Appreciating the Baja moments

How can one appreciate the experience enough?  How long can you stare?   How often can you wonder at the next cliff, the next dolphin pod, the next manta ray leap, the next unspoiled, perfect, coiling sea shell? 

 Anchorages at desolate beaches and rock formation like broken down sand castles surrounding your anchorage.  

An osprey returns with its morning catch to its perch on top of a rock with cactus on its top like a spiked helmet.

 

An orange moon rising over a low sand spit and casting its orange glow to the side of your boat.

A daughter humming herself to sleep in the V-berth.

Spotting manta rays pop out of the water like firecrackers.

Free diving in an aquarium with schools of fish within arms length:  a school of yellow-fin, dog fish, and a thin, football shaped silver fish, huge angel fish, and at the top of the reef oodles of rainbow wrasse, yellow and grey sergeant majors, blue fish, star fish, fan coral and a manta ray leaps out of the water 20 feet from where you are snorkeling and your kids tell you all about it. 

Sea caves and steep cliffs that drop straight into the water and form little shallow lagoons.  You can’t stay long enough because there’s another one to see around the corner.    

What is it like?

Finding large, perfect sea shells on the beach. 

The blue phosphorescent sparkles in the sea at night. 

Clams for lunch, fresh fish for dinner.

Kids collecting shells and black rocks called Apache tears

Its beauty steams over indifference.  You have to look.  You’ll forget “whatever” and be amazed.  And talk about it excitedly.  I’ve seen this happen to kids.  Keyboards and game boys sit idle.  

The Baja is unbroken, at least to the fresh tourist’s outlook.  It is foreign to the image of “beach” wedged into the Southern California mind.

Kid comments:

Henry, as we watched an animated movie, said, "She’s not singing that.  She’s lip-syncing.”  (Remember...it was animated)

A 4-year-old describing a noise he heard at night. “It was louder than a shooting star”.   

And yet another boat kid said, "When I grow up I’ll have my ketch and sail the Ohio river."