South Island, West Coast: Kohaihai to Monro Beach

From Little Wanganui, we headed north to the Department of Conservation (DOC) office in Karamea to get a map of Kahurangi, New Zealand’s second largest national park. We wanted to day-hike the lower end of the Heaphy Track along the Tasman Sea. The Heaphy is one of New Zealand’s Great Walks (4-5 days from Karamea to Golden Bay, north of Abel Tasman National Park). According to a sign at the trailhead, Charles Heaphy, a European explorer, was guided down the West Coast by Kehu, his Māori guide, in 1846. We stayed at Kohaihai, a DOC campground at the northern end of the Karamea- Kohaihai Road. It was small and undeveloped, but had toilets and potable water and cost $6 NZD per night. The campground was mostly empty and our spot had a view of the Tasman Sea out the back windows. The sandy beach behind us was steep, not very wide, and littered with weathered tree trunks.

Our caravan at Kohaihai campground

Little Wanganui and the Whitebait

The drive north from Westport along the Tasman Sea was spectacular. Forest-covered mountains spill down to a narrow coastal plain of pasturelands. The forested hills are filled with fern trees; everything is green and wet. Lots of mud; people wear rubber boots here. The road left the coast and climbed a small mountain; another narrow, twisty, wet road that I had to drive with both hands on the wheel. On some of the curves and bridges, we had less than 0.6 m (2 ft) on either side of the caravan. Amazingly, 20-wheel commercial trucks with double trailers navigate the one-lane bridges and one-lane blind curves (with stop lights no less!) carved out of the mountainside.

Karamea Highway along the Tasman Sea south of Little Wanganui

Port Douglas – Part 2

A couple days after catching a cold, I felt good enough to go for a hike, so we drove up to Mossman Gorge (link, link) in the southern section of the Daintree National Park, another “must-see” attraction north of Port Douglas. The Mossman River spills down the Main Coast Range of mountains winding its way through weathered granite boulders the size of small cars. It’s hard to comprehend the amount of energy it took to move these massive boulders down the mountains, and the time it took for the water to wear them smooth.

Mossman River in Mossman Gorge

Port Douglas - Part 1

The two-lane road north from Cairns to Port Douglas winds 50 km (31 mi) up the coast past sugar cane fields and beach resorts, and through small towns and tropical rainforest. We passed a large group of wallabies (known as a mob) grazing in a large pasture along the road. I parked next to a lawn bowling complex and, camera in hand, walked around the corner of the building and began taking pictures. A man came out of the building and told us to come inside, but to stay behind the fence because "wallabies can be aggressive if you get too close." Inside the open-air facility, twenty people were bowling in a tournament. One of the women bowlers said that a few weeks earlier, a man taking photographs in the pasture was attacked by a male wallaby.

Agile wallabies

Eungella to Cairns: the Coral Sea

We rented an apartment in Yorkeys Knob, a small community on the beach about 20 km north of Cairns. It was named for George “Yorkey” Lawson, a fisherman from Yorkshire, England who homesteaded there. We looked in Cairns, a city of 150,000 on the east coast of the Cape York Peninsula, but chose a more relaxed town on the beach north of the city. Cairns spreads out along a mud flat south of the Barron River. The downtown was crowded with traffic and tourists, and we had to pay to park everywhere. In the morning, a constant stream of buses dropped off hundreds of tourists at the marina where they boarded day-boats going to the Great Barrier Reef. Tourists that didn’t go to the reef wandered the Esplanade eating in the restaurants and visiting gift shops and boutiques. I stopped at three dive shops for information on trips to the Great Barrier Reef, and two underwater camera shops to get parts for my camera. Unlike Airlie Beach, dive shops and dive-boat operators are thriving in Cairns. I made a reservation for a day trip on the Tusa 6, which was recommended by one of the dive shops.

Coral bommie (pinnacle) at Hastings Reef

Yeppoon to Airlie: the Highs and Lows

In Yeppoon, we stayed at a bed-and-breakfast owned by an Aussie (Lois) and a Kiwi (Richard). At breakfast we talked about living in Australia, politics (mostly Donald Trump) and travel. One of our maps showed a colony of flying foxes near Yeppoon. Richard said that they roost in trees along Figtree Creek and we went to look for them late in the afternoon. The tide was ebbing and boats along the tidal creek were resting on their keels in the mud. An old guy in faded shorts and worn tee shirt introduced himself as Dave; he was tall and slim, and as weathered as his clothes. He said he’s lived in a steel-hulled boat tied to a jetty for two decades, one of the 40 or so boats I could see. The Jetty Club was sponsoring a photo contest with a $500 first prize and he said I could take pictures from his jetty.

Boats in Figtree Creek at low tide

Dive Heron - Part 2

Cristian Poulson created the first resort on Heron Island in the 1930s. Poulson was a fisherman and ran a turtle soup cannery on the island in the 1920s. Turtle harvesting and processing was seasonal work and, as the turtle population declined, Poulson made more money taking tourists to the island in the off season. In 1930, he took over a failed effort to establish a resort on Heron Island. In 1932 he opened his resort in the converted turtle factory. It took visitors 6-8 hours to reach the island in sail-powered motor launches; there was no harbor and passengers were ferried ashore across the reef flat in small boats. Researchers and educators used the resort in the 1930s and the island was declared a national park in 1943. In the 1940s, glass-bottom boats towed by motor boats allowed visitors to view the coral reef. Passengers huddled under a blanket to view the reef through a glass panel.

Catch of the day from the 1960s (link)

Dive Heron - Part 1

We left Bargara for Gladstone, three hours north, where we caught the ferry, a 34-m (112-ft) catamaran, for Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef. We were going to spend a week at the Delaware North resort (link). Heron Island is in the Capricorn-Bunker Group of islands in the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. They form the Capricornia Cay National Park, so named because the 15 islands straddle the Tropic of Capricorn where temperate and tropical waters meet. From a distance, Heron Island is a small (0.29 square kilometers, 0.11 square miles), undistinguished, sand cay (key) covered with vegetation, but it sits on the leeward edge of a thriving 27 square kilometers (10 square miles) coral reef platform.

Approaching Heron Island

Beyond Brisbane

From Brisbane we drove north to Rainbow Beach, which is named for the brightly-colored cliffs rising behind the narrow beach. This small, busy town on the Coral Sea caters to campers, fishermen, kayakers, surfers and beachgoers. Before 1969, it could only be reached by boat. After the road was built, the name was changed from Black Beach to Rainbow Beach (link).

Rainbow Beach

The Road North (Part 2)

…runs through mountains and along rivers and took us from northern New Mexico to Washington state. We drove north from Taos into the San Luis Valley in Colorado and then over La Veta Pass to Interstate 25 to northern Colorado, a route we've traveled many times. Our household goods are in storage there and we stopped to swap our summer clothes for warmer jackets and rain gear.

Sawtooth Scenic Byway, Idaho

For the rest of the trip, we planned to visit parts of the country we hadn’t seen before on roads we hadn’t driven before, mostly blue highways. That term appears in the first line of the 1982 book of the same name by William Least Heat-Moon: “On the old highway maps of America, the main routes were red and the back roads blue.” He was separated from his wife, had lost his teaching job and wanted to change his life. He outfitted a van for camping and drove 13,000 miles around the country on blue highways writing about people he met and places he visited.

Looking for Whales

Jacques Cousteau called the Sea of Cortés the “the aquarium of the world” (link), and you know it has to be a helluva big tank to hold 6,000 animal species – 4,854 invertebrates, 891 fishes, 181 birds, 36 mammals and seven reptiles (Brusca et al. 2005). We could discuss the “health” of the Sea of Cortés – the lack of freshwater flow and nutrients from the Colorado River; habitat destruction and bycatch by commercial shrimping; overfishing of sharks and groupers; over-harvesting of pearl oysters, sea turtles and whales; population crashes of the totuava (link) and vaquita (the world’s smallest and most endangered cetacean) and more (link, link). Maybe when I feel sufficiently misanthropic about the future of the “world’s aquarium,” I’ll depress you with some of those stories. For now I’d like to celebrate the remaining diversity in a diminishing sea.

Ron photographing humpback whale (Isla Danzante on the right)

Damselfish: Danger (and Sex) on the Reef

I was up before sunrise to go diving in Parque Nacional de Bahía Loreto (link). Driving south from Nopolo on Baja’s Transpeninsular Highway, I stopped at the Mirador (viewpoint) above the village of El Juncalito to check sea conditions. The winds were light from the north and the Sea of Cortés was calm. I turned off the highway where it turns inland and begins to climb. The dirt road to Ensenada Blanca drops down into an arroyo that drains a large canyon stirring up a cloud of dust. I wondered what the arroyo was like during a flash flood. 

Sunrise over Isla del Carmen from the Mirador above El Juncalito

Losing Nemo

I was resting on the surface between dives when I was startled by a yellow flash in my peripheral vision. It was close to my mask and bright, taxi-cab yellow. I thought it was the sun reflecting off the yellow housing of the strobe attached to my camera and ignored it. I was freediving around one of the large rocks at Los Arcos south of Puerto Vallarta, exploring a series of ledges that stair-stepped down the wall. As I descended on my next dive, a yellow spot appeared in front of my mask. It was a small fish less than 5 cm (2 in) long, and it was leading me to the bottom.

Golden trevally swimming near my face

The Crocodile Farm

According to the Ramsar Convention*, Bahía Tenacatita is one of the five most important bays on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. Estero La Manzanilla, an estuary on the east side of the bay, supports a mangrove forest in good condition. It is one of three estuaries on the coast with a large population of American crocodiles. During our stay in La Manzanilla, we often walked down a dirt road by the estuary to the restaurants on the beach. A sign said the area was a crocodile farm (cocodrilario) and a sagging chain-link fence was all that separated pedestrians from large crocodiles basking in the sunshine.

Be careful. Crocodiles in this area. Do not swim. Do not feed the crocodiles. Do not walk your pets. Do not fish. 

Swimming in the Aquarium

The paved road to Tenacatita turns off Hwy 200 15 km (9 mi) northwest of La Manzanilla. I’m going to dive “The Aquarium,” a group of islotes (small islands) and submerged rocks on the north side of Bahía Tenacatita. The road winds through agricultural fields and two rural villages. Early in the morning when I pass through El Rabalsito, the larger village, shopkeepers are sweeping out their stores, dogs and chickens are foraging in the street and young and middle-aged men are waiting in the back of pickup trucks that will take them to work on local farms or into La Manzanilla and Melaque.

Farm on the way to Rabalsito

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

Wishing you a happy New Year. If you've been following our blog, you may have noticed that we changed our picture and blog description. Last year when we began this enterprise, we were leaving the working world and transitioning into retirement. Once retired, we quickly realized how much we enjoyed it; the transition was not difficult.  “Every day’s a Saturday” as my former boss said after he retired.

Sunrise, Mar de Cortés

Traveling had a lot to do with easing the transition. We sold our house in northern Colorado, got rid of a lot of stuff, put the rest in storage, packed the truck and headed to Mexico. We loved northern Colorado, but didn't want to spend another winter there. We sold our snow shovels in a garage sale and gave our winter clothes to Goodwill.

Los Toros y Las Sardinas

This is a story about life and death on a beach in Bahía de Banderas. The main characters are jurel toro, or simply toro, the local name for the Pacific crevalle jack (Carangidae), and sardina, the local name for the flatiron herring (Clupeidae). 

Jurel toro or Pacific crevalle jack

Sardina or flatiron herring

Los Arcos

Los Arcos (The Arches) is one of the most popular diving and snorkeling spots in Bahía de Banderas (Bay of Flags) and is visited by many of the local tourist companies (link) and dive shops (link). It comprises five granite islets from 5-50 m (16-160 ft) high about 10 km (6 mi) south of Puerto Vallarta. I snorkeled the rocks when we were here in early April and again when we returned in early June.

Los Arcos from Puerto Vallarta

Bucerias

Bucerias is on the Pacific Coast in the state of Nayarit north of Puerto Vallarta. It is located at the southern end of the Riviera Nayarita, 200 miles of coast stretching from San Blas in the north to Nuevo Vallarta south of Bucerías (link). We spent two weeks here in March.

The beach at Bucerias looking north to Cruz de Huanacaxtle

Founded in 1937, Bucerias was known as a place for diving and fishing (link). With a population of 17,000, it has cobblestone streets; brightly painted homes; a lively Saturday market; and shops, art galleries, restaurants and services to satisfy tourists and expatriates (expats) alike. We rented the downstairs of a duplex two blocks from the beach.

Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz is the anti-Mazatlán. It's a small town on the Pacific Coast south of San Blas. There are no high rises and few tourist hotels and RV parks. The industrial-scale agriculture we saw north and south of Mazatlán has given way to towns and villages surrounded by orchards and small farms growing fruits and vegetables. “The local people are hard-working citizens, fishermen, farmers, blue-collar workers such as waiters or waitresses, or small business owner” (link).

Street near Playa La Manzanilla