Punta Granita to Bahia Kino, October 31st 2004.


In the morning the air was calm again but we were prepared for the bugs. I put on my kayaking gear before I got out of the tent: A spandex dive skin that covers me from neck to wrist and ankles. Dive socks to cover my feet. On top of this I put on my mesh hood to keep insects off my face. The only part of me exposed was the hands, and these were bitten so much that the back of each hand turned into one angry red bump. But I felt in control because I didn’t have to swat annoying clouds of insects away from my face all morning. Unfortunately my spandex dive skin is wearing out and there was a hole in the back of it. So a bunch of mosquitoes bit me in the small of my back. It might be time to buy a new dive skin.

Before the morning became light, before we even got out of our tents, trucks started driving by us on the beach. Dozens of trucks drove by and more after the sun came up. We aren’t sure where they were going because they were heading towards the end of the Punta Granita spit. There’s no place to go there unless it is possible to cross the mouth of the lagoon at low tide. Don Fleming suggested that they were all going to church since it was Sunday morning.

We packed up all our stuf and launched for the last day of paddling. We hugged the shore pretty close and I looked for good places to camp on some future trip out here. Like I noticed on the trip out, the coastline was too developed with houses in some places and dirt roads coming down to the water. While I was looking at one beach and wondering if it would work, an all terrain vehicle came down out of the hills and a guy got off to cast into the water for some fish. Although we could not camp here this section of the coast is interesting to look at with steep red cliffs dropping into the water. We only had 10 miles to go on this day but we started anticipating getting back. At every point someone would predict that this was the last point before Bahia Kino and then we would round it only to see another point or two that we had to paddle around. We finally did go around the last point and landed on the long sandy beach in front of the restaurant. Before we went in for a big lunch, we called Rescue One on the VHF radio and told them that we made it back safely.

After landing we introduced the two Lupithas to each other, the "real" one that ran the office at the Kino Bay RV Park and the doll from Don’t bow that had just completed crossing the Gulfo de California and circumnavigating Isla Tiburon. We told the "real" Lupitha the doll’s story and she was tickled pink! I think we really made her day! She tells us that her name is so common in Mexico that she spells it a unique way, Lupytha. She named her daughter Lupytha and is proud that her daughter was the only person in all of Mexico with that name, until now. She has asked us if we would spell the doll’s name this way as well, so now there are two Lupythas.


All text and images Copyright © 2004 by Mike Higgins / contact