In The Water At Last - at Santispac

Here it is, the launch of our Maiden Paddle!! Well, after trying for an hour our connection is just not fast enough to let me post pictures ... not even one! I will see what we can do to speed it up later.

(written Friday January 26, 2007)

Ahh, kayaking – I think we have found a wonderful sport! I’m a born-again-kayaker! We were a bit discouraged when we first arrived as Santispac had a very brisk offshore wind. The next day was better and we enjoyed a short few hours on the water, however it was quite windy returning to shore, requiring a bit of muscle to paddle in. It felt a bit choppy too, on this our maiden paddle. My little mystic is wonderful; it is quite narrow and has a small cockpit but sits very comfortably for me. It does feel pretty tippy but I think I will get used to it quite quickly. I didn’t have any trouble keeping up to Lorne, in fact it was the reverse!, especially when I was using his much bigger paddle! Ha ha! I do like to zip along! Lorne is happy with his kayak but I would not be surprised if we buy another one for him fairly soon. Not sure yet what one it would be, have to do some more research.

Thursday was beautiful! We paddled for the whole morning and paddled over to another little gringo village on the beach just south of Santispac (complete with tennis court). (Posada Concepcion or Bahia Tordillo) This whole area has a lot of hot seeps and this village has made several attractive stone surrounds to make pools so you can sit in them. There is a large one right in the center of the village and several small ones along the shore. Santispac has its own little muddy hot spring that doesn’t look that appealing to me but our neighbors enjoyed it when the tide was high.

There was just a light off shore breeze which of course picks up as the morning wears on, so the trip home took a little more effort than going out. I went out for a late afternoon paddle too, the water was like glass and so crystal clear you could see down into that enchanting world of fish and sea creatures. These beaches are shallow for quite a ways out so much sea life was visible.

No cell service here or internet unless you carry your own satellite. Already being 800 lbs overweight that’s one essential item we do not carry! Sometimes there is someone who has an open WiFi we can hook into but this year, with all the changes on the beach, there was no one. However, Lorne found one over in the little village we had visited by kayak, and with his handy dandy new USB WiFi adaptor we were able to pirate into Jim’s satellite service if we walked way down to the end of beach where we had a clear site line over to the village. If we had brought a headset the signal was strong enough to use Skype. Thank you Jim whoever you are!

There have been many changes on this beach this year. For years gringos have enjoyed the freedom to build little beach front grass houses and last year there were many lining the shore, including some not so little, very elaborate two story ones complete with air conditioning. These houses were framed with wood and the walls were made of a grass or palm matting. They had to pay the Ejido a nominal fee, something like $10 per day for the pleasure. This year they were given notice they had to remove their houses and move off the beach as of the end of January. There were many sad people who were busy packing up their belongings and tearing down their houses to rebuild them at other beaches near by. Rays restaurant, also a palapa style building – sand floor, grass mat walls and palm palapa roof was burnt to the ground, rumour has it the Ejido offered to let him stay if he paid. He refused to pay and it is suspected that they played a hand in this fire while Ray was away on the mainland over Christmas. But, who knows, there are many stories in Baja and many mysteries yet unsolved.

There are three permanent houses built way down at the end of the beach. These are quite beautiful stone and adobe houses with elaborate stone walls around them. Apparently they were offered to buy the approximately ½ acre their houses are on for $120 thousand. This, in our opinion, is a reasonable price as these beautiful homes are worth at least ½ million or more. One family agreed to this and the other still has not! They are trying to sell the house at the moment. Interested? You might get a real deal! It will be interesting to see what happens to this beach in the future. There is much speculation as to what the Ejido have planned for it.