Cabo Pulmo asks her visitors to take each day as it comes, weather often determinating the days' activities. Proximity to the only living hard coral reef in The Sea of Cortez calls for lots of time in the water.
On a warm windless day, Mermaid Beach beckons even the most inexperienced snorkeler. All who venture there get to experience breathtaking displays of colorful coral fish. The plentiful and common sergeant majors glimmer under a sunlit sea like hovering gold meldalions.
Little electric blue fish living here will soon grow into their more humdrum mature silver selves. The parrot fish come in a variety of brilliant orange or blue hues. Surgeonfish bigger than a human hand drift broadside to the currents, riding the ebb and flow of each wave's underwater repercussions. On an unseen signal from a leader only they recognize, they suddenly turn their pancake-on-edge shaped bodies and disappear in the tiniest spaces between underwater boulders.
When Cabo Pulmo's winds howl from the north, the mermaid still offers her underwater shore,bui just t visiting warm-blooded creatures seldom tolerate the long-lasting chill which sets in after a swim on a windy day. On those days, the mermaid recommends a trip to Los Frailes Beach at the southern end of Cabo Pulmo National Park.
At Los Frailes a large rocky cliff meets the north end of the bay-like beach providing some wind shelter for surfaces both wet and sandy. While the large variety of types of fish found at Mermaid Beach is not matched here, the larger beach accommodates larger schools of fish. It's not an unusual experience at Los Frailes to stop and watch an approaching group of fish, only to find the group seems endless as hundreds of individuals circle the waters.
Rarely are days cool and windy in Cabo Pulmo. When they are, the mermaid points west to the inland desert trails. There visitors can climb mountain ridges and look down to see the sea on both sides of the mountains.
Bright red Northern cardinals, orange or yellow orioles and the noisy cactus wren all make their homes here. Watching the desert's theatre from high above are the vigilantly soaring vultures and occasional Greater Caracaras. Black-tailed jack rabbits scurrying underbrush seem to rival some of the neighboring dogs in size. The hiker can't help but feel like a very temporary visitor to this harsher land.
As the number of windy days increases during our last week down here, this wannabe mermaid begins to look north, hoping winter has only left-overs to serve. Grandchildren grow and change rapidly. Love of family and friends beckon us homeward. Baja has been a lovely adventure and diversion, but now Montana's allure ( and mermaids?) beckon.
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