View from a Kayak

I spent the morning kayaking around the islands and channels of Aransas and Redfish bays dodging speeding boats carrying fishermen and fighting a wind gusting 15-20 miles per hour out of the southeast. I launched my kayak at the public boat ramp. On the return trip, I had to avoid pickup trucks with trailers backing down the ramp to load their boats. I lifted my kayak onto the sidewalk next to the ramp and a man called out “Hey, Mr. Kayak, how was it out there?” “Windy” I replied. He was small and slim, with a sunburned face, and white hair sticking out beneath a tattered baseball cap. “The water’s warmed up; it must be in the 60s” I continued. He was sitting at a picnic table next to the ramp. There were several fillet knives laid out in front of him and he was sharpening one on a rectangular stone. It was hard to tell how old he was; his weathered face added at least a decade to his age.

Channel leading to Aransas Bay from Little Bay

San Cosme

Parque Nacional Bahía de Loreto is the largest marine park (800 square miles) on Mexico’s Pacific Coast. Park regulations prohibit spearfishing (except for subsistence by Mexicans), so I was looking places to launch my kayak outside the park. I plotted the park’s boundaries in Google Earth (they’re not shown on local maps) and looked for access roads. The first good access to the Sea of Cortés south of the park was San Cosme, 26 miles from Loreto. The 13-mile road from the Transpeninsular Highway to San Cosme reminded me of the road to Caleta Agua Armargosa in Gene Kira's King of the Moon: A Novel About Baja California:

…men fought their way from the main road in the west, over the high mountains, and down the very cliffs themselves, to the floor of the canyon. It was not a legitimate road they cut, but more of a plunging, twisting trail clinging to the sides of the cliffs. Is was so narrow in places one could not get out of a pickup, for on one side the door would be stopped by the face of the cliff, while on the other, it would open over noting but air.

Feral burros along the road to San Cosme