The early Spanish explorers of Mexico, who almost always traveled with priests, had a habit of giving religious names to the places they "discovered" -- which was fortuitous with respect to the region of the Mar de Cortés, which has an unearthly, supernatural beauty. It's hard to imagine talking about, even thinking about, the Isla Espíritu Santo, Holy Spirit Island, under some more prosaic name.
It's a severe, haunted, sublime place. When the Spanish first arrived there were about 300 Indians living there -- they must have been hard, solitary folk. Disease or some other European-borne catastrophe left the island unpopulated until a French entrepreneur set up a camp there for pearl fishing around the time of the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. Disease again intervened, wiping out the pearl-oyster beds throughout the Mar de Cortés between 1936 and 1941.
Today there are a few shacks used by local fishermen (with solar panels on their roofs for electricity) and a luxury tent camp for wealthy tourists.
There is something shocking, even frightening about the landscape of Espíritu Santo. It's a place for gods and monsters, not people. I kept thinking that when blind Homer imagined the settings of The Odyssey in his mind's eye, they probably often resembled the Isla Espíritu Santo.
We rented a panga, with a captain, at Pichilingue beach for a cruise to the island.
It was a magical journey -- we flew like the wind across miles of open sea to reach the island, then circumnavigated it slowly, pausing to marvel at many wonders.
The captain took us at speed through rock-bound channels barely wider than his boat, into caves and along the seemingly endless curves of totally empty beaches, running the boat close in to the shore for dramatic effect.
We stopped to snorkel at a small island populated by hundreds of braying sea lions, who swam close to us when we were in the water, eying us ironically. "You don't really think you can pass muster as an aquatic mammal?" they seemed to say.
We stopped to look at what appears to be a mask carved into the rock face of the island. That seemed like an ironic gesture by nature itself, vaguely threatening.
Finally we came ashore at a lovely beach. The captain set up a table under an umbrella and produced lunch -- ham and cheese sandwiches, exceptionally fine fish ceviche and picked marlin. We swam and ate and felt utterly elated.
It was good to go to the island, and good to leave it -- it didn't seem like a place that wanted to be visited for too long by the children of men. All the same it might be interesting to camp out on it for a night -- like spending a night in a haunted house. I imagine one would hear exceedingly strange voices in the wind.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]