Karen's Shark

Cabo Pulmo 191119

In the morning I abstained from another trip out to the lagoon because I was sure we had seen all the birds but Amanda returned boasting about three new species; short billed dowitcher, a common yellowthroat, and a house wren.

We took our gear out to go snorkeling, walking North to the rocky beach around the point. Along the way we ran into a family who told us the visibility was still poor and that it was much better at some other beach a hours drive away with a name we didn't recognize.

The visibility was poor but I still had fun floating in the shallows watching the sergeant majors, beaubrummels, jacks, and mexican goatfish. Beaubrummel, by the way, was what we speculated the first diver said when he saw one underwater.

For lunch we went out to 'the reef', the last untried restaurant in town and had a beer and a mai tai with Joy and Kayla. I tried to shoo the flies away from our nachos and mentioned how I really hated flies and that the sight of Kayla's salad covered with them a few days ago was one of the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen. Joy told us that when she was growing up she didn't like flies because she thought they peed on everything. Later that evening she looked up what flies actually do and was even more disturbed (they vomit on your food and soak it up with spongy mouthparts).

A man came in and tried to start a conversation with Kayla until Joy pounced on him. He told us he lived half the year in Juno Alaska and there were an unusual number of Idahoans in town for some reason. It was true we kept seeing Idaho license plates on the cars driving through. He said we got '25' of rain during the storm. We'd heard the town got 5 inches so I tried to get him to clarify. "You mean 25mm?" He looked a little panicked and then corrected himself. "No, 25cm." then he started rattling off other months and rainfall numbers but I didn't pay much attention considering he couldn't even get the units right.

While we sat on the deck I watched a line of ants climbing up the post next to me. They were gathering dead bugs from the light fixture above. After picking up an insect often two or three times their size, they came marching back down the pole and had to cross a small gap where the pole touched the concrete railing post. This was much more difficult to do carrying a dead moth and they all seemed to hesitate at this transition as if trying to figure out the best place to put their feet while they stepped across the gap. I saw a couple fail to make it, they slipped from the post and fell into the abyss. It was an interesting little drama to watch while we chatted about other things. Another ant came down the post and hesitated at the gap. He tried a few times but could never find his footing and decided instead to turn and climb up the post a bit to look for another way. As he came around the side where I was watching he reached a small crack in the wood and a spider leapt out and tackled him. My shout of surprise startled Amanda and Joy and I found myself having to explain what I'd been doing the last ten minutes. The spider was a little smaller than the ant but it wrapped the ant in silk and pulled it into the crevice.

After lunch we went on a lizard hunt. We saw a whiptail and several desert spineys but all the larger lizards were extra skittish and we never even had a chance to chase them. I wore my sunglasses for the first time and found it really helped with the little gnats that kept trying to land on my eyeballs. I could still see them dive bombing my eyes and bouncing from the lenses.

The caracaras were more common than we expected. This one posed for a nice picture.

When we returned to the house Karen showed us pictures of some sharks she saw in the shallow water near the beach and Rian said he wanted his butt tanned so he removed his shorts on his long walk down to Arbolito beach but only succeeded in burning his front.

Amanda and I walked down to caballeros and bought six bottles of cabo pulmo brand beer. Joy looked up the company online and discovered it was bottled in Washington and shipped down to Mexico. She wrote a complaint on their facebook page and they responded a few hours later saying there were only three people running their marketing department and they were having problems updating their webpage. They said they donate 10% of every sale to the national park.

Karen made chicken mole enchiladas and Joy tried to rationing our dwindling chip supply by allowing two for each person but Amanda filled her plate!

Amanda announced that she opened her eyes under saltwater for the first time. And I described a method I read about once where if you find yourself swimming without a mask you can cup your hands against your forehead and blow air out of your nose to fill this space with an air bubble. Then you can look through this air bubble to focus on things underwater. Amanda remarked that the air didn't have to come from your nose and I just about died imagining what the world would look like through a hazy fart bubble.