First off, the naming of lots of these places we visit is a bit strange. Many places have the same names, which is very confusing. One stop in this entry is Balandra, which is not the same as Balandra that we visited further south. Another quirk is that the names are not consistent. One map, chart or guidebook with call places one thing and others will call it something else. So, if I bounce between Isla Coronado and Isla Coronados, or Isla Carmen and Isla del Carmen, I’m not to blame.
The area though has been amazing for cruising. Every anchorage has been 20-30 feet deep with good holding and no underwater obstructions. Since we are here in the off-season, even tiny 1-boat anchorages are always available so we get to go wherever we want and have the place to ourselves. Each stop is only a few hours away (keep in mind we move at jogging pace) and there are many, many options. It is truly spectacular cruising grounds.
Candelero Chico
Our first 1-boat anchorage stop was a tiny tuck in with huge cliffs surrounding us on three sides. We were very well protected from swell and it was a comfortable spot.
There is reportedly really good snorkeling in this cove, but due to the large numbers of jellyfish larvae right now we did not go. We did SUP around the small cove and go to the rocky little beach. We found a sea turtle carapace and some interesting shells. After a little bit on shore, we noticed some really nasty looking clouds rolling in so we went back to the Hoss to close up hatches and not be out in the weather. And boy howdy did we get some weather. It rained like crazy, which allowed me to scrub our decks clean and rinse everything off. But then the lightning was getting closer, louder, higher pitched.
It was a scary 30 minutes or so with cloud-to-cloud lightning passing over us and ground strikes within a mile, right outside the cove. I think the tall cliffs all around us kept us nice and safe, but it always feels a bit tense.
After the rain cleared, a beautiful full rainbow spanned the gap in the rock wall to our east and stayed for close to an hour. It’s the longest I have ever seen a rainbow stick around for.
Isla del Carmen
This island has a somewhat remarkable resemblance to a seahorse, so that was cool.
Painted Cliffs
Our next stop was on the east side of Isla del Carmen. The guide book described the colorful striping in the rocks, reds, browns, yellows, oranges, and black. It turned out to be very pretty, although the next bay south seemed prettier when we passed it. When we arrived there was a catamaran already anchored since the day before. I dinghied over and chatted with them for a little bit and they invited us over for cocktails that evening. This has set off a ‘buddy-boat’ relationship that is still going strong as I write this post over a month later.
In the Sea of Cortez in summer, there are storms that sometimes hit in the middle of the night. They start way off to the east over mainland Mexico. That mainland convection typically breaks up on its way across the 150 or so miles over the open water. But not always. When it hits Baja with full force, the winds can be 50-90 knots and there can be horribly lightning, etc. They are called Chubascos. If they are weaker, in the 30-50 knot range, they are called Chubacas.
We had a Chubaca make it across that night. The anchorage is wide open to the east so the winds that had built up some fairly large waves came right into the anchorage unimpeded. It made for a really rough night and one of our worst days at anchor in nearly three years aboard.
The fact that we didn’t get to sleep did make it so that our friends on Selador were able to get an amazing shot of the Hoss right before sunrise. Also, right after sunrise we got a good shot of them with a rainbow framing them in well.
Bahía Salinas
Rather than deal with a terrible day and night in the now very rolly anchorage, we moved to the south side of the island which offers great protection for weather from the east. There is a ‘town’ in this area with one inhabitant. It used to be the largest salt flat operation in the world. During hunting season, they lead bighorn sheep hunts but there was no sigh of hunters or sheep for our entire time around the island.
In the middle of the bay is a sunken boat, and although the visibility wasn’t great, there was a ton of fish to see which was really cool.
Ashore I got in a back-and-forth beach run and we went for a stroll through the ghost town and over to the salt flats to sample the salt left behind from the last flood.
The walk was nice, although the next day I went back for a run across the island and it was the worst I recall feeling on a run in recent history so I was jaded by the time we left.
V-Cove
Our friends had to go back to the marina to receive parts, etc. so we continued on to the north end of the island by ourselves to go to a somewhat famous anchorage known as V-Cove. It should be called Bee-Cove because oh my god! When we first arrived, we were taken in by the beauty of the cliffs and sand dune so we dealt with the bees. Sunset was approaching so we knew we just had to hang in there for a little bit before the bees stopped coming. I’m glad we did because we got some great pictures, including one of me with Dublin (who rarely allows such things).
The next morning the plan was: get up about an hour before sunrise and go snorkeling from the boat past the caves and then spend a little time on shore at the sand dune. Then we would swim back to the boat and rinse as we left the bay, hopefully staying ahead of the return of the bees. Nope. The bees showed up very early and in huge numbers. So, we decided to leave. It was quite a challenge since the bees were covering everything. Grete managed to make it up to the windlass to pull up the chain and anchor. I got stung three times getting out of there and although we hated leaving so early, it couldn’t have been clearer that we made the right call.
Loreto
When we left, we headed over to the town of Loreto, the sight of the oldest Spanish mission in the Californias. It is a really colorful town with a nice little walking street, good food and friendly locals.
Like many towns in Mexico, there were a lot of off-leash dogs in the town, so the running kind of sucked, but other than that it was a great stop. We even found a really good spot for fresh gluten free products. We got hamburger buns, break, bagels, croisants, and donuts. The guy who owns and runs it was super friendly and had two sweet dogs inside. Purchasing bread there takes about an hour because he’s like an elderly relative who just won’t let you leave. During our transaction, one of the sweet dogs had an explosive diarrhea incident and fired a stream of it across the floor. He felt bad and, obviously, cleaned it up. He commented on how awesome he though we were (especially the kids), for not being weird about it. It was weird, but it’s a dog. In Mexico. We weren’t surprised. I have gotten more laughs out of this than I should, in part because I had a note to myself so I wouldn’t forget to include it. The note was “exploding diarrhea dog”, and I laughed every time I saw it.
Isla Coronado
Our next stop is one of our favorite anchorages ever. It was remarkably beautiful, and although only about 5-10 miles from Loreto, it felt very remote and we had it to ourselves. Crystal clear Bahamian water, white sand beaches, a massive volcano, no rolling, and a surprising amount of lush greenery ashore made us fall in love immediately.
After a couple of days though, the long tendrils of Hurricane Lorena reached our area and gave us a nice freshwater rinse as well as tons of choppy wind waves coming at us hard, making it very uncomfortable. So we tried moving around to the south side of the small island. On that side, the wind waves were gone, but were replaced by the swell from the southeast, which was even worse. We decided to go back to our original spot but then decided shortly after getting underway to seek better protection in a notorious bee-filled anchorage back on Isla del Carmen.
Bahía Balandra (Isla del Carmen)
We arrived in the dark, which we, as a rule, do not do. I think this was the second time in nearly three years of cruising that we have gotten to a place at night, the other time being due to an engine issue when leaving Bimini. It is really scary to get in at night since you have to completely trust the charts which, in addition to not being very accurate, make you accept a notification when you power up that they are only to be used as an aid to navigation augmenting visual navigation, etc. Well, we weren’t going to stay out in the weather so in we went. We had no incident, but I can say that I would have anchored in a slightly different spot had I been able to see.
The rain from the storm turned out to be really beneficial for us. This anchorage typically has so many bees it is known as “Beelandra”. But the bees had tons of fresh water ashore so thay left us completely alone. Also, I have been to tons of places in deserts and seen the arroyos and though, “How cool would that look in the rain.” We got to find out. This small cove on a desert island was covered in waterfalls in every direction.
I did feel kind of bad for Fira. When we first got to Isla Coronado it was a couple of days from her birthday. She didn’t ask for much: one gift from each of Grete and I, a card from Dublin, pancakes for breakfast, quesadillas for lunch, a pot-luck of odds-and-ends for dinner, and to be at the anchorage on Isla Coronado. But the storm came and that anchorage was not tenable. This stop was nice enough though, and we explored the shore by SUP board and enjoyed ourselves regardless.
I made pancakes for breakfast and quesadillas for lunch. We all contributed something special for our in-house potluck, and I managed to bake a cake.
Her one other wish was to have a movie night. Pretty simple requests which I take to mean we aren’t completely horrible at raising our kids.
Honeymoon Cove (Isla Danzante)
After a couple of days in Balandra we decided to head a bit further south to next island, which we had skipped on our way up. We are very glad that we did. It was prettier than Balandra and afforded us a chance for some great family time on SUP boards and the beach.
I got some nice pictures of the boat, and we enjoyed the prtoection of the bay until the winds subsided.
I went for a run on shore, but the well-maintained part of the trail is very short, everything else was a rock scramble which makes for pretty vistas but terrible running.
Victory Lap
Well, at this point we planned to start heading back north but we had been away from town for over a week so we decided to go back to Loreto for supplies. We went back to bread dude, and had no further diarrhea dog incidents. I also went ahead and refilled our propane and fuel. The guy who shuttled me around spent most of his childhood in Arizona, so he spoke perfect English. It turns out that he runs tours into the nearby slot canyons, so we decided to stay one extra day and go on a tour of Cañón del Mezquite. We are so glad that we did. I could post dozens of photos of just this, but I’ll pick a few highlights.
The guide was laughing really hard at all of us slipping on the rocks as we navigated the trail. It was really a special time to do the tour also since the area had just gotten a lot of rain from Lorena about a week earlier, its first rain in two years. As such, the normally brown, dead desert was green and the water levels were very high. It was a great day.
Our last stop on this section of Baja was to go back to beautiful Isla Coronado for one more day and to reunite with our friends from Selador. We went snorkeling, and went to the beach and just generally had a really pleasant stay.
But it was time to keep marching north, so off we went.