We left Ensenada Grande early June 15 for a short trip to Embudo, also on Isla Partida. We anchored and dinghy’d over to Isla Islote to see the sea lion rookery where we’d been told we could swim with the sea lions.
When we arrived we had a visit from the park rangers who very nicely explained that June through August was pupping season and people are not allowed to get within 40 meters of the island. We did a couple loops around the island.
The island was a jagged rock formation with caves, tunnels, sharp peaks and flat rocks for the sea lions to haul out on.
Several places there were large groups of sea lions in the water with one or more fins up in the sun. Not sure why they do that – maybe to warm up? Hauling out on the rocks would work better, but maybe this is good enough sometimes?
Then back to Embudo where we pulled anchor and headed to Isla San Francisco. Winds were good so we sailed most of the way and dropped anchor around 4pm in a large bay with a sand bottom for good anchoring. We stayed 3 nights and saw many boats come and go. At one time I counted over 25 boat and many of them had tenders/dingys and some had jet skis as well. It was a busy place with maybe 50 water craft out at some times.
One day we looked down through the clear water and saw that we were nearly directly above our anchor. And that there was a turtle rubbing against our anchor.
We watched and he would hang out there for several minutes, come up for air and go right back down.
As we watched, another joined and they kept at this for at least 20 minutes. Maybe they use the anchor to rub parasites off?
The clear water was also great for snorkeling.
I am not a fan of the Crown of Thorns seastar because it feeds on coral and can do a lot of damage.
The Reef Cornetfish gets up to 5 ft long. This one did something I had not seen before. It changed from the normal a dull grey to a set of grey and brown bands and back!
We also took a nice hike up a steep hill and along a narrow ridge. When we got to the top, we realized that we had done that same hike two years earlier when we were with Pat and Steve on Ahelani.
