Odds & Bobs from Cabo

We spent the day yesterday in Los Barriles watching the Lord of the Wind kite-boarding competition. Quite the sight, lots of colorful kites, crazy high flying stunts, lots of food. Sat in the sand & enjoyed the day. Missed out on the pig roast as we had to get back to Cabo before it was pitch black, but we got to see the pig up close & personal!

We continue to walk most days, actually walked all the way to the marina & downtown in Cabo (at least 5km one way), but we found a great little taco stand that specializes in El Pastor tacos (pork sliced off a circulating spit). Took a picture of a common advertising poster plastered everywhere here!

Another day of exploring in the boonies and we found more layers of ancient seashells with oyster shells over a foot long. We made a great find of a fossilized whale/dinosaur bone encased in rock, over 2 ft long (the hatchet is for scale in the picture). We also saw a huge, maybe 3 ft long area of exposed honeycomb, covered with bees, attached to a rock outcrop. A quick picture, one bee sting for Robin & we were out of there. We stopped in a small town, Santiago, for fresh picked mandarin & tangelo oranges, got a huge sack for about $5. On our way home we stopped in a Mexican housing barrio & found a group of boys, aged 6-12. We had brought down a bunch of used soccer & basket balls & frisbees which these kids were quite happy to get.

We spent a glorious day at Chileno beach, best snorkeling by far, I took 171 pictures underwater! Robin avoids the snorkeling but he stood in the water & fed tacos to a large collection of fish.
Robin continues to carve faces on assorted pieces of wood & now has starting carving faces on coconuts.

I was stuck for pictures for the blog at one point so I took several shots of the general state of the sidewalks here, including holes, rocks & assorted poles.

We are here in Cabo until Feb. 22 then we begin the slow trip north. Still enjoying it, loving the warm weather, 24-32! Actually starting to use our A/C.
Hope everyone is having a great winter, we miss you all!

Birds and Burros

Quiet week, lots of birdwatching in our back yard. We now have 2 hummingbird feeders as the orioles and woodpeckers keep feeding at them & the hummers get left out. Robin has taken to watering the bush just behind us with the neighbors sprinkler which excites the birds as many try to shower by rubbing around in the wet leaves. We have seen 3 kinds of hummingbirds, gila & ladderbacked woodpeckers, cardinals, cactus wrens, scrub jays, a verdin, northern mockinbird, hooded orioles and house sparrows. We have now made 2 trips to the store that sells bird food (not common here) for treats.

We have been out kayaking, tried fishing today but pretty big swells & waves so back to shore. I have snorkelled a few times, got a few decent pictures, lots of fish variety.

We did the hike up the mountain again! - crazy!, but this time we left at 7:00 AM & took enough water. It went much easier so will probably be a weekly thing.

We have been visiting with 2 Canadian couples who have RV'd mainland Mexico, mainly to Puerto Vallarta, we are now considering that for somewhere in the next few years.
 Robin has been doing some wood carving, he's getting pretty good!
We went out exploring again, this time along the coast road then circled back to San Jose. We found a few shells, picked up a lot of prickly things on our shoes (they seem to jump onto your feet) and had a close encounter with 2 burros. On one hike away from the car we heard whimpering & found 3 very young puppies that appeared to have been dumped on the side of the road. There was a plastic crate next to them, we couldn't leave them there to die so we took them. Now what? We stopped to check with a nearby road guard but he had no interest & mentioned a vet. Off we went in search of a vet, our lucky day because we found one, they called the Humane Society for us & they agreed to keep the puppies until the Humane society could pick them up. Hopefully a good ending.

We have looked into a sport fishing charter to go out after tuna & dorado. We will probably book one once we can confirm a couple other people to share the cost. We continue our mission to eat our way thru Baja, this week it was a breakfast buffet at Mango Deck, a crazy bar/restaurant on the touristy Medano beach, then a walk along the marina.

Still not bored!

Fossil Hunting

I originally thought that we had a fairly quiet week and a half, but once I started this I realized that we have been busy! Our first "adventure" which we may actually do again was a "hike from hell". The neighbours put us on to the idea & we figured if they could do it so could we.  We walked uphill, steep uphill, for an hour & a half to the towers on top of the hill/mountain up from our campground. We are quite close to the ocean & the towers are quite a ways inland. The views were amazing, the pictures don't really do it justice. The trail was sand & rock, again, very steep and then we had to make our way down - another hour. All this with moderate humidity levels, hot sun & mid 20's. We must have strong hearts because I felt like I might have a coronary. Needless to say we spent the rest of the day resting!

We spent a day strolling around San Jose del Cabo, bought two books - Birds of Mexico and a 50 Hikes in the Cape region, bought ice cream from a wheeled cart with bells and checked out some very cool, very expensive lamps ($3500)!

New Years was quiet, sitting around a campfire then watching the fireworks. We barbecued 10 lobster tails (just over 1 lb.) for ourselves for New Year's Day.

We took the kayak out to Lands End,the Cabo arch and Lovers beach, took only half an hour to paddle but the boat traffic was scary - everything from small boats to fishing charter boats to booze cruises to cruise ships so lots of waves. The swells were pretty big, filling the kayak a few times, luckily we have a sit on top kayak so there are several holes in it to drain. We kayaked around Lands End into the Pacific Ocean, this is where the Sea of Cortez meets the Pacific. We had a lovely picnic with the crowds on Lovers Beach & did a bit of snorkelling before heading back to the main beach. Still lots of families here for the holiday, crazy busy!

We drove out to Todos Santos, about 1 hour north for a day. We went on a hike from the book we bought, was hopefully going to find sea lions & iguanas, but just saw one sea lion. Nice walk from the hiway out to the ocean along a dry river bed. We stopped at Playa Las Palmas (Palm beach) where the sand was smooth & flat for a long ways, uncrowded & we watched Mexican fisherman fishing from high up on the rocky cliff edge. They were throwing their hand held line out into the rocky surf & hauling in fish. A couple of beaches in that area are popular with surfers & we got to watch for a while. We had lunch in a palapa roofed open air building with a dirt floor, good food and enough for supper later.

Days that we don't go out we are trying to identify all the birds that come to our feeders - cardinals, cactus wrens, orioles, scrub jays, hummingbirds & gila woodpeckers so far. The woodpecker & the wrens have figured out how to drink out of the hummingbird feeder!

Our latest adventure was a day of "treasure hunting". The area north of where we are was under a huge sea millions of years ago, so there are whale bones, sharks teeth & beds of seashell fossils to be found. We had no real idea where to go so we drove about 50 km. north then left the hiway & proceeded on mainly sand & dirt roads. At our first stop at a dry riverbed Robin pulled out his metal detector & low & behold, he found an old Mexican centavo coin. After Googling it we know that it is made of bronze & minted between 1943 & 1955. It's in fairly rough shape, worn down, but still a great find! We put on quite a few miles driving, always hoping we would remember just which road to take to get out of there. We met up with two Mexican fellows looking for a ride back to town who showed us the huge sharks teeth fossils that they had found & they indicated which direction to head to find more. I got a picture of their find as we were not so lucky. We did score by finding a couple places where there was a seam of sea shell fossils in the banks of a dry riverbed. Amazing find- shells caught in sand or mud & turned to stone. Some had the original shell still intact, others the shell had crumbled away leaving the stone shape. We brought back a few "souvenirs" including a fairly big rock full of shell fragments & an intact shell attached to it. Cool to think that these are millions of years old. Maybe on our next trip out fossil hunting we will stumble across some whale bones!

We are due for a beach day tomorrow, then who knows.
Merry Ukrainian Christmas and good night. Still living the dream & having fun!