Peaceful Frailes salt-water lagoon
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Peaceful Frailes salt-water lagoon |
Having rested at bit at our lovely calm anchorage in Los Frailes, we got our friends Rouser and Waking Dream on the SSB that evening who were still waiting in Cabo San Lucas. After retelling them of our excitement coming up that day, bashing into the swift headwinds and square steep seas from Cabo to Frailes, they left in the dark soon after in order to make the passage in the calmer nighttime hours. That night, we celebrated our successful, albeit uncomfortable passage, with a big bowl of kettle corn and an episode of the X-Files from Michael's DVD collection.
By morning our friends had indeed arrived in Frailes, happy to have motored the whole night, dry and comfortable having not encountered one nasty sea. That afternoon the two of us hiked over the beach to a beautiful salt water lagoon surrounded by all sorts of interesting desert plants, including some of the giant cactus we'd come so far to see. It was a very quiet peaceful area with hawks soaring high overhead the lagoon and other small birds wading in the shallows. We loved the Los Frailes anchorage which seemed very remote (especially after Cabo) with only a bunch of fisherman and a few RV's camping out on the beach besides us anchored sailors. The water was a beautiful aqua-green color we could see the bottom through in most days, and the sand was white and soft.
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Hiking in Baja is cool |
The next morning Ben and Lisa on Waking Dream got out their hookah for diving and all the friends gathered around their boat waiting to try it out. I (Sara) and our friend Greg had never been diving before so we were the lucky two to get to try it out first. It was really weird to be breathing underwater and took me a while to get used to. I hung on to the boats anchor chain about five feet underwater for about 20 minutes before I finally got up the guts to inch further below the surface. Ben is a great instructor and just kept encouraging me to relax, let go of the anchor chain, dive down a bit further, and relax. Before I knew it I was laying on the white sand at the bottom of the anchorage, and staring up 35' to the sun sparkling through the surface of the water. What a feeling! After that I had a great time just floating suspended -- flying really -- in the eerie and fascinating greenish-blue waterworld watching a few fish swim by here and there.
We spent nearly that whole day in the water, taking turns on the hookah and snorkeling. There was some very interesting diving by the rocks near the beach and the huge "friars" hill, including several large moray eels which scared even the tough guys a bit.
The following day was filled with even more diving adventures. Waking Dream had offered to take all who wanted to go on their boat over to the north side of Los Frailes to Pulmo reef, the largest coral reef in Mexico. We took off early in the morning, Waking Dream piled high with dive and snorkling gear and guests, as to try to avoid the northerly winds that seem to blow down the Sea of Cortez daily. But by the time we'd set the anchor near the reef it was already blowing around 15-20 knots with 3-4 foot wind waves in the anchorage. The divers didn't mind as the waves didn't matter at all in the deeper depths, but us snorkelers were getting bounced around quite a bit with the occasional wave crashing over us. Ben himself didn't get much diving in as he was busy running around in the dinghy, keeping track of all the snorklers (including Greg and Sujata who went missing for about a half hour) and making sure his boat wasn't dragging onto the reef.
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Unfortunately, much of the coral reef appeared to be dead, as it was brown and broken off in many places. There were some interesting fish to be seen such as several large parrot fish and lots of needle fish, but the wind and waves had stirred up the sand a bit and visibility wasn't so great. When we snorklers were ready to warm up, we swam to the beach, now getting pounded by waves, and waited for our dinghy escort to take us back to the boat.
After about 45 minutes of warming ourselves in the sand we saw Ben come crashing through the now six foot wind waves toward the beach in his RIB dinghy. When he reached the beach, we were about to swim out to him when WHOOSH a big wave caught the dinghy and washed the both of them ashore. So the six of us pushed the dinghy back through the surf and jumped in. It was a harrowing wet ride back to Waking Dream in the overloaded Caribe as waves continually were washing over the bow. The dinghy was so low in the water that the surf was flowing over the transom. With the tubes and outboard barely above the surface, we all began grabbing our snorkel gear that was floating around in the dinghy filled like a swimming pool, and got ready to abandon ship when we finally reached the Mother Ship. Once all was onboard safe and sound, we quickly hauled anchor and headed back to the Frailes anchorage, nice and flat in the lee of the land. Once safely anchored, there were many rounds of drinks, especially for Ben and Lisa of Waking Dream for sponsoring the adventure.
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Idyllic anchorage |
The next few days were spent recovering from the Pulmo reef trip by doing some hiking up the dusty Baja road, having a picnic on the beach to meet other cruisers and doing some snorkeling and hookah-ing in the anchorage. Many evenings were spent with friends on Rouser, Maajhi-Re, Waking Dream, Dos Brisas and other boats having potlucks, watching movies or just visiting. It had been a while since we'd talked to Michael's parents so on Saturday morning we got on the Chubasco net and got a phone patch through to his Mom. She was glad to hear from us in this lovely remote place!
On our last night in Los Frailes, a local Mexican church group held a fundraising dinner for the RVers and cruisers. For only $5 each we got a choice of a Dorado or steak dinner, complete with salad and potatoes. It was a scrumptious dinner on the beach and we had a good time meeting some new people, including the local folks.
After our idyllic week in Los Frailes with many many fun memories to take with us, the weather forecast was for the northerlies that had continually blew down the Sea of Cortez to subside. It was a good time to make the crossing across the Sea to Isla Isabel, on our way to mainland Mexico for the next couple of months. We'll explore over there, then head back into the Sea for Spring and early Summer when the air and water temperatures are warmer and the wind isn't blowing us south.
Click
for Pulmo Reef dive video -