Oh how soft, warm, and yummy to wiggle your toes in the caressing sands of Isla Magdalena. The texture cannot be described as sand like, it is blazingly white and amazingly fine, much more like cake flour. Why wear shoes when this is your carpet? We had the opportunity to walk across the island amongst these silky smooth dunes piled and shaped by the prevailing winds.
There was an exceptionally high tide this morning and the tidal water had migrated back behind the beach and filled low lying swales and dips amongst the dunes. Wading birds took advantage of this opportunity to probe the freshly inundated mudflats with their supersensitive beaks. Buried invertebrates were no longer safe; there were hungry birds about, equipped with the proper tools for seeking out a tasty buried morsel.
As we walked we encountered many differing patterns in the sand; zipper tracks made by beetles and grasshoppers, bicycle-like tracks made by scurrying crabs, seven-toed coyote tracks made by these desert canines stepping into their own footprints as they trotted amongst the dunes. Delicate prints of mice and lizards were preserved in fine detail near the larger vegetated hummocks. Splashes of color were offered by ground cherry blooming their flat dinner plate flowers, loco weed with stems of purple, and milkweed with sprays of pink-tinged white blossoms.
The beach on the Pacific side of the island was littered with sand dollars. Gentle rollers of waves broke in parallel lines, some of us chose to body surf and others combed the beach for shells, bones, and other washed up findings. An intact skull of a male sea lion was found high on the beach. The boney protrusion of the sagittal crest gave away that it was from a male sea lion. We plodded and photographed our way down the beach, reveling in the isolation of Isla Magdalena.
For the afternoon we navigated north towards the gray whale breeding lagoons just south of Puerto Adolfo Lopez Mateos. This maze of mangroves and shallow protected waters become a birthing nursery each year for the California gray whales. This is where we hope to explore in the next few days and meet the gray whales up close and personal.
Our day closed with a supersaturated sunset. Intense pinks and impossible orange colors lit up the western skies. What a lovely exclamation mark to end our first day of exploration in Baja California.
Sand Dune Haiku by David Murray, age 11
Sand dunes a plenty
Like a nice comfy carpet
A place to call home
