Awesome Camping Trip!

I just got back from the most awesome camping trip yet. We went to Loreto National Park, which is a protected island system on the Gulf of California. It's protected against commercial fishing but still allows artisanal (small scale) and sport fishing. It's about 3 hours north of Puerto San Carlos, and on the opposite side of the Baja peninsula.

The first day, Wednesday, we packed up early and drove for a few hours until we got into the main town of Loreto. There a couple of different towns encompassed in the park, but Loreto is the largest. It's a fairly pretty town with the main road running parallel to the coast. It's touristy, but not as bad as some of the places we've seen. We stopped at a government office and had a mini-lecture from CONANP, National Commission for Natural Protected Areas (which by the way, has the coolest logo). They went over the creation of the Loreto, what the park offers, and what the rules of the park are. Then we had less than an hour off to get lunch in Loreto before we had another lecture. We ran around looking for a place to eat and by the time we found one, we had 30 minutes to eat. Ended up getting fajitas, which were amazing, but had about 10 minutes to finish them and pay. We had to practically run to the next meeting place. The lecture we had there was with Eco-Alianza de Loreto (http://www.ecoalianzaloreto.org/ in English) where we met the director, Laura Escobosa, who is a friend of Vero's. Vero had asked her to tell us about how she came to be director and how her career goals changed. She started out wanting to do strict, hard science but started to get more into community involvement and eventually got her master's in natural resource management at UC San Diego. While at UCSD a couple approached her and asked her to help them set up an environmental NGO (non-governmental organization) in Loreto. Now Eco-Alianza does a lot of outreach in different areas. They do education both of students in the area and of tourists/visitors. They also helped reassess the management plan for the entire Bay. To do that they had to work with different stakeholders: fishermen, tourist companies, the local government, etc. Apparently it's the first time a management plan has been truly reassessed (instead of a government agency just handing down new rules) in Mexico.

After Laura's talk, we drove another hour to our campsite, which was absolutely beautiful. We were on a sand point with part of the bay all around us and an island just across a sandbar. The first day was really windy though and we had a rough time getting our tent down at first. Luckily my roommate Jenna's Miss Outdoors and handled the situation. The next day we got up early and had breakfast, then got ready to snorkel around the island. We could wade all the way out to the one side point of the island, then put on our masks and fins. Eduardo had us do a short check to see what types of fish we could see, then we split into teams and did abundance transects for those fish. One person would hold the end of the transect line, two would count fish on either side of it, and one person would swim along and record bottom conditions. We counted the Cortez Sargeant Major fish. We also saw a ton of Cortez Damselfish and the best were the Cortez Angelfish which were fairly large-from top to bottom probably the size of a dinner plate. We also saw a bunch of sting rays and sea bass. It was definitely the most fun snorkeling I've had-much more interesting than looking for scallops. On the way back into camp I snorkeled for most of the way, despite being in a good wading depth. I figured that this way I wouldn't have to look out for stingrays and might see something cool. And I did! I saw a seahorse, and fairly large too, like 6 in flattened out! He was bright orange and holding onto a piece of seagrass. At first I thought he was dead, but I waved my fingers near him and he moved. He tried to flatten himself out, maybe to look like a snake? Anyway, I was super happy to see him, and kicking myself that I hadn't gotten the underwater camera back from Dylan (who got some awesome fish pictures).

After snorkeling we had some time off and one group went to a nearby town, Mision, to check out an old Franciscan Mission and the little town. The mission was sparse but pretty and I bought a skirt in Mision. Also got an awesome popsicle from an ice cream store.

The next day (Friday) we packed up camp and drove back in to Loreto. Then we went out to one of the large islands there for more snorkeling. Before we pulled up to the island I pointed out a dolphin pod to the boat driver, so he drove over to them. It was sooo cool! It was about 4 bottlenose dolphins and they played under our bow for a good 10 minutes. They kept turning their heads to look at us. If I had been hanging onto the side of the boat, I would have been touching them, they were just underwater. We'd seen dolphins before, but never that close. They're much bigger than I realized! We stayed with them and they played with one of the other boats, and then we left to go snorkeling on the island. We were supposed to be doing more transects but Eduardo packed the equipment at the bottom of the trailer, so we just had free time to snorkel. That was amazing, there were so many fish! There were twice as many angelfish and a lot of other cool species that I have no idea the name of. I found some rock crevasse and saw this bright blue fish, maybe 4-5in long, that had florescent blue spots along his back. And lots of large starfish and sea urchins, I got to hold a couple that Eduardo or Vero brought up (no spiny urchins though, they would hurt!). I got some pictures but unfortunately I don't think I have the right cord to upload the underwater camera's pictures. In any case I ran out of battery before I came across the really cool fish. After we had been swimming for 30-45 minutes Eduardo and Vero rounded us up and said we should get back on the boats so we could go snorkel with sea lions!! We drove around to the other side of the islands and were in the water almost before the boat stopped moving. There was a colony of maybe 20 sea lions on the rocks and calling in the water. Some of them would swim right by you-at one point I was within arms reach of one, but figured he probably wouldn't like me touching him. We swam with them for another 30-45 minutes. Again, I was surprised by how big they were-the size of a large man but in sea lion form.

After snorkeling we had two hours in Loreto, and my group got ice cream and went to this juice place that AJ recommended. It was awesome, it was set in these trees and the guy had a bunch of birds and reptiles. It was like being in a mini-jungle, and the juice was awesome. I got Megaton, which is a mix of date and coconut and tasted like Humma's nut roll in liquid form. After walking around Loreto we got back into the vans and drove out to this women's coop. It's a group of nine women who collect and sell ornamental/aquarium fish to buyers in the US. They're the only group who fish ornamental fish, and the only women's coop in Loreto. They actually hire their husbands and sons for the diving, and they do it all sustainably. Some NGOs have helped them cut out middlemen and make the business more eco-friendly, which also allows them to increase their price. It was really cool, some of those women were 50+ years old and talking about how they're the boss of their husbands.