Sand Dollar Beach, Isla Magdalena
Reflections of the lapping shoreline along the peaceful bay of Magdalena mirrored our guests this morning. Our first full day in Baja California and we were whisked to a beach devoid of buildings, roads, cars, and oh yes, other people! The rare commodities of solitude and space combined to create concourse for us to photograph, frolic and revel in the expansiveness of Baja California.
Wildlife had cavorted and danced before our arrival. Tracks of mice, jackrabbits, coyote and lizard skirted dunes, circled hummocks of vegetation and zigzagged their way willy-nilly over the sands.
On the Pacific side of the island, the ocean was quite pacific today. We stumbled upon ghost crabs, cryptically colored crustaceans racing sideways across the beach, pausing to hide in the depression made by one of our footprints. A reversal of being stepped on, hiding in a step.
We transited north in the Canal de Soledad this afternoon. The falling tide left mudflats naked and exposed to the sun, a veritable dining room table was set, waiting along the edges of the mangroves were a number of hungry avian visitors, ready to probe the goopy muck for yummy invertebrates.
Great blue herons stood arrogant and tall, conveying an apparently abstemious attitude as they stood motionless in the mudflats. This attitude was rescinded when they made a flash of a stab for an unwary fish swimming the shallows. Game over for the fish, lunch started for the heron.
“Bald eagle!” came a shout from the bow! Perched on a small dune along the shore a mature bald eagle contemplated the afternoon. Many of us may mentally picture bald eagles sitting in evergreen trees, perhaps in temperate rain forests. Obviously this eagle felt the need for a little warm sand between its talons.
Bottlenose dolphins escorted us as we continued northward. The pea green soup of the water ejected a dolphin occasionally; it took a short breath and was swallowed into the depths once again. At our anchorage a sandbar with preening white pelicans was just off our stern. They wore the sticky-up doo-dah flange on their beaks associated with breeding. Where are they when that thing falls off their beak?
We are generating more questions than may ever have answers, but that is part of the entertainment and intrigue of exploring new and wonderful places. Welcome to Baja California Sur.
