It was a calm night with a very gentle breeze and once the moon had set, it was a very dark sky with lots of stars and a shining Milky Way. In the morning, we launched the dingy, attached the outboard and new wheels and went ashore to do some exploring. What a difference the dinghy wheels made to landing the dingy on the shore and pulling it up above the high water mark. Almost no effort and a stark contrast to when we tried this at Los Frailes where we both struggled to drag the 120 lbs over the sand to get it above the tide line. We discovered that launching from the beach was even easier. Just lift the bow and it rolls down the beach to the water by itself. Oh what a wonderful purchase!
Caleta San Juanico is a wonderful area to explore with lots of trails, sand beaches for swimming and coves to snorkel in. A couple of houses are up on the cliffs above the cove, otherwise the area is deserted except for some beach campers. We headed off on one of the trails to see if we could find some ‘Apache Tears’ or Obsidian for which this area is known. While we were unsuccessful at finding Obsidian, we did discover the ‘Cruisers Tree’ on the beach where we added a shell with Hilbre’s name to the collection of artifacts that have been left by various boaters over the years. There are lots of nice shells and rocks to choose from. Many of the rocks have nice markings and colors and there are lots of shells embedded in the shale along the shoreline.
In the afternoon, we took the dinghy for a longer ride along the cliffs, to another bay called ‘False Bay’ where a Mexican fisherman was just hauling in his nets and catch of leaping fish; it looked like a nice haul. The area is very photogenic and we took many pictures to record our stay here. If and when we come back, we plan to stay much longer as it is such a nice area.
Later in the day two more sailboats arrived, one an older Catalina 36, the first C36 we had seen since Cabo. It arrived with another smaller sailboat. Both boats were travelling together the smaller one anchored in the bay behind us and the C36 just off to our port. The skippers were alone but not so a small boat from Anchorage, Alaska that had arrived the day before. He had picked up three young women in La Paz who were cycling around the Baja. They had stored the bicycles on the boat and sailed with him from La Paz and were headed later that day to San Carlos on an overnight passage. We had met them on the beach and the skipper was very happy with the arrangement as he had not had to cook a meal in weeks.
We took in the dingy before nightfall as we planned on an early start for the 54 mile trip up the coast to Conception Bay.