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Six thousand miles, 11 hours’ flying time and four airline meals later, my companions, Brent and Paul, and I had crossed the Pacific Ocean and had reached our departure point for another kayak journey. Arrival in the Mexican town of Loreto was sweet—but not for long. Having been groped by half a dozen airport security officers on the way to Mexico, it was a final insult to discover on arrival at our hotel that the security process had also relieved me of my camera and sunglasses. Loreto is a very nice town, full of Mexican charm and friendly folk, but alas, it’s not a place where you can purchase a weatherproof 35-mm camera. My missing camera was the one I had always carried in my kayak, and now it was gone.
It
was great to be there, but it would have been better to have my
on-the-water camera too. That vacation feeling of leaving all my
cares at home was eluding me. “Una mas margarita, por favor.” 
A
few hours later, we woke up in paradise. Just over the back wall
of our hotel, across a narrow white strip of sand, the Sea of
Cortez was smooth and the sun hung low over Isla Carmen, the
light softened by the thinnest veil of high cirrus clouds. A
solitary dog sniffed its way along the tide line searching for
morsels, while a crow loudly scoffed at the dog’s chances.
A committee of pelicans stood about on a short rocky breakwater,
as if waiting for the morning papers to be delivered. The palm
trees had no reason to sway, and the smell of fresh coffee lured
us to breakfast.
We examined our newly acquired maps,
seeing for the first time some detail of the route we planned
from Loreto to La Paz—a distance of about 200 miles. The
outdoor dining area was attended to by Juan, a Mexican with a
ready smile and a talent for making margaritas. When we told
Juan what we were planning, he looked at us as if we’d
completely missed the point of visiting Baja. He explained that
it would be much more fun to just hang out at the resort for
a week rather than paddle all the way to La Paz.
John Steinbeck
explored this region in 1940 and chronicled his adventures in
The Log from the Sea of Cortez. His was a trip to collect marine
animals for classification against the backdrop of World War
I and was an escape, in a sense, from a dark world-political
climate into the bright sun of Baja California. Our own excursion
was also something of an escape from the Southern Hemisphere
winter and the complexities and pressures of our professional
lives.
After a day in Loreto, we had gathered
the food and other supplies we needed for our trip and had it
packed in dry bags to load in the morning. That night, Brent
assembled his new cooker, which, with its ability to burn white
gasoline, propane, kerosene, petrol and just about any other
fuel you can name, promised to be a remarkable device. Reading
the instructions, always a good last resort, revealed the fact
that the cooker is supplied with three jets, each for different
fuels. Somehow, Brent had managed to misplace two of the little
jets, leaving us with—you guessed it, the wrong one for
the only fuel we had. Luckily, the cooker still worked, although
its performance was adequate rather than spectacular. At full
throttle, the small blue flame purred rather than roaring reassuringly. |
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