Sunrise through an apricot fogbank offered a delicate beginning to another beautiful day in Baja California. A long gentle Pacific swell rocked National Geographic Sea Bird as we made our way to the entrance of Bahia Magdalena. Skirting the rugged shoreline of Isla Margarita, a variety of seabirds, a scattering of common dolphins, occasional California sea lions, and a single California gray whale were seen nearby.
Once inside the protective rocky arms of La Entrada, we cruised north along the inside of Isla Magdalena, a sixty-mile-long barrier island that creates the narrow shallow mangrove and sand dune-lined waterway called Hull Canal or Canal de Soledad. Small groups of resident bottlenose dolphins came in to ride our bow wave, scores of shorebirds worked the nearby tidal mudflats, and we spotted western grebes, brown pelicans, and loons in the water, and osprey, elegant terms, and magnificent frigatebirds in the air as we journeyed ever northward.
A mile or so past the picturesque Mexican fishing town of Pto. A. Lopez Mateos, we dropped our anchor near the tip of the island and went ashore to walk the beach and play in the dunes. The stunning sand beach that lead us back out toward the Pacific Ocean breakers is littered with a colorful profusion of shells and populated by crabs and shorebirds, while the dunes are home to coyotes, jackrabbits, and nocturnal desert mice. Mangrove skeletons scattered across the beach left stories of typhoons and added a sculptural dimension, while the presence of magnetite in the sand painted some glittering blue black streaks on the wild scene.
