After a nice trip north I settled in for a few days in San Juanico knowing that I had a big project to cross off the list – installing the refrigerator door frame. I enjoyed my first sunrise before spending six hours knocking out the bulk of that project. In the afternoon, to get out of the wind noise and to stretch my legs, I headed to shore for a walk. There I met a nice couple Paul and Yohanna, who have been beach camping along the Baja since December. They were on their final couple of weeks and when I asked about their favorite spot, both said San Juanico, pretty hard to argue there. A stop by the cruisers tree and some time meditating on the sandstone spit in front of the big house before it was time to get back to Strikhedonia.
The next morning my traditional hike to the top of the two western peaks before sunrise got things moving. Other than getting the refrigerator properly reinstalled not much more to report except more wind… Oh and I suppose I should comment on the changes to San Juanico. I have heard rumblings for a few years that the Walmart heir who bought the bay during Covid had conservation plans for the area and the possibility of prohibiting anchoring in the bay. Mind you these are just rumors but man would that fucking suck. I’m all for conservation, but all the times I have visited this bay the cruisers have had very little impact on the bay, so hopefully it is just fear mongering rumors. With that said, there were a lot of noticeable changes from last fall; markers of the high tide line ring the land around the bay, there are a number of tall white/red posts higher up in the surrounding land (development of plots of land?), the installation of a radar tower (recording how many boats are in the bay?), and lines of buoys along two areas in the bay (monitoring sea life?). It is hard to not be scared about what is happening, that said I’m going to remain hopefully that the bay will remain untouched and accessible.
My last day, I took the dinghy out for a rip from the far southern edge of the bay around to the western beach, soaking in all of the spectacular patterns etched into the hillsides. Still needing to stretch my legs, I parked the dinghy and walked the long beach. Not content with a beach walk I followed a trail to the dirt road and followed up to some nice views above the bay, and yet an odd location for a pink flagged stake in the ground. On the way back, I took a cattle trail down into an arroyo, lined with green vegetation but not apparent live water. Getting hot it was time to retreat back to the boat.
Knowing it was my last day, in the early afternoon I took a hike over to the anchorage in the next bay north. The wind was whipping and even with limited fetch the waves were crashing on to the beach. Being low tide, I was able to walk around the rocky wall to the spit of land protecting the bay to confirm that today would not have been a good day to sail north…
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