Moving Slowly

A blossom from the White Shaving Brush tree.  Photos: © Jeffrey Cardenas

A Panamic Cushion starfish

An ancient reef embedded in rock at Las Perlas

I am moving slowly, focused today on the extraordinary detail and variance of nature that make up the land and sea—and people—of Las Perlas.

In every exhibition of natural beauty there is an incongruity that seems to accompany it. Example: The Panamic Cushion starfish is a carnivore with an arsenal of hydraulic tube feet, but its five arms are vulnerable. If one arm is attacked or damaged this sea star has remarkable regenerative powers to re-grow a new one. The White Shaving Brush tree has razor-sharp, inch-long thorns on its trunk and branches but it blossoms into a flower of fragrant and delicate white stamens. The flower bursts open with a popping sound at night but by noon the next day the flower is finished and it drops gently to the sand. Three million years ago colliding tectonic plates pushed up these islands and an ancient reef rose to the surface creating a land bridge between the Americas. The rocks of Las Perlas exhibit both an historic record of this cataclysmic event and a lasting vision of natural art.

This is a reality check of new sights, scents, and sounds. It reminds me that everything is changing and nothing is as simple as it seems.

Flying Fish is anchored near the remote Isla Espiritu Santo. This is a beautiful but foreboding coastline. A 15-foot tide hides jagged rock outcroppings that rise without warning out of great depths to the surface of the Pacific. Many of these rocks are uncharted. And, in areas near the big island of Isla Del Rey where streams drain into the ocean, the water is turbid. Visual navigation is essential here. I move slowly.

Also unsettling along this coastline are the geographic names given to the islands. Entire civilizations of indigenous people were wiped out here by Spanish conquistadors. The charts read Punta Matadero (Slaughterhouse Point), Punta Mala, and Isla Entierra Muerto (Island of the Buried Dead).

Author and cartographer Eric Bauhaus made a brief entry in a guidebook noting the remains of a whaling station lost in the jungle near Isla Espiritu Santo. The station was set up long after the Indians were gone and now it, too, has disappeared under the dense forest and wild tangled mass of vegetation on Isla Del Rey.

I take the dinghy ashore. Fragments of pre-Columbian pottery have been found on this beach. Steam rises from the wall of vegetation that borders the sandy beach. The jungle is impenetrable without a machete. There are plenty of tools aboard Flying Fish but who would have thought to bring a machete? A local mariner, that’s who. Every fisherman aboard the passing cayucos (dugout canoes) carries a machete.

By a small fresh water stream I see a familiar leaf in the wall of vegetation. There is an ancient mango tree growing here. I push my way forward through the tangle and when I reach the tree I see that all undergrowth below the mango tree has been cleared. Excitedly, I see a brick, and then a hand-hewn piece of wood. When I look closer, however, the brick is only a rock, and the wood is not timber–it is simply driftwood etched by the sea and pushed up into the jungle by a storm. I find no remains of a whaling station, or the indigenous people who once lived here. Just as well. I don’t need to see any bones on Isla Entierra Muerto.

Nearby, in the isolated fishing village of Cañas on Isla Del Rey all eyes stare at Flying Fish as I sail into the bay. Men lying in hammocks under the palms trees watch me silently and without welcome as I wade ashore. They offer no response to my greeting in Spanish. I can only imagine their thoughts. “What now? What does this odd looking stranger want with us?”

Then, around the corner of a house a little girl breaks the tension and hands me a stalk of bananas. Another little girl shyly offers me a basket of sour oranges. I realize the most beautiful detail in nature can be the simplicity of a child’s innocent smile.

Track the passage of Flying Fish here: https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Flyingfish