Yesterday in the late afternoon, I took a walk through an arroyo near the town of El Pescadero where I live. There were five of us on this field trip. One of the young Mexicans on the trip is doing a project regarding the issue of basura (trash) and how it affects the town and its wildlife.

Many of the locals are using this arroyo as a dump. Without making judgments right now (there are so many reasons for this behavior and that’s not the point for this post), this walk opened my eyes to something I didn’t even expect or know about.

You can actually follow the arroyo under the highway and go all the way to the beach a few kilometers beyond.

Looking at it from the start just beyond the town, you’d never know how incredibly beautiful it is. With a lot of work this could be turned into something extraordinary for the people of the town. 

Here we enter and find our way down into the arroyo.

Both sides of the arroyo have trash cascading down to the bottom.

We just kept going, making our way through the brush and trees toward the highway underpass.

I didn’t take a photo as we went under the highway, but that’s about where the ground water was trickling down the pathway. It was a bit soggy.

And the longer we walked the more we were in awe of the growth.

I was surprised at how lush it became. It was truly beautiful.

This looked like a yellow kiwi fruit.

A tomato plant has found a home here tucked into the native plants that were covered with spittle bugs.

Beautiful torote trees (sometimes called elephant trees) interspersed with other vegetation.

I am told that as you move farther toward the ocean, there are places with more trash and it’s not as lush as this part, but we turned around to head back here. I’ll go back some other time and check it out.

We left just before sunset to go up in the hills to watch the sun go down and to see the lights come on in Pescadero.

That’s when it was my turn to take photos, as my project is about light pollution.

Thanks for stopping by. I’ll share about that soon. You can come back for a visit.

Here’s a preview

Thanks to our friends, Paula and Carlos, who own Explora Baja, we spent 3 days and 2 nights on Magdalena Island, staying in a 4 bedroom home overlooking the bay where we board the boat for a wildlife adventure. Gray whales migrate over 10,000 miles from the Arctic to Magdalena Bay, Mexico, from late December to mid-April to mate, give birth, and nurse their calves in the warm, sheltered lagoons.

Greg and I had a great time with our son, Matthew and his fiancee Michelle, my former student Heather (from 26 years ago) and her husband David, on Magdalena Island for our whale watching trip. Paula gave us lots of information about the whales and the area before we started.

It was a marvelous adventure, even though this time we didn’t get whales come to the boat close enough to touch, they were very close to our boat and we felt the thrill of being with them.

Looking at them in the water on the surface was surreal.

Magdalena Island has very few residents (under a 100) and most of them are fishermen and their families. Some of the fishermen have opted to use their pangas for whale watching. Others still fish. They live simply and seem very happy, which is easy to understand, as they are living so close to a large number of creatures in the wild. There is one church and a couple stores with snacks, plus a restaurant where we had lobster dinner the first night.

The photos above and below were taken at sunrise a few steps from the 4 bedroom house we stayed in.

Michelle, Matt, Heather, David, me, and Greg in front of the house we stayed in.

We took the boat through the mangroves to the sand dunes and the Pacific side of the island. The dunes are so fascinating and the beach is alive with shells and sand dollars.

We stayed on the dunes till the sun was setting over the Pacific Ocean. What fun!

I’ll close with this. Hope you enjoyed the photos. Thanks for stopping by.