I just recently got back from an amazing trip in Baja California del Sur in Mexico. This was our
blog while we were there. We spent ten days in various places like La Paz, Todos Santos, and La Isla Espíritu Santo. I got the opportunity to learn, do charity work, share experiences, get my breath taken away, be part of a community, and have some truly delicious food. While I was away in paradise I kept a journal of my experiences throughout the ten days to be able to share with my readers!
Day 1:
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| Erica, Kara, and I at the water springs |
I woke up bright and early to meet the Baja group at LAX. We all checked in with our chaperones Dr. Stogdill and Ms. Larios. We double and TRIPLE checked that we had our passports because we were so scared we might have left them at home and would have to go back. I was eagerly awaiting our plane's arrival in Baja the entire trip which made the couple hour plane ride feel like an eternity. Once we got to the airport in Cabo, I bounded off the plane, luggage in hand, and was greeted by the overly humid outside air. Unfortunately, we didn't get to hop right into an air condition van as it appeared our guides were late to picking us up because our flight got in earlier than expected. Once we were picked up, we began our journey to the ranch. The car ride was filled with lots of singing and admiring the country road we were traveling on. When we pulled up to the ranch we were greeted by an entourage of a cow, a horse and it's foal, and some goats at the gate. I was really excited to see that their animals were allowed to just roam around their ranch which was really different compared to many ranches I had seen in the US. There were mango trees everywhere and we ended up setting our camp up under the trees which provide a huge amount of shade which was vital in the area. After camp was set up we ate dinner and decide to go on a hike to some water springs. We hiked through the brush of their ranch to some water springs with a miniature waterfall. It was very deserted and preserved and if you stood still long enough in the water some fishies would swim up and eat the dead skin cells of your feet. When we finally got back to the camp, it was dark and we set up a campfire even though it was really hot out. We sat around the fire and listened to Rogelio, the ranch owner, tell the history of the ranch in Spanish and how it was passed down through his family. I retired to my tent before the fire gathering was done because I was exhausted from the travels.
Day 2:
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| The Rock Paradise We Hiked To |
The night of sleep I had was out of the ordinary because the night was filled with the competing sounds of animals from birds to barking dogs and cows. We began to help Rogelio and his father with the preparation of the palm leaves for the palapa that we were helping them build. I got the job with Erica of wetting the palm fronds. We basically had to continuously splash water on the palms while they were arranged in a circular pattern that made it easier to grab them when stacking them on the roof. The reason the palms had to be wetted for an hour is because it made the fibers more pliable and thus easier to weave for the roof. We traded out with another pair and rested in one of the many hammocks around the ranch. We snacked on some fresh passion fruit. Next, we prepped the palms to get tied to the roof. I got to use a real antler to stab holes in the frond and then we would use another plant and string it through so you could tie the plant to the wooden beams. While we were poking holes and threading the palms another one of the guys from the ranch was trimming the palm fronds to give to us. As he was trimming the palms, he found a scorpion and swiftly brought his machete down on the tail of the scorpion to chop off the stinger. He then proceeded to pick it up and show us the stingerless scorpion. We got to see the puppies that they had on the ranch and they were really adorable. They were raised by their mother in a den-like space and are frequently used as hunting animals for the ranch hands. It was really cool to see the different uses that dogs had on their ranch. After a morning of work, we decided to take a break and they told us we were going to drive and then hike to this big swimming pool. Yet no description could prepare us for the beauty we were going to encounter at the end of our hike. We climbed over some rocks and a paradise unfolded in front of us. It was a huge swimming hole with rock surrounding the entire thing high up into the sky. The only way into the swimming hole was to jump in off a pretty decent cliff. The only way out was to climb up using a rope. There were waterfalls on the backside that spilled into tiny smaller pools up on the rocks. It was amazing and we wasted the rest of the afternoon swimming and playing there. We then fell soundly asleep after an exhausting day.
Day 3:
We woke up in the morning and returned to our work on the palapa. They were building the palapa so they could have another larger outdoor kitchen for them to cook in and have dinner under especially when big groups like us came. We continued to thread until our hands were dirty and well worked. Next Dr.Stogdill, Tom, Cali, and I got the opportunity to learn how to make delicious salsa from Rogelio's mom. It was a great experience to have a cooking lesson in Spanish and it proved that food can really be a universal language. I wrote down the recipe for the salsa because it was so fresh and tasty that I wanted to remember it.
The recipe is as follows:
Need:
2 cloves of garlic
1 roasted red tomato
8 serrano chile peppers
salt
Recipe:
1. Roast a tomato and the 8 chiles over a fire until softened.
2. Next mash 2 cloves of garlic in a mortar and pestle.
3. Mash in the chile peppers and some salt.
4. Lastly, mash in the tomato.
5. Enjoy! :)
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| Deer Skin Wallet I Crafted |
The rest of the group then ate the salsa with lunch. Some of our other group made some delicious mango jelly that we enjoyed with lunch as well. After lunch was over we had a leather making workshop. We learned from the older gentleman on the ranch about the curing process and effort that goes into just creating the leather before you even craft it into something. It was a lot of work and something fascinating that I learned was that the skin is actually white and we dye it using bark from a tree to become the darker color that we all know and associate with leather. At the ranch, they use all types of skin ranging from cow to deer to goat. We then were given 3 hides, one was deer and the other 2 were goat leather and we were allowed to make whatever we want from it. Some people made belts, luggage tags, and others like me made a wallet. I found it very difficult to work with the deer hide as it was a lot thicker compared to the goat skin which was a lot more pliable. I actually am wearing a bracelet I made of goat skin and I keep it on 24/7. It is extremely durable and is a reminder of my time in Baja. After we had dinner, we had a council circle where we got to share some ideas and experiences that we took away from our time at the ranch since the next day we moved on to a different town. One of the major takeaways I took from this conversation was a goal to cut down on processed foods and try to live more sustainably. It's a lot healthier for your body and the environment and is also a glimpse at how the rest of the world lives who don't have so many expendable resources. It was a really great council circle that really got the gears turning in my head about what we were actually doing and the impact it has. I fell asleep with the ideas mentioned still racing through my head.
Day 4:
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| Erica (left), Kara (right), and I(middle) surfing |
We had to pack up and leave the ranch in the morning and it was very sad. We all felt like we had made such a great connection with our guides and hosts that we just wanted to stay and keep learning new things together. Fortunately, we were leaving the ranch and going straight to the beach to learn how to surf! I couldn't wait to go surfing even though I have never even tried. It had always been on my bucket list of things to do and I was stoked that I could finally do it and in Baja Mexico too! I was skeptical of my skill to get up on the board. We had some local instructors come to us and teach us the basics of surfing. They made it sound so simple and I couldn't wait to hop in the water despite it being quite cold. We were all individually paired up with an instructor and I got up all three times that I tried. It was quite an exhilarating experience and I was just dying to go surfing again afterward. We then went to our new home for the next few days showered up, took a siesta, and got ready to go visit the local orphanage. It was really awkward arriving at the orphanage at first as a majority of the kids were middle school boys and not very talkative. We decided that making conversation would just be forced and uncomfortable so, we decided to play sports. I joined in a fun game of ultimate frisbee. It was action packed and people were very competitive and diving to try and score a goal. Even though some of us didn't speak the same languages, we were still able to communicate just through victorious cheers. As we took a break from our ultimate frisbee game, I sat down to watch the orphanage boys and some of the boys on our trip play soccer together. It was really mesmerizing to watch and the boys were really good. I was grateful to have shared that experience with them and especially thankful for the shower afterward to wash off the dirt and the blood off my knees from our intense frisbee game. I snuggled into bed very well exhausted.
Day 5:
We had a very slow and relaxed start to our morning as we all strolled into breakfast at varied times. Once we were finally all at breakfast, we got to start the medicine workshop that we had planned for the day. This morning was the beginning of me getting sick on the trip and so I was exhausted and low energy. We started off the medicine workshop with taking a walk around the hotel property where our guide pointed out all the different plants and their medicinal uses. After our tour, we were sat down and showed a powerpoint on the history of shamanism and how the seven chakras worked. I was incredibly fascinated by this and contemplated doing my GIP project on this. It was a very interesting background and I love the strong theme of eco vs ego. This basically says that eco is where we as humans consider ourselves as part of the entire system and ego is where we consider ourselves above it which is what leads to the depletion of so many resources. It is essential to view the world as a balance and a cycle. We then got to taste the medicinal tinctures of the seven different tinctures and feel the effect that it had. Each of the different chakra tinctures had incredibly varied tastes and reactions. We then made our own tinctures and were able to take them home. This was pretty much the end of the day for me as I started to feel sicker and stayed back at the hotel instead of going out to dinner.
Day 6:
This day was pretty uneventful as well as I was still in the midst of my sickness. By now a larger chunk of our group was sick and so we had a doctor come to check us out. She prescribed us some medicines and after a morning and afternoon of rest, I started to feel a lot better. I made it so that I could go out to dinner to the Hotel California with the group. While at Hotel California, we requested them to play the Hotel California song and we decided it couldn't get much better than listening to this song at an actual Hotel California. The food was delicious and my sleep was definitely food coma induced.
Day 7:
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| Giving shade to one of the Skimmer Chicks |
We left our hotel today and headed to Rancho La Duna. On our way to the ranch, we stopped at a local beach cleanup to offer our extra hands. It was along the Sea of Cortez but by the time we got there they already cleaned the beach so we all got on 2 boats and jetted off to a small island made from dredging. When we got there we saw tons of birds called Skimmers and Royal/Caspian Turns. Our guides told us these birds were actually nesting on this island and that they didn't know about it. Therefore the birds were very protective of the nest area and were getting worked up by our presence. We cleaned up a ton of netting we found on the island and freed 2 birds from the netting as well. On the island, there were a ton of bird carcasses and even a stingray carcass! We left the island after piling on a ton of the old netting onto the boats and logging our findings on an app. Then we arrived at Rancho La Duna and after we ate lunch we took a short five-minute drive to the beach to snorkel, identify fish, and collect algae samples. Snorkeling was really cool and I was able to identify a lot of different fish especially since I was scuba certified last summer. When we got back we got to try some chips one of the scientists brought that were made of algae and they were actually really good. I couldn't stop eating them especially the spicy ones. Next, we got to learn more about the algae that we had collected. I learned how to really easily identify the different types using a book. Some of the university students that were there with us were searching through the samples they grabbed and found a baby shrimp and a miniature starfish which was really cool to see. We then had a specialist talk to us about sea turtles in the area and it was actually really sad. We learned how people will kill them accidentally in nets and since they don't want to get caught for killing the sea turtles they cut off their heads and flippers so they sink to the bottom of the ocean. They also will capture them to make turtle soup and other leather products which are illegal. It was really interesting to know that this is still happening in current day and shocking to find that there isn't much awareness around this. I know Robyn who was also on my trip is thinking about doing her project on the sea turtles in Baja and I can't wait to hear it! We got to camp out in the soft, sandy dunes while looking up at the stars.
Day 8:
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| The Beautiful Island View |
We left Rancho La Duna and headed towards La Isla Espíritu Santo! The boat ride to the island was amazing. The water was like blue glass and we just cut right through it. As we were approaching the island we saw a pod of spinner dolphins with some sea lions with them. They are called spinner dolphins because when they jump out of the water they spin and then dive back under. We would try and play with the dolphins and speed up really fast and the dolphins would go swim and play in the waves that we created. Once we got to the island, there were trumpet fish and sting rays all right by the shore. I got to paddle board before lunch with Dr.Stogdill, Betsy, Alexa, and our guide. It was amazing because we were in complete isolation and were able to freely explore the bay. The guide suggested that I jump off my board and without any hesitation I dove off into the shimmering water below. When I got back to camp I discovered that some of the members of our trip had collected hermit crabs and were racing them to discover the very best. It was surprisingly really intense and fun. We then popped onto to the boat to go snorkeling to see if we could see any sea turtles. As we were going over to a common sea turtle area, we spotted an osprey nest up in the cliffs. The key to finding a good place to snorkel was to watch the water very closely to see when little heads of the sea turtles would pop up. We weren't having much luck finding any except right when we were about to leave we saw a massive sea turtle. It was actually a Hawksbill which is a critically endangered species. Back at camp, I was exploring and found a dead bird carcass. Little did I know that was the first of many dead things to come. Once we finished setting out tents up right next to the beach, we noticed there was practically a fish graveyard right next to us. There were a lot of pufferfish carcasses and one even died puffed up! There were also target fish carcasses which had really intimidating teeth sticking out of their mouths. Stephanie, our sea turtle expert, notices that there was a sea turtle nest right next to our tent! You could see the trail where she dragged herself in and then you could see the area in which she dug and created the nest. It was a unique thing to witness and I was definitely excited to have it so close to my tent. I slept very tightly knowing that little sea turtle eggs were growing right near me.
Day 9:
We started off this morning in one of the most exciting ways possible. As a group, we took a 45-minute boat drive to the opposite side of the island that we were staying on and found a tiny island that hosted a HUGE sea lion colony. When I say huge, I mean it. There were colossal dominant male sea lions but there were also tiny little newborn pups that were nursing on their mothers. It was incredible to see the age diversity within the colony. It was breathtaking to look at but then we got to hop actually in the water and swim with the sea lions! The water was pretty cold but it was well worth it for the many up close encounters with the sea lions. They were just like little dogs underwater, they would swim really fast at you and then at the last second turn away really quickly. We were warned of a certain behavior that was not considered playful. As silly as it sounds, if a sea lion blows a line of bubbles at you under no circumstances should you blow a line of bubbles back. This is seen as accepting the big males challenge to fight, which you certainly don't want to do as they can weigh upwards of 660 pounds. I opted out of our 2nd snorkeling excursion to stay back and finish reading my book. After I finished my book, I took the paddle board out and just paddle out into the bay and lay down. It felt so nice to just nap in pretty much the middle of nowhere. When the other group got back we had some delicious dinner and retired to our tents for the night.
Day 10:
Unfortunately, we had to depart from our perfect paradise. We spent a majority of the day traveling and finally returned to Todos Santo. While in Todos Santos, we were let loose to go shopping. We got back to our hotel after dinner and slept the night away.
Day 11:
We said a tearful goodbye to our tour guides and left Baja and made it safely back to LAX.
The rest of the group then ate the salsa with lunch. Some of our other group made some delicious mango jelly that we enjoyed with lunch as well. After lunch was over we had a leather making workshop. We learned from the older gentleman on the ranch about the curing process and effort that goes into just creating the leather before you even craft it into something. It was a lot of work and something fascinating that I learned was that the skin is actually white and we dye it using bark from a tree to become the darker color that we all know and associate with leather. At the ranch, they use all types of skin ranging from cow to deer to goat. We then were given 3 hides, one was deer and the other 2 were goat leather and we were allowed to make whatever we want from it. Some people made belts, luggage tags, and others like me made a wallet. I found it very difficult to work with the deer hide as it was a lot thicker compared to the goat skin which was a lot more pliable. I actually am wearing a bracelet I made of goat skin and I keep it on 24/7. It is extremely durable and is a reminder of my time in Baja. After we had dinner, we had a council circle where we got to share some ideas and experiences that we took away from our time at the ranch since the next day we moved on to a different town. One of the major takeaways I took from this conversation was a goal to cut down on processed foods and try to live more sustainably. It's a lot healthier for your body and the environment and is also a glimpse at how the rest of the world lives who don't have so many expendable resources. It was a really great council circle that really got the gears turning in my head about what we were actually doing and the impact it has. I fell asleep with the ideas mentioned still racing through my head.
