Just before leaving La Paz, our friends Doug & Anna on Karuna, told us about Mezteno, one of their favorite places. It is 22 miles from La Paz, on the northwestern part of Isla Espiritu Santu, just south of Caleta Partida. We left La Paz about noon to catch the outflowing tide and hoping for more wind in the afternoon. It worked out as we had some motoring but some good sailing on a very nice trip to Mezteno. It is a small, well protected cove with VERY clear water at 81 degrees. 🙂
After a very calm night we dinghy’d to shore for a hike. It was beautiful, but kinda long and hot. The ‘trail’ was a wash in the bottom of a canyon with occasional cairns to mark the way. Lots of cactus, a few chipmunks and one rattlesnake (silently stalking the chipmunks).
When we got back to the beach, hot and tired, I discovered that I had lost my cell phone on the hike. Yikes! I knew it would be hard to retrace our steps with the trail poorly marked, but we went back up anyway. And we were lucky, finding it on the way back down.
Back to the boat and into the water! Snorkeling was great with fish and rays.
When we had been anchoring I spotted some large dark formations (like 20 by 100 yards) on the bottom in places where the map said it was a sand bottom. We stayed away, not wanting to risk anchoring in rocks which can snag your anchor and cause damage to coral. But today, on closer examination, we saw the dark patches moving. Getting really close we could see it was not rock but hundreds of mobula rays. They like to group together in huge schools. The pic above is only about a dozen but the larger groups had fooled me.
Mezteno is now on our ‘favorite places’ list. Thankyou Doug and Anna for the recommendation!