26° 43.926'N, 111° 54.307'W

We departed San Juanico at 0640 May 22 to travel the 56 nm further up the Sea and into the large and beautiful Bahia Concepcion to El Burro Cove. There are quite a few coves, bays, islands and anchorages within Bahia Concepcion, which is about 21 nm long and 4-5 nm wide. Mexcio Hwy 1 runs along the western shore for much of its length and the community of Mulege is located 5 nm above the northern entrance to the bay. Mulege is described as a "date palm oasis" on the banks of the Rio Santa Rosalia. Bahia Concepcion was explored by the Spanish in the 1500's and Mulege was founded by Spanish missionaries in 1705 with the construction of the Mission Santa Rosalia de Mulege. The town has an old appearance and feel with narrow streets and many old, very old buildings still in use including the mission.

We anchored off the beach near "Bertha's Restaurant" in El Burro Cove at 1640. No sooner had we anchored that we were alerted to a whale shark or "ballena tiburon" swimming near our boats. As it turned out this was a small one, a "juvenile" at about 15 feet in length. I got into the dingy with my camera and was able to get a picture of Mike swimming with the big fellow. Very cool! They are harmless, but none the less the mouth on those things when open and coming straight at you is impressive! We were told the adults get to 30-35 feet overall, but we didn't see any that big.

El Burro Cove has a community of beach huts, small T-11 plywood cottages on concrete slabs one row deep just above the high water mark. We met "Geary" a retired American who has lived in one of these cottages for the last 16 years and does an amateur weather report on the HAM radio "Sonrisa" net at 0730 daily. We got a chance to thank him for his reports and Karen presented him with a plate of her home made cookies, for which she got an instant marriage proposal!

That evening we all went ashore to Bertha's where we learned that the restaurant is now owned by Celia, a Mexican lady who lived in Vancouver, B.C. for 20 years and of course speaks excellent English. After a few beers and Mexico tipico dinners and we were playing horse shoes, girls against the guys at the restaurant's pit. I hate to say it, but it was a long, very long game and while the guys were definitely ahead 6:1 the girls cleaned house with two ringers in a row to beat 7:1. We were only playing to 7 since none of us were any good and we knew it would take forever anyway, but it was fun. Several local customers enjoyed watching and especially at the end when C-Monkey got to hold the steak for the last few rounds. One of the families vacationing there turned out to be Italians from Rome. They were Roberto and Daniella with their two daughters and they told us they have been vacationing in this area every year for years. Roberto is a pilot for Air Italia and he lived in California for several years during which time he had the opportunity to fly to various areas of Baja California and fell in love with the Baja and Bahia Concepcion. They are also sailors and keep their boat at the Marina Lido de Ostia, outside Rome and where I had the opportunity to visit for several weeks in 2004 when I was crewing aboard "Rover" a Nordhavn 62 owned by John and Gail Maloney from Denver, but that's another story. It turns out Roberto and Daniella are interested in returning to California at some time and are especially interested in the San Clememte-Oceanside area. We had an interesting conversation and enjoyed meeting them. You just never know who you're going to meet in these places!

The next morning Celia gave us a ride into Mulege and provided an interesting commentary on the community. She set us up with a taxi for the return trip and we were on our own. We had the opportunity to visit the mission, explore the town and had a nice lunch at Las Casitas Hotel and restaurant. After that we did some grocery shopping and caught our taxi back to El Burro Cove. We could have stayed longer, but to make our final destination in the Sea, Santa Rosalia, we needed to get going, our time was running out.