I forgot to report on our border crossing experience when returning to the US

I had heard stories about Charlie being pulled over for secondary inspection and having to unpack the truck and open every bin on his return a previous Baja trip. When we finally got to the border guard we handed over our passports. Fio included her green card since she has an Italian passport. I included my new Global Entry card with my passport and noticed the guard scanned the card rather than my passport. I would like to think my being a "known traveler" contributed to our getting waived through after asking what was in the truck. But when I asked Charlie how often he got sent to secondary inspection, it turns out it hasn't happened that often. The time he had to unpack everything was when he was crossing the border alone and thus might have appeared more suspicious being a lone traveler with so much gear. So the time it took us to cross the border was an hour and a half waiting in line and less than a minute with the border guard.

border crossing line that took an hour and a half 

lots of last minute shopping opportunities while waiting in line to cross the border

Follow-up on Baja trip

First let me say thanks to Fio, Charlie, and Brock for including me on this trip. I really appreciated the opportunity to visit Baja with a team that is so experienced and knows the language.

Since returning I spent some time cleaning up the blog posts. I reduced the size of the photos so they don't bleed over to cover text in the column on the right. I also added captions to all the photos. Both of these things I was not able to do using the Blogger app on my iPad.

Next I wanted to post a short video that I didn't dare try to upload while dealing with limited Internet access in Baja. This is just a 5 second clip to give you an idea of how much the wind was blowing around the sand in La Bocana.

Baja tarp has been retired

All the gear in the back of the truck is covered with a tarp. While it helps keep things dry should it rain, its more common function is to keep down the amount of dirt and sand that gets into everything when driving the back roads and beaches of Baja. The tarp started to develop tears part way through the trip, and by the time we got back to Hopkins it was only covering about half the bins. When we unpacked the truck yesterday, Charlie place the tarp in the dumpster. Cheryl will be ordering a new one before the next road trip to Baja.

Ripped tarp at the end of our road trip

A night in Ensenada

We left El Rosario around 5 pm and drove up to Ensenada. We tried to stop at the Santo Tomas winery, but they had already closed by the time we arrived.

After checking into our hotel, we went looking for a place to eat. The same winery has a store front in Ensenada, but it too was already closed. After many hours in the truck, we decided to search for a restaurant on foot. We found a very nice place and all ordered the night's specials. I had the fettuccine Alfredo with shrimp. Everyone else had the ribeye steak. The specials started with a nice fresh salad and also included a glass of wine and a brownie with ice cream for dessert. The specials were priced at 250 pesos which is about $15 US. Quite a deal.

Below is a photo of the Corona Hotel & Spa where we stayed. I forgot to take a photo of the hotel, so I grabbed this one off the web. They brought in a roll-away bed so the three guys could share one room. Charlie very generously offered to take the roll-away. Previously I had been sleeping sitting up as it was the only position where my shoulder didn't hurt. I appreciated having the queen size bed since I was finally able to lay down and get a good night's sleep.

Corona Hotel & Spa in Ensenada

Not many photos for my foodie friends

I'm afraid I didn't take many food photos on this trip. I don't think I ever had a bad meal, and the quantities were often huge. I kept looking to order things that might provide a smaller portion size, but usually was unsuccessful in my attempt.

I ate a lot of fish and other seafood, which was great. When we were in La Cobana we tried to get in the water early before the winds picked up so we were leaving  shore just about the time the restaurant started serving breakfast. Knowing this, we ordered food to go the night before. They provided us with smoked fish burritos which turned out to be one of my favorite meals. Another favorite were the crab quesas I had at Mama Espinoza's restaurant in El Rosario. I had been told how wonderful the crab was at this place, but they had been out of it until our very last meal there.

Below is a picture of one of our dinners in the restaurant on Isla Natividad. Here we were served two huge dishes of ceviche. One was fish which was good, but the second was lobster which was phenomenal. It was quickly devoured.

Ceviche lunch on Isla Natividad

The dives I didn't make

The team just returned from the two early morning dives off Isla San Geronimo. I gather conditions weren't much better than our earlier dives. At one site there was a strong current, and at the other there was a large swell. Despite the conditions they got everything installed. So while I wouldn't wish poor diving conditions on anyone, at least I don't regret not being able to dive today. They did see gray whales during the boat ride to the island.

While they were gone I took some interior photos of our motel and also an exterior shot of the restaurant next door where we have been eating.

Here is our bedroom with two queen size beds downstairs and two single beds in the loft.

The "boys" bedroom with loft in the Baja Cactus Motel

Below is the bathroom sink area outside the room with the toilet and a very nice walk in shower. I really like the Mexican tiles used in the shower, the tall glass door, and the built in sitting area on the side opposite the shower head. I need to remodel my bathroom at home and this gave me some ideas to consider.

Sink and shower stall in Baja Cactus Motel

Mama Espinoza's restaurant is right next door.

Mama Espinoza's Restaurant in El Rosario

Back at the Baja Cactus in El Rosario

Yesterday afternoon we returned to El Rosario which is our final field site before returning home. As with Isla Natividad and La Bocana, a couple hours were spent training local divers how to open the miniDO2Ts, download the data, and then re-set them for re-deployment. The goal is to eventually turn over the operation to the locals, and they will just send the data back to Fio, Brock, and Charlie.

miniDO2T training session at COBI in El Rosario

Early this morning some of the local divers went out with our team to observe the deployment operation at two sites off Isla San Geronimo. Unfortunately I strained my left shoulder and decided I needed to sit out today's two dives. This is a major bummer.

If everything goes as planned, we should be checking out of the Baja Cactus Motel this afternoon and will probably spend tonight in Ensenada and face crossing the border on Tuesday morning.

Our drive north on the way to El Rosario

After leaving Vizcaíno early this morning we had a nice breakfast in Guerrero Negro at the same cafe we stopped at on our drive south last week. We then crossed the border from Baja California Sur into Baja California Norte. The armed guards didn't make us unload everything off the back of the truck, but they did look through some of our things in the truck's cab while we waited outside. At this point I developed a nose bleed. This came out of the blue. Arturo gave me some gauze soaked in iodine to put up my right nostril. I had taken some aspirin earlier this morning for some muscle pain, but other than that I don't know what brought this on. In any case, it wasn't too long after I had my nose blocked  that the guards released us to continue across the border.

Charlie offer to stop along the way for a short hike in the desert, and we took him up on his offer. Below are a few photo from our brief respite from the long drive.

Cactus in bloom

red cactus

Charlie showing off boojum tree
Fouquieria columnaris

A few photos before leaving La Bocana

After out morning dives and some lunch, Fio and Charlie headed over to the aquaculture facility to take tissue samples from diseased and healthy abalone. I stayed behind and did some packing and took a few more photographs.

flock of sea gulls on the beach in La Bocana

view from my cabin on the beach in La Bocana

After loading the truck we left for Vizcaíno where we had a nice dinner and spent the night in Hotel Lachita before continuing our drive north.

Our second day of diving in La Bocana

If you thought the photos I posted from our first day of diving were pretty murky, that would be considered good visibility compared to our second day of diving. I didn't even bother taking photos since the viz was only a couple feet. Despite this we accomplished the day's mission to deploy two miniDO2Ts and two subsurface buoys.

Divers descending to attach miniDO2T and subsurface float

One nice thing about the day was spotting a gray whale mother and calf on our return trip.

Gray whale

Military inspection when we return to shore

We were met by men with guns and sniffing dogs when we returned from our dives on Friday.

Military greeting as we return to shore

The challenges of Baja

Yesterday we were expecting Fio, Arturo, and Antonio to join us in La Bocana sometime between 5 and 6 pm. When it got to be 8 pm we decided not to wait to order our dinner, but we were also a bit concerned. The fact they had not phoned was not too surprising assuming they took the same route we had driven the day before. There was no cell phone service and only two small fishing villages along the route. Given we only passed a couple cars during the entire drive, my concern was they might have broken down and would be stuck in the middle of nowhere overnight. Shortly after we had ordered our food, they showed up. They had driven off the road and got stuck in the mud. You will have to ask Fio how this happened. It took them 2 hours of digging and putting various things under the tires before they were able to get back on the road. At one point Antonio was considering walking/jogging back the the nearest town which was a considerable distance.

Below is a selfie that Fio took after they had finished getting the truck out of the mud. If you could have seen them when they arrived at La Bocana you would know the photo does not really do justice to the amount of mud they had on them.

smiles of success after 2 hours digging the truck out of the mud

Staying right on the beach is great, but...

The accommodations in La Bocana are great. It is nice being right on the beach. There are 6 cabanas plus the office. Pictured below are the exterior and interior of the restaurant/bar that is right next door to the cabanas.

restaurant & bar at Bocana Adventure

view inside Bocana Adventure restaurant & bar

The one disadvantage of being right on the beach is the sand gets everywhere, especially when the wind is blowing. Below are photos of my white dive slate and my wetsuit that were left out overnight on my cabana's porch.

corner of my sand covered slate

sand on my wetsuit after being hung over the porch railing overnight

First dive in La Bocana

The winds were pretty strong last night, but they had calmed down a bit by morning and the sea conditions didn't look too bad. We got our boat loaded with lots of gear and then a tractor towed us to the water's edge before getting his tractor behind the boat to push us the rest of the way into the water.

tractor pushing boat into the water

We were floating in the water when we ran into a problem -- the engine wouldn't lower into the water. The winds and current were pushing us out of the estuary into the breaking waves, so we hastily threw an anchor over the side to keep us from drifting onto a sandbar. It didn't take too long before they managed to get the engine lowered and we were off.

We arrived at our site, Zona Afectada, and tossed the float with its stainless steel cables over the side followed by the two cement filled buckets. Five of us then went down to move the float system over to the other four cement filled buckets that were already in place. There were over 70 pieces of stainless steel hardware holding this thing together by the time we were done.

six cement filled buckets to hold the subsurface float in place

The CTD was then attached to the float cable.

CTD attached to stainless steel cable

Once done with the installation we took a little time to explore the area. Visibility was not great, maybe about 10 feet. In particular, we were looking for abalone but found none. Magda spotted the ray shown below.

California spotted stingray
Urolophus halleri

The total time for the dive including our safety stop was half an hour.

A hard night's work

The good news is that FIo and Arturo gave their presentation this morning. I am told they received lots of questions which is usually a good sign. After the talk they made it over to the mainland and are now driving the coast road to La Bocama that we drove yesterday.

I know I posted a photo earlier in this blog showing where we would be staying in La Bocama, but the cabins on the beach are so nice I have to share one if my own photos of the accommodations. 

Bocana Adventure cabins on the beach

After our drive down yesterday, we kept busy getting things prepared for our dives today. While Brock prepared the instruments for deployment, Charlie and I worked on the lines for for the sub-surface floats. Charlie worked on the one for the Zona Afectada dive site where the CTD will be deployed. This involves a half inch stainless.steel cable. I worked on the other two lines that were made from polypropylene rope. Charlie's showed me how to splice the rope and Brock show me how to tie an anchor knot to attach the float.

At 8:45 pm Brock reminded us that the kitchen at the restaurant closed at 9 pm, so we dropped everything and went to get dinner. I ordered fish, and it was delicious.

half eaten delicious fish dinner

The drive to La Bocana

We originally planned to drive inland from Tortogas and catch Hwy 1 south and then cut over to the coast. However, we were told the more direct road that hugs the coast was passable. It is a dirt road, and in some places where it goes across a mud flat, it is hard to be sure where the road is as you can see from this photo I took looking out the front windshield.

sometimes it was hard to know where the road was

Charlie did a great job driving.

I noticed some metal cylinders showing up on the side of the road. Initially they were all black, but later they were white. Actually they seem to be associated with the power lines and not the road, but since the power lines followed the road much of the trip, I saw l lot of them. Below is a photo of one of the white ones. They all had the two handles midway up the side. I would love to find out what they are should anyone know.

Lots of these metal cylinders along the road, but what are they?

Some random photos from Isla Natividad

Here are some photos that didn't fit into the storyline of the blog.

The fishing community has their own amphibious vehicle.

amphibious vehicle on Isla Natividad

The only mammal on the island besides humans is an endemic mouse. I haven't seen one, but here is a lizard I spotted outside the science lab.

lizard on Isla Natividad

A requisite beautiful sunset.

sunset on Isla Natividad

Last day on Isla Natividad at least for some of us

Fio is still waiting to give her presentation to the Assembly. The date and time has become a moving target. Originally we were going to work in El Rosario first, but we changed our plans and headed directly to Isla Nativicad first in order to be there for the meeting, The plan was to attend the meeting and then make our dives, but we switched and did our dives first when the date got pushed back. Fio was then told it would happen on Wednesday, and if not then, on Thursday morning. It is now Thursday, we are not even sure if it is going to happen today. Since there is a chance it might get pushed back to Friday or even later, we decided that some of the team should head to La Bocana today and start getting things set up there. We are working with a team from COBI, so there are two vehicles which makes this possible. While less than ideal, this plan should work. Of course this is all predicated on the seas being calm enough for us to make the trip. The wind was really howling last night, and it is still blowing this morning although not quite so hard.

Below is a photo of the fish co-ops office on Natividad. This is where we go to get internet access.

COBI office on Isla Natividad

Visit to the abalone aquaculture facility

We returned to the aquaculture facility on Wednesday and saw the abalone munching down on the Macrocystis we dropped off on Monday. Here you see Fio, Charlie, and Brock crossing the dirt "airport" runway as they head toward the science labs.

You can actually fly to Isla Natividad.  Here we are crossing the runway.

Fio received permission to place a miniDO2T sensor in one of the tanks. After getting it all strapped in with zip ties, we realized it had been placed in one of the cement tanks that has a flow through seawater system. We wanted it in a tank using the partially closed system where the seawater is recirculated but also receives some fresh seawater. These are the blue plastic tanks. We didn't have our tools with us, so the staff brought out a large machete to cut the zip ties so we could move the sensor.

The sensor was placed in this blue tank.  To the right is one of the cemet tanks.

Isla Natividad aquaculture facility

The sensor in place until Fio is back in 6 months

miniDO2T placed in Isla Natividad aquaculture facility tank

A bunch of green abalone

green abalone

More abalone with the shackle there for perspective.  Most of these are between one and two inches in length.

more abalone

They pointed out the sea horse that found a home in one of the abalone tanks.

"resident" sea horse sharing tank with farm raised abalone 

Another pre-dinner walk

On Tuesday most of the group headed back to the lighthouse before dinner. Besides the walk itself, the goal was to get to a location with good cell phone reception. SInce I left my cell phone at home and had no need for cell phone reception, I decided to take off on my own and walk to the beach below the lighthouse. As I arrived on the beach I wasn't sure how long I would stay since the wind was strong and it was like being in a sand storm. As usual I was wearing shorts, and the sand was stinging my bare legs. I also didn't want to expose my camera lens to the sand projectiles. However, once I started walking down the beach where most of the sand was wet, it was quite pleasant. In addition to enjoying my search of the beach wrack for treasures, I contemplated how lucky I was to be at this remote location watching the sun set from a beach I had all to myself.

lighthouse on Isla Natividad

The most common thing on the beach was Sargassum muticum. I also spotted one small bit of Macrocystis. Finally I spotted a large batch of Sargassum horneri (thanks to Kathy Ann Miller for confirming the identification). This invasive species is all over Catalina Island and the other Channel Islands to the north, so it was nice to document its presence here on an island off the Baja peninsula.

Sargassum horneri on Isla Natividad beach

In addition I ran across two dead sea lions. 

dead sea lion on Isla Natividad beach

Harvesting algae is one of the lucrative businesses on Isla Natividad

One of the marine resources they "fish" for using hookah is the red alga Gelidium robustum.  After drying, it is sold and used to make agar.  Below is a series of photos showing some of the process.

Here are examples of some of the bags the divers use to collect the Gelidium.

nets used to collection algae

Here is a bag after it has been filled.

net filled with Gelidium robustum

The algae is then spread out on the ground to dry.  The sea gulls come through and pick out any invertebrate by-catch.

Gelidium robustum drying on the ground

This is that same patch of Gelidium after it has been drying in the sun for a day.

Gelidium robustum after one day in the sun

After a day the mat of dried algae is flipped to allow the other side to dry.

Gelidium robustum after being turned to dry the other side

Posts out of order

Still a bit frustrated with the Blogger app.  I have been offline for a couple days and getting blog entries ready to post.  Unfortunately instead of listing the date I wrote the blog entry, it is listing the date and time I got online and it finally was able to post.  It even got some entries out of order.  Grrr.  I believe I was able to set the date and time when doing this on my laptop.

A frustrating lack of underwater photos

On Monday we made three dives to retrieve the three miniDO2T sensors. Since these were short dives, we traded off who went down. I went on the first dive and planned to document the installation of the CTD. Unfortunately the visibility was poor and the depth was at the limit of my camera. I did not succeed in getting any reasonable photos of the CTD installed on the cement "pyramid" at the Morro Prieto site. I did get a photo of a kelp recruit on the line holding the sub-surface float, so maybe there is hope that the kelp will come back now that the water is warming up.

Macrocystis recruit on subsurface mooring line

That dive lasted 10 minutes, and I was not involved in the other two dives.

On Tuesday we dove at two of the three sites to re-deploy the miniDO2T sensors. We didn't need to do it at the "pyramid" site since the CTD would be collecting that data. I didn't dive at the "buckets" at Morro Prieto and instead dove at the third site at Punta Prieta. This site has a fairly disturbed sandy bottom, but with much better visibility. It is on the more protected, landward side of the island. I decided not to take my camera which was a mistake since it was probably shallow enough for me to get some decent photos. I dove with Fio and Brock and as the third diver didn't have to go. However, I made the right decision since we had engine problems and had to abort the third dive that we planned to make. It wa going to be an exploratory dive in the nearby reserve. I had been looking forward to this dive in what looked to be a great place to take photos. So after two very long days of driving and two days where I spent 5 hours each day getting gear together, motoring to the sites, and then returning and cleaning up, I managed to make one 10 minute dive and one 9 minute dive.

Fio and Magda preparing the miniDO2T for deployment.

Fio and Magda get the taped up miniDO2T ready for deployment