Ok, well maybe a lot of tequila! We are off on a
camping/wildlife adventure with wonderful guides provided by Mar y Adventuras. We
camped on beautiful white sandy beaches on two different island in Baja
California, Mexico.
Our guides took very good care of us, offering lots
of tequila, fresh fruit, and fresh caught fish. Happy hour awaited us every
day when we returned from a day of bird watching, whale watching, hiking and
kayaking.
I added at least 15 new birds to my life list. I started this list as a young teenager in Alabama so you can imagine how exciting this is for me. I
finally see blue-footed boobies!
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| Zoom in to see the blue feet! |
I see two birds that are endemic to
Baja California, the Belding's
Yellowthroat and the Gray Thrasher.
The drive to Magdalena Bay, for gray whale
watching, is a four-hour van ride through a land of cactus, lizards and turkey
vultures, bare and hot. We stopped at a tiny cafe for fresh empanadas and quesadillas,
which were served from a rancher's kitchen.
There is no menu and we satiate
our appetites by ordering from the kitchen window. The rancher's wife
quickly warms up our food on a wood burning stove. Delicious! We all order seconds. I wander outside to
find meat hanging to dry like freshly washed laundry. Surprising, there
is a flock of brightly colored yellow birds.
I take photos and identify
them as Lesser Goldfinches. Off in the
distance at the tip of a cactus I take a picture of another, not so colorful
bird and find out that this is a Gray Thrasher found only in this region.
All this is wonderful inspiration for painting in my Arches watercolor
journal that I brought on this adventure.
I had to pack my traveling light kit, as I knew there would be limited
space. Here are some photos of how I
prepared my small Winsor Newton palettes.
I filled one with my warm colors and another with my cool colors.
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