Day 4 – Puertecitos: Resupply Water and Food!

Today I might make it to Puertecitos where I could resupply water and food. The clouds to the west that had given me such a beautiful sunset yesterday brought heavy winds last night.  The tent was rocking and at about 9 PM it started to rain.  It didn’t rain very hard, but I didn’t have the tent rainfly up, so I had to secure everything inside the tent until the rain ceased.

I woke up about five. I could hear the shrimp boats working offshore all night.  This sky was perfectly clear so, as I expected, there was a short but spectacular sunrise. I was packing my kayak and I noticed there was a square sand dollar on the kayak stern deck that I had found on the beach and placed there about three days ago. I was surprised to see it was still there after the many landings and launches through the surf. Out loud (talking to myself, which is my habit) I said, “Where do you think you are going?” Not hearing an answer, I thought it would be good company, so I decided to give it a ride and call it Mr. Sandman, “Sandy” for short.  Let’s see how far south Sandy wants to go in the Sea of Cortez.

I went quite a long way today, about 10-12 miles, all the way down to Puertecitos. As I proceeded south toward Puertecitos, the shoreline for the first six miles or so was sandy beach but that soon changed to outcroppings of lava rock. The lava did not offer any safe places to land without damaging the kayak, so I had to continue on for another six miles or so until I found a beach in a small break in the lava. After resting on the beach, I walked inland a bit and met a fellow living in a trailer. He told me there was a small beach just north of Puertecitos where I could land and pitch a tent. I was happy to hear about the landing spot he described because I was exhausted and hungry from several hours of paddling without rest.

Puertecitos is on a small “T” shaped peninsula with a wide beach to the north and a harbor to the south where the main part of town is located.  I landed on shoreline of the north beach which at low tide was a long way from dry sand. I could see in the distance there was a campground and a row of palapas, made up of a thatched roof of palm fronds. From my landing spot at low tide on the water’s edge it was probably ¼ mile to where the palapas were located. Still tired, I pulled the kayak a little ways up above the waves and left it there while I went to briefly scout the area. Sitting under the palapas, I met a couple from Colorado there on the beach. We talked about where I might find the store in town that I was counting on for water and provisions. They told me where the store was, about ½ mile from the beach.  I couldn’t leave the kayak where it was because the rising tide would wash it away and I didn’t want to pull the kayak on the sand for a quarter mile to higher ground. So, I launched the kayak and went around the first point to a small inlet that led to another beach that was a little steeper.  Here the beach was not too wide, and I pulled the kayak about 50 yards across the sand to a place that I thought would be above the high tide line.  My usual method of pulling the kayak was to wrap the bowline around my waist and pull it like horse pulling a log. Pulling the heavy kayak, I would have to rest every few yards.  I pitched my tent and got settled.  Then I went off through the scattered houses that make up the north end of town to try to find the store.

Climbing over a small hill behind my campsite, I soon came to the beach with the campground and the palapas.  There were three whale skeletons near the palapas.  The story was that these three whales had beached themselves several years ago in this cove.  Their skeletons, one large whale and two smaller ones, have become a local tourist attraction for this beach.  

I was lucky to speak with the couple on the beach where I first landed because they told me how to recognize the store, otherwise I certainly would have missed it.  As they described it, the store has a big sign that says “Auto Parts” on a Pacifica Beer sign.  There is a mini store mentioned in a tour book that is called “AlphaBeta”, which I found just up the street from the Auto Parts store, but the AlphaBeta store was deserted.  The Auto Parts store was small, about the size of a large bedroom, but it seemed to have all the essential groceries, and no auto parts as far as I could tell.  I got some water, dried soup, tortillas, oranges, and bananas.  I spotted some fresh donuts and wolfed two of them down on the spot.

There was also a phone in the store, so I made my first call home. I called my wife, Ann, she had been sick for three days this week and was just getting over it.  Otherwise, everything’s OK at home.

The tide was lowest when I had pulled my kayak up the shore in the afternoon and it would be low again in the morning, making for a long haul both ways.  On the headlands and points on both sides of the beach the rocks were composed of large lava flows. These rocks made the shoreline look more interesting than the continuous sandy beaches and low rocky formations farther north.  There were some lava pillows and other interesting formations. I didn’t see much of Puertecitos, I was mainly interested in the store and the phone.  The northern part of town where I had landed is not much more than scattered houses, with a dirt airfield.  The main beach on the harbor facing south looked like it had a few newer buildings, and maybe a motel.

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Here is an internet description of Puertecitos:

“Puertecitos is the end of the road…in more ways than one! Yes, this is where the blacktop from San Felipe stops and the rough dirt road south to Gonzaga Bay starts as the Baja traveler heads into more remote sections of the Peninsula. However, this is also where conventional thinking stops and almost anything goes. Puertecitos is an interesting place and a bit difficult to describe. “Long on character” would be a good start!

This eclectic collection of mostly North American vacationers and ex-patriots is unlike any other town in Baja. For that matter, it is unlike any other town on the planet Earth. As the town gradually continues to grow north and south of town, the area seems to be taking on some form of normalcy, although the core of the town seems intent on staying “out there”.

Although the bay has been a stopping point on the Sea of Cortez for hundreds of years, Rafael Orozco first permanently settled the area in 1949. His daughter Clara still resides in the village, carrying on her father’s tradition of hosting weary travelers at the hotel and campground on the bay. There are over a hundred homes and mobile homes here, most lying on a low hill which overlook the Sea of Cortez on the east side and the inner bay of Puertecitos on the west side. This bay is gorgeous at high tide and less so at low tide. Despite all of the homes scattered around town only about 20 gringo families live here full time. Others fly or drive in for short periods of time.

Puertecitos shares the same arid climate as San Felipe. An average of only 2 inches of rain falls here per year. And there are times when the area goes years without any rain!”

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I was about one day ahead of schedule, having done about 52 miles in four days to get to my first resupply point at Puertecitos.  That was about 12 or 13 miles a day, pretty much the progress I was hoping to make.  It was important to keep moving whenever the weather was good because I knew that storms common at this time of year might keep me tied down in one place for several days, a dangerous situation with my always limited water supply.

Next: Day 5- The North Wind

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