Tecolote Beach, Baja

We often say that we are taking the ferry to mainland Mexico out of La Paz.  The ferry actually leaves from a small port town called Pichilingue, rather than the cosmopolitan, captiol city of La Paz.  We stopped at Pichilingue to make sure we could get on the ferry and to check the cost.  Since there are some beautiful beaches past the port that we'd never seen, we decided to explore before leaving the next day.

Tecolote snorkel

We stopped at Balandra Bay to snorkel, and then we headed to Tecolote beach to spend the night.  The next morning, Scott decided to grab the Hawaiian sling and his snorkel gear.  I decided to follow him with my snorkel gear, all the while thinking it was unlikely that we would see anything, as there didn't appear to be any rocks or reefs.  As Scott was giving up on the possibility of seeing any fish, I noticed a medium-sized Scorpion fish hiding next to a random rock on the shallow, sandy bottom.  I yelled to him to get back in the water, all the while feeling guilty that I had sealed the fate of this poor fish.  I love to eat fresh fish, but it makes me sad to witness the death of it.  I've said before that I think all of us should have to witness the death of the things we eat -- it would surely make us more thankful, if not less glutinous.

The killer

Scorpion fish are delicious.  They are easy prey because they lay on the bottom, pretending to be rocks, while waiting to pounce on smaller fish. They do not move when you get close to them. That can be a problem, because people step on them, and their fins have highly toxic barbs (note how he flaunts them in the pic). Anyway, because of their sedentary lifestyle (kind of like veal, but voluntary), their meat is very tender.  We made a large batch of fresh ceviche for the ferry ride later in the day.  It was gone before we ever left the dock. Thank-you Mr. Scorpion fish.

Pictures from November