The Beach - Playa El Burro

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February 12th 2009

Published: February 13th 2009

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Summitheart

Pelicans at dawn

Finally - “the” Beach - Playa el Burro

We woke up early - and suddenly by a hundred or so birds - pelicans, sea ducks and NOISY seagulls, feeding on little fish in schools along the shore - 20 feet or so from our palapa (that is a palm topped, open sided shelter from the sun).
To be honest, I thought they were attacking the two food bags I had hung up on one of the palapa poles closest to the shore, it was so close.
We totally relaxed into a lay about day. After Dainius took about 500 pictures of pelicans feeding.
During the day we met our great neighbours -local residents who live here for six months of the year. They loaned us two beach chairs, a little table, and a cooler to keep beer in. Life is good.
A fish vendor came by and sold us a whole kilogram of scallops the size of snuff cans. I made half into ceviche for lunch then we ate the rest with pasta, sautéed in butter for dinner, with just a little left over for tomorrow. What did I say a minute ago? Life is good. Yeah, that was it.

More Pelicans

The next day was another lazy beach day - a little less windy. Dainius got up early and with his camera biked up to the lookout on the highway above to beach to get morning light pictures.
Took a quick dip in the morning, after it got hot and was still calm. Too cold to really swim but worked to clean us up and refresh. Dainius took the offer of a quick fresh water rinse in the neighbour’s shower. I opted to try out the technique suggested by a host in San Ignacio. I washed my hair, then after rinsing, I used conditioner in my hair but also all over my body, then rinsed everything off in the salt water.
The idea is the conditioner makes it so the salt washes off. Well, Dainius tells me I still taste salty, but I don’t feel salty at all. A good trick to know when fresh water is scarce.

There is an abandoned trimaran tied up in the bay. Well, someone does own it but hasn’t touched it for over a year and it is floating there just getting barnacled. We took the loan of the neighbour’s kayak to go take

The whole variety of morning birds

a look at it. It has been haunting Dainius and I since we got here - the waste of a sailboat. It is not totally unsalvageable in terms of the cabin, not sure with regards to the hull. In any effect, it would take a good 3-4 months of solid work and probably new… everything to get it seaworthy.
It is a fantasy that is in effect a door to the belief that we will be able to find a sailboat we can afford when we are ready to have it.

Our last day on the beach we laid about, again, and then joined our neighbours for the evening drinking wine and tequila around a campfire made in a washing machine tub buried in the sand.
No rush to leave in the morning. We drove only 30 or so km into Mulege, get a hotel room, clean up and do a little trinket shopping. The trinket shopping got a little out of hand, particularly with the purchase of 3 foot long ceramic lizards - actually one was a frog - resulting in the need to spend more than we spent on the items to send them home by Coreo