Feb. 26, Friday; Day 1
There were to be four of us on the trip: Patrice, Thaqib Bungtroll, Matt E., and myself. We arrived at the San Diego, California, REI as it opened for business on Friday. Because we had rented a Ford Valdez for the trip, our kayak-rental decision was dictated almost solely by the space on its roof: in the end the most kayak we could fit on top of the vehicle was, disappointingly, two single Scramblers and a slightly larger double. Much in the manner of a troop of hooting vervets, we made the kayaks fast to our slouching hulk of a car, and gibbering mildly we were off.

A few hours later found us a few hundred miles further south, in the Mexican state of Baja California. Our little slice of paradise there is known as Los Arbolitos, and I will not reveal its location more plainly here. We camp atop a cliff overlooking a cove formed by two arms of rock reaching out into the Pacific to form a perfect 'C', with a great spire of rock on an island in the center, towering over everything and dividing the cove entrance in two. One entrance is rather narrower than the other, and the seas are consequently at their roughest coming in the narrow opening. At the foot of a cliff is a narrow pebble beach, accessible via a stairway cut into the rock of the cliff wall. The campsite above is surrounded on three sides by steep, high hills. (The fourth side, of course, is the cliff edge.) It is a secluded, paradisical spot, inaccessible except over dangerous, rutted, crumbling mountain roads, unmarked on any map.

Upon arrival we pitched our tents and checked out the sea: in years of visiting the Arbolitos I had never seen the Pacific less aptly named, at least not in the absence of a gale. The big waves relentlessly pounded the rocky beach, with never a break in their cycle.

With a few hours of afternoon sunshine left, we took our kayaks down to the beach to see if a window of opportunity in which to launch would present itself. In light of the anger of the waves, we decided that Patrice would sit in the double with Matt (the double being far stabler than a single-seater Scrambler), and that I would launch first in a single, followed by the double, with Thaqib taking up the rear. Our reasoning was that should Patrice run into trouble, I would already be out there in the cove, in a position to help, with Thaqib ready in case the double capsized close in to shore. We waited tensely for our moment, but it never came. After a quarter of an hour standing in the shadow of the cliffs, a wave unexpectedly broke over our heads instead of at our feet. Shivering, we admitted that the sea had so far been successful in repulsing our invasion. We vowed, however, that we would return.

We built a fire, cooked our evening meal, passed around a bottle or three of red wine and made the spirits of the Baja aware of our presence by pouring them generous libations and regaling them with verse and high comedy. The moon was nearly full, and rose at this latitude well before sundown, giving us ample light for our revels.

Feb. 27, Saturday; Day 2
The Baja gave us a glorious day, but our libations of the previous night had failed to appease the wrath of the Pacific. The sea was distinctly heavier than the day before.

During breakfast, Patrice was the first to spot a whale quite close to shore. Along the Baja California coast gray whales are common, but although they usually travel in pods, this animal was apparently alone. It stayed on the surface for a very long time, blowing frequently. We had never before seen a whale remain so close to shore so long. We theorized that it had been fighting heavy seas, and was suffering from exhaustion.

Obviously, my first impulse was to get out to it and see what sort of contact might be made. I hurried down to the beach and readied a kayak for launch.

Waves come in cycles. A string of breakers will crash in, each more violent than the one preceding it, until a climax is reached, after which crescendo a new cycle will begin with a series of relatively smaller waves. When seas are rough, the preferred time to launch is just after a cycle has ended, and just before the waves of the new cycle develop into something formidable.

One cycle of waves is not just like any other, however. Some cycles begin with waves too high to permit a launch.

And on a rare occasion, a huge wave will come in with such violent fury that one can see clearly and without any doubt was the last of its series: that it, however momentarily, has spent the ocean's strength... and then, just as you to prepare to launch into its receding waters, it will be followed by another, far larger, which breaks over your head and chills you to the bone. Teeth chattering, I made my way back up the stone stairs to await the warmth of the day before making another attempt.

Finally, just before noon, the four of us lined up together on the beach, determined to make our way out. Already almost half our time here was spent, and we had not yet launched our boats. Danger be damned, we were not going to allow a mere ocean, however opinionated or stubborn, to dictate our comings and goings. This day we settled on a modification of the previous day's strategy: I would help Patrice and Matt to launch in the double, then Thaqib and I would follow in the singles. Our new reasoning was that the first boat to launch would enjoy the safest exit from the cove, assuming that the right moment in the wave cycle was chosen.

I think we waited twenty full minutes, during which time there were at least three moments when we said to one another, "Look, we could go now. Yes... yes... yes, we would have made it." But another five or six times what we said was, "Yes... yes... yes, we -- no, even the first boat out would have been caught by that one... and there it is breaking us [hypothetically] on the rocks."

Then came an avalanche of crashing water which soaked us all, and left the whole surface of the cove white with thick foam. I was caught by surprise when Matt yelled, "This is it!" and started to launch. I pushed him and Patrice off, and as they slid out I saw that indeed they had chosen the best opportunity we had seen; not even a small wave had yet built up to meet them.

Thaqib launched on the other side of the first real wave to come in after the double went out. My own kayak lay some yards back from the water line, so I launched two waves after Thaqib -- only to be grounded on a rock a good fifteen feet further out into the cove than I thought was possible. My body temperature dropped slightly as I realized that this meant that the water was pulling itself back in readiness for a really thorough pounding. Finally the fourth wave came in, drenching me utterly and very nearly knocking me off my boat, and I was able to launch again on its receding waters.

From this point, there was no time for evaluating alternative courses of action: I was committed. Just seconds after I relaunched, I was facing a wall of water whose tip was just beginning to curl over. I kept my kayak straight on to it, and passed over it harmlessly. "Thank the gods," I thought, "at least I'm past it now, and in open water." My relief was short-lived. Following hard upon the wave I had just crossed was another, still taller and more imposing. If one keeps a straight kayak, an alert dynamic balance, and steady forward thrust, one can get over even a very tall, nearly vertical wave. I got over the wave. At this point I was still responding fairly calmly to the situation, weighing my chances should the waves decide to get rough with their plaything (me), but not yet feeling the true bite of fear.

It has been said that the wave which follows the second shall be the third. So it was in my case. The third wave, visible immediately as I plunged steeply "downwave" along the sloping back of the second was of course the tallest yet. Had it been half its height I would have been unable to see the other two kayaks past it; I had not seen them since I had begun my own battle with the waves. For all I knew, they had themselves capsized -- I could not take chances, I had to reach the other boats. I paddled hard but steadily, and kept my nose straight as I climbed the third wave. At its peak, I spotted Thaqib two waves ahead of me, perched on his own wave's crest; it appeared I had caught up one of the waves that had initially separated us. He was battling pretty significantly himself, and looked none too happy -- but I bitterly envied him the relative safety of his situation. At the same moment, I realized that there was no way he could know for sure that I had launched after him; given his knowledge of his own situation, and his likely surmise of what lay behind him, it would be reasonable for him to suppose that I had thought better of launching and stayed on shore. Thus, if he made his way to open water and found me not following, it would be reasonable for him not to think of going back for me, at least not until it was relatively safe or he was relatively sure I was in trouble. In a brief instant, awareness of this set of facts passed over me, and then I slid down the back of the wave into the deep crease at the bottom of the trough separating the third and fourth waves.

The fourth wave was the one that started eating away at my bravura. It had an ugly face, and a sneer that was meant for me. It truly towered over my little kayak, the curl at its crest well developed, and it went well out of its way to make sure that I knew that it knew that I had no idea what it concealed behind its bulk: an endless series of taller and taller waves? two capsized kayaks? one definitive tsunami?

I didn't really think I was going to get over that fourth wave. I fully expected it to flip my kayak over lengthwise and have its way with me on the rocks. But from its crest I again saw Thaqib, out among nasty, tricky swells but outside the zone of constant crisis. "Thaqib ..!" I bellowed. He looked back and met my eye, which, irrational as it may be, made me feel safer. At least he knew I was there. I slid into what looked to be the last trough, and Thaqib was briefly separated from my view once again. I was by then just past a line drawn between the tip of the northerly arm of the cove and the island in the middle of the cove entrance. Thaqib came into view again, just as I rose up, not on a swell, but on massive, mountainous interference wave whose source lay behind me.

In a sit-on-top kayak, such as we were using, the type of water most likely to tip you over is interference waves (the kinetic energy of the incoming waves rebounding off the cliffs of shore back into the face of more incoming waves). Standing waves and more chaotic interactions between the incoming and outgoing waves can produce sudden, unpredictable, momentary peaks of energy in particular locations, resulting in unexpected upthrusts of water. If these take place under a kayak, the kayak can without warning be thrown over. Normally a steady forward paddling rhythm will prevent this from happening.

In this case, the interference waves that were being formed were actually much bigger than is truly treacherous to a kayaker; I was riding up and down the sides of the peaks of water, so there was little chance of one forming suddenly under me. Nonetheless, as the obstacles I was facing shifted from oncoming breakers to the less predictable and more capricious interference waves, all the last dregs of courage were drained from me, and, conscious of the taste of fear in my mouth, I finished my hail lamely: "...keep an eye on me!"

But in fact by that moment I was past the dangerous waters, and out in the open. Swells were huge and required a certain alertness to cope with, but we quickly distanced ourselves from the rocks which would make a capsize dangerous, and took stock of our situation. First we headed north, where there are sea caves and the like. Soon we realized that we could not get anywhere near shore, and that the caves were simply not accessible to us. So we headed south, toward an island inhabited by sea lions and pelicans. Approaching the island, we found that the interference waves were especially terrifying near it, and getting away from the island was again trickier than I was comfortable with. My cellular reserves of moxie were thoroughly depleted. "Trepid" was the word for me.

By this time we had been out for perhaps an hour, not one second of which had been fun. We managed to get all the kayaks together for a conference. "Lacking," said I, "as this enterprise has been in the spirit of glad abandon with which it is normally invested, I suggest we make for shore."

"Aye, and sharpish," Thaqib agreed. "Let's head in to the cove just south of ours; it's more sheltered." Matt and Patrice did not demur.

Sheltered is, of course, a relative term. The breakers were nothing like what we had faced on launching, but they were significant. The tricky part was the approach; the water outside the entrance to the cove was not unlike a maelstrom, with heaving seas, deep troughs, and waves crashing over partially submerged rocks. What one wanted to do was wait in that chaotic area until a big series of waves had passed, and then enter when the cove was (relatively) calm. I was the first to reach the cove's "foyer," and I waited in it for my moment. Just as my moment came, Patrice and Matt, approaching from behind me, began calling out. Thinking they were having difficulties, I aborted my entry, and approached them. It turned out that they were under some sort of misapprehension as to whether or not I had been staring into the correct cove. I told them it was the right cove, but that now we would have to wait until the next window of opportunity came to enter. They thought differently, and went in. By the time I realized that they had done so, some distance was separating us. I saw that they had probably been correct: the window appeared still to be persisting.

I made to follow them. I almost rode a huge breaker into the cove after them, as the next big cycle started, but managed to backpaddle off of it.

I was fairly sure, but not completely sure, that they would have gotten in past where that wave would break before it reached them.

Thaqib and I entered the cove on the next opportunity. We landed with classical elegance on small breakers that beached us safely on the rocky beach before politely receding to allow us to disembark. It turned out that Matt and Patrice had experienced a fairly rough landing, resulting in injury to Matt the scars of which he still bears.

We left our kayaks in that cove, and made our shaky, shivering way to our own camp. Later I noted privately that the waves calmed down noticeably, and that indeed, by mid-afternoon, it was quite safe to go out again. However, the mood of the group -- myself very much included -- was not such that going out again was a viable option. We ate our evening meal in town, at the fish taqueria that we love so well, and made it an early night.

Feb. 28, Sunday; Day 3
We awoke with the sun and prepared our breakfast. The cove was calm -- a sea change, as they say, from the morning previous. We went out relieved and joyful, with no hint or whiff of fear. Glad abandon was the watchword of the day.

This time Thaqib and I took out the double, and Patrice and Matt took the singles. This was unfortunate in a way, because it was Matt's first time there and only Patrice's second, and they were still a trifle timid from the day before, and did not take such full advantage of the many opportunities to risk life and limb (in a more controlled and pleasurable fashion than the day before) as did we veterans.

In a single as opposed to double kayak, one is better able to ride a breaking wave into a sea cave, turning aside at the very last moment to avoid impacting its inner wall, riding a great chaotic outflow of water through the side exit. One is also better able to ride the various places where blowholes churn the water and throw up columns of spray at the mouths of caves, or where two rocks channel the waves into a thrilling natural roller coaster, or where the waves flow through a maze of rocks to drop you willy nilly where they please... but Thaqib and I did our best with the materials at our disposal. It is a poor carpenter that blames his tools.

[Click here for images from a previous trip to the same location to give a sense of what the Arbolitos coastline has to offer the enterprising kayaker.]

We saw cormorants and formations of pelicans flying low over the water like pterodactyls. We saw no more whalespout, nor even any dolphins. We did play a sort of rough game of tag with sea lions poking their heads like periscopes through leafy kelp floating on the surface of a cove... this was what we had come for.

In the afternoon we broke camp and headed north. We gorged on lobster and carne asada in Puerto Nuevo, as is our habit. And we returned to San Diego.

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