were burned black in the sun.

Looking out over the village you could see dozens of these be-fronded houses between the palm trees.