What a Wild Life!

The most amazing thing happened yesterday: We had breakfast sitting on the beach. It's was a totally calm day, with not a breeze or a wave in sight. I walked down to the water's edge with Humphrey and looked out to sea and all of a sudden a dolphin breached. He couldn't have been more than 20 feet out, in thigh deep water. And then another dolphin breached right next to the first, and bait fish started jumping out of the glassy water. I walked along the shore and watched as the two dolphins swam, sliding up out of the water every couple feet, all the way south along the beach and around the corner.

Today we went fishing with our neighbor and caught a bunch of big sierras (a kind of mackerel.) On our way back to the beach, we were followed by a sea lion who wanted to see if he could beg a few of our catch. We saw osprey hunting and manta rays jumping out of the water.

For lunch we had a ceviche of very fresh sierra plus a few giant diver scallops (almost as big as my palm) from some of the local guys. As we sat on the beach afterwards, enjoying a siesta break, we watched pelicans hunting, stitching the water in synchronized patterns, and herons wading around in the shallows looking for their own lunch.

Sorry about the silly title of this post, but it's been an amazing 24 hours down here, although according to our "neighbors", it's all perfectly normal. And about that stingray experience that so many of you have expressed concern about: It turns out that what we stepped on were probably skates or flounders or something like that. The local fishermen laughed at our stingray fears. And we went snorkeling on this beach yesterday and didn't see a single ray, so I think we're safe. I even went out windsurfing (and fell a lot!) without fear.