Of stones, birds, and reptiles

After returning from Copper Canyon and celebrating Valencio’s 15th birthday, we prepared to leave Mazatlan for points South.  First stop was Isla Piedra (Stone Island) just past the port harbor.  This is a sweet anchorage with lots of palapa restaurants, a cruiser-friendly pizza place called Benji’s (named after the young owner’s dog), and good protection from wind and waves.  We visited with a few more cruisers on the hook, Jan got sick on his birthday, and Patti made him feel better with a foot massage and great food: huevos and tortillas (and homemade salsa) for breakfast, a palapa lunch including “cocos” (young coconut with milk, which the sweet gay waiter scooped out for us so we could enjoy the flesh), and then shrimp scampi and a pecan pie for dinner.
After another restful day we left for Isla Isabel on Monday afternoon so as to arrive on January 11 (2011), our 11th adoption anniversary! This was another overnight, this time J and V teamed up while P and T had the other 3-hr watch. 
An uneventful passage with a sweet sunrise, though nobody had enough sleep.  Isla Isabel is infamous for its rocky bottom which “has probably claimed more anchors than any other  anchorage in Mexico”.  So we attached a rope and then a fender float to the crown of the anchor in case we needed to pull it out from a stuck place.  Took a while to get it to set (in the lee of this great rock), but after that we were fine, and at the end it came up like a piece of cake from a greased pan.
We tried coming ashore close to Neener, but were shooed away by some very personable graduate student researchers, who  who were studying the boobie population.  They did let us take a couple of pics before we headed off to the fishing camp on the south end of the island.
Isabel is called the Galapagos of Mexico, for its huge populations of birds and reptiles, and the scientists who study them.  There are blue, red, green, and brown-footed boobies; tons of frigates; and also brown noddies, Herman gulls, sooty terns, white tailed tropic birds and of course pelicans.
The frigates dominate, both by numbers and aggressiveness – since they cannot land on the water, they survive by stealing other birds’ catches, and  they seem to pick on the boobies the most, often tag-teaming five on one.   The males have these gorgeous red bags on their chests, which they inflate to impress the ladies.  And they both display and nest in the trees, which can be very amusing to humans when one of them is pushed off and flaps around in the branches trying to get free.
Then there are all those iguanas – some of them stood still for this shot, others just wandered around or sunned themselves.  Come to think of it, we never did see one of them eat anything…
Besides their colorful webbed feet, the boobies are distinguished by the size of their young – basically as big as the adults before they fledge.  How the parents manage to feed their young so much while being attacked by frigates is a marvel of nature.  Another marvel is that both frigates and boobies were virtually fearless around humans – we walked within two feet of both of them without so much as a wing flap.  Those scientists have it easy…
After lunch with the iguanas we all trekked off to the central crater lake (sounds better than pond), and Jan led Patti on a long hike which was supposed to lead back to the original “boobie beach”.  But that trail had been closed without warning, so instead they ended up on a convoluted death march to the North end of the volcanic island (see above), and just  after starting back Patti sprained her ankle on a hidden hazard, an ankle that is still swollen three weeks later.  Jan lost a lot of points for that one, though they did have an amazing jungle experience with birds calling all around them from the low canopy, and saw many terns and gulls at the top of the island.
Next day we left for San Blas, and ended up towing a panga for a few hours when their engine started making nasty noises. While Jan was trying out various rope and knot combinations (long and stretchy is good in a following sea), a humpback surfaced less than 50 feet away.  Alas, we were all too busy to get the camera, so you’ll just have to imagine this one.  We tried calling for assistance occasionally with the VHF, but the only panga who responded came within a hundred yards and then sped off, which seemed strange since the driver of the disabled vessel said it was his brother.  Brother returned two hours later, so with the wind coming up we could sail the rest of the way and still make the harbor entrance before dark.