The name was deceiving, Bahia de Los Muertos (the Bay of the Deads) was not spooky or gloomy at all. Quite the opposite, it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable and beautiful places of our trip - Yalçın's favorite so far.
Let me try to take you with us.
If this wasn't a written blogpost, I would ask you to close your eyes and imagine a white sandy beach. On the left end of it, green mountains and a hotel. On the other end, a little café and restaurant place. No walls and a thatched roof, a few tables spread apart with the view on the Bay: paradise! Cacti by the entrance, giving a real Mexican feeling. A road ends there, on a parking lot by the café but also by the boat ramp where people launch the usual pangas, white skiffs used everywhere for fishing. This road dives into a landscape of desert, mountains and cacti, with a cloud of sandust if a car happens to pass. Vultures are circling above the road, the movie scene is set.
From the water, we see the beach and the sand dune that start from there - we hiked to the top, curious to see what was behind, and it looked like more mountain and more desert. The water itself was transparent and that's the first time we could snorkel and follow our anchor chain to see the hook buried in the sand, quite a milestone! Past the café, at the point, a rocky bottom with coral was our first snorkeling place. We could take a glimpse at the underwater life, a delight and another milestone.
But transparent waters and 'cruisy' anchorages also meant doing cruiser's chores in between enjoying-the-surroundings sessions. One of them is to clean the bottom of the boat where algae and sealife stubbornly grow. Quite a workout, especially after that much time (the bottom was last cleaned in Berkeley!), but the transparent water definitely made it easier - Yalçın had done it once in the Berkeley marina for his former boat Avocet and that was another story.
In the end, we spent two nice days in Los Muertos, each with a trip to the 1535 Café, one swimming to land and the other kayaking to the beach, one snorkeling in the coral, the other snorkeling under our own hull... We then took advantage of a calm wind weather window to take off for La Paz, hoping this is only the beginning of the gorgeous cruising this area is known for and considering to, maybe, come back, before crossing to the mainland.
Here are the pictures - you can reopen your eyes :p
