I have a feeling that I leave many of my potential readers in a state of groaning inundation with my posts. It was during a goodbye the other day that a young woman said plaintively that she'd try to keep up with my adventures on the blog, but frankly it was more effort than her short attention span would allow. The short texts accompanying Facebook pictures, she said, were the limit of her concentration. I doubt that was really true, but I took the comment to heart. This very paragraph is an example of how I can ramble on. So, that said...



Bahia Santa Maria, if possible, was less civilized even than Tortuga. Any shoreside community that there was consisted of a few fishing shacks on the bluff overlooking the bay. The bluff was separated from the beach by a tidal estuary that the pangas used as a driveway, blasting through when the water was deep enough, often over some two or three foot waves. That was in the northern shoulder of the bay which arced south and east along a tenuous isthmus separating it by only hundreds of yards from huge Bahia Magdalena.

The big event scheduled for this stop was a party up on the bluff complete with imported rock-n-roll band. They'd driven I don't know how many hours over washboard roads to bring their guitars, drums, amps and voices to a captive audience of desolation-bound cruisers. They deserved resounding applause for the effort to get there if not for their extremely mediocre music. Still, there was beer and catered shrimp and fish dinner to hold an audience within earshot.

Mary, Dave and I took to shore a little early to get some exploring in. Mine took me a little way up the hill to a knoll that overlooked the bay and the small collection of shacks. Others climbed higher and farther to get a view of the Pacific, but my meager efforts only yielded a small triangle of blue through a notch in the brown, sparsely vegetated hills.

Going back down, I had some food and snagged a couple of beers, then ventured across the estuary to see how my crew were faring with the surf. Our friends on Friday had found a surfboard floating abandoned off the SoCal coast and Kevin on Andante had bought a long board in Morro Bay, so the opportunity to get some wave time in was there. Amazement of amazements, we'd also found a stack of boards next to the hut they were using for food prep, so Dave and Mary had borrowed a couple of those, too.

I'll let the photo album for Santa Maria speak for itself except to say that, for those who spent the afternoon in the surf, the party on the bluff almost didn't exist. There were the occasional forays back for beer, but that was about it. The rest of the time was spent with Mary and Dave giving instruction to the new comers and surfing a bit themselves.



For us, Bahia Santa Maria was surfing.