We paddled across Guadalupe Bay and bypassed all the rest of the long sandy beach. This was followed by a short but spectacular section of steep cliffs with falcons and ospreys flying over it. I saw one large white bird that had something small, white, and round in it’s claws. I just assumed it was an osprey with a fish even though the “fish” looked like one of the little horned greebes we had seen in the water everywhere on this trip. But then Bob identified the bird as some kind of falcon, and I realized that my first impression was correct, it did have a little bird in its claws!
Past these cliffs was another huge white sand beach. This beach was not long across the waterline, perhaps a kilometer, but at low tide it extended a kilometer or more from shore to the other side of the sand. A huge flat expanse of sand! Penny stopped us here because she wanted to look for shells. She described to us how to find certain kinds of shellfish: Look for a track in the sand and follow it until it ends, then dig down and pull out the animal that made the trail. She demonstrated this and pulled a small green moon snail out of some wet sand. She exclaimed: “It’s like going on an Easter egg hunt!” I went on my own hunt and found another beautiful moon snail. Since someone was still at home inside behind the trap door, I could not bear to take it with me and buried it in the sand again. I did find a few nice sand pesos that were already dead so I took those home as souvenirs. Back in the water we rounded some low hills and stopped at the next beach. This spot had a bunch of little dunes with trails between them. We had planned a short day and were originally going to the next beach, called Ensenada Alcratraz, only a few kilometers away. We decided to stay the night at this lunch spot where we could each have a private place to set up a tent between the little dunes.
