I’m not sure how to say this, but we are still in Bahia Magdalena. After my last post I know alert readers will be assuming that this is because of all the beautiful rocks. This time, though, your astute understanding is misplaced. Let me tell you a little story.

Two days ago Michael and I went ashore for an afternoon ramble up the beach and along a trail. We hoped to find an interesting arroyo to explore but the main goal was just getting off the boat and stretching the legs. When we are out exploring we are always on the lookout for signs of death in the desert. It’s not morbid or anything. It’s just that life and death seem a little easy come, easy go here in the desert. We are always finding interesting things that used to be alive. Birds, fish, the occasional sea turtle shell and sea mammals. We approach these things and marvel at the bones and how the desert takes care of any disgusting bits right quick. Everything in the desert feels like it could either be dead at any moment or could kill you. Even the plants take offense to being walked by, some of them actually jumping on you with their many spines. Why we enjoy this is sometimes beyond my comprehension.

Animal skull for your consideration.

As always, I was on my guard for anything that didn’t seem to fit the pattern around it. This is my brain being in a meditative state as I walk along, always on the alert for something interesting. Yes, it’s usually a rock. But not always. My brain began to spin a story on its own, as brains will do when unattended and given little to do. The story went like this: what would happen if we found a dead body out here? To whom would we report that? Would we leave it by itself while we went for help? What would be the Spanish phrases we would use to report such an awful find?  What would the appropriate authority be? How would we contact them? Would they believe us?

To be clear, I was not being morbid and I cannot give you a reason why my mind went to this storyline. I wasn’t worried about anything at all. It just..appeared, as it were..in my head. I scolded myself for allowing such a dark fantasy to unfold but then noted that it really wasn’t anything more than a curiosity, probably caused by all the dead animals we had seen. I put it aside and looked at rocks.

The lovely Crested Caracara. Probably getting ready to kill.  Maybe another day we’ll get a better photo of one. He wasn’t too pleased with us getting closer.

The next day I had to work for a couple of hours. We had planned to leave Mag Bay after my workday was over. It would be one of those dreadful overnights that mean no one will get any rest. I had even made a pot of chili for the passage. But I just wasn’t feeling it. I wasn’t ready to leave, although I could not necessarily put my finger on why. It would be easy to blame my love of beach rocks for this, but that wouldn’t really be true this time. I have enough samples from this area and, as beaches go, the one we were anchored at was not all that intriguing. Some nice porphyries. But other than that, nothing much.  Still, I just didn’t feel ready. Plus the winds were truly howling and while I would rather sail than motor, I knew the seas would be pretty uncomfortable on what would be a dead downwind run. Getting the dinghy and outboard stowed might even be downright dangerous with the amount of wave action happening in the anchorage, which was on the south part of the bay. Apparently Mike wasn’t in that much of a hurry either because he quickly agreed that putting the dinghy up on deck in about 24 knots of wind didn’t sound like good entertainment. So we agreed on one more beach walk and we’d leave the next day. Winds would be fine for sailing, but not quite as boisterous. We went ashore.

Uphill to the desert floor.

We climbed up to the desert floor from the beach and walked around. There was nothing much of interest. So we walked a ways down to the beach level maybe 15 -20 feet below. I noted that the hillside was full of shells, although in this case there were only two varieties: old abalone shells and some sort of clam. I wondered if it might be an old shell midden, especially as the hill was fairly soft sand rather than the rock hard sandstone of the Pacific side of the island. We found a piece of dead sea turtle, then the shell of another one half buried in the sand. Really, I was just meandering with very little direction. The rocks were only mildly interesting at that point.

Deciding to walk further down the beach, I stopped to take a look at something I could see poking out of the sand about two thirds of the way from the beach level to the desert floor. It looked like a piece of turtle shell, and there were other bones around it. I couldn’t tell if they were fossilized, or what kind of animal they came from but because we had just seen turtle remains, that was my thought.

I saw a number of long narrow bones in a bunch sticking up from the sand, like so many drinking straws stored in a tall glass,  and gave one a little tug. Just the slight movement caused a big shifting of the sand holding them upright and they tumbled to the ledge like pick-up sticks. Hmmm, They looked like ribs. Were turtle ribs like that? My eye went to the curved piece of bone on its side in the sand that had caught my eye before. It looked like this was part of the turtle shell. I gave this a little tug. Really, not hard. I just wanted to see if it would move easily. It did. Strangely easily.

The thing suddenly gave way and something rolled off the ledge and onto the beach at my feet. It was truly surprising that such small movements had caused such a big response. It was like the thing threw itself off the ledge. I reached down and turned the thing over.

You’d think that words wouldn’t be adequate to describe the shock that was seeing a human skull staring up at me from the sand. And you’d be right. I gave some sort of strangled squeak and yelled out, “Mike! That’s a human being! That’s a human being!”, taking a big step back.  Mike reached out for my arm, but neither he nor I can say why. He said he couldn’t really see the thing from the angle he was looking at and thought he needed more data, although how “That’s a human being” is not enough data is hard for me to fathom. We were both just shocked. First off I noted what nice teeth it had. Shock will do strange things to the mind.  We both took a few breaths as we stared at the blank eye sockets, trying to make sense of this thing. Not. A turtle. After all.

Not feeling happy about leaving it apart from its brethren up on the ledge, I used the pick end of my rock hammer to gently lift it up and replace it. Not exactly where it rolled from, I later realized. But at least with the rest of the bones. Putting the pointy end of my hammer through the eye socket, I felt nothing. Just this blank necessity to get it back up onto the ledge. I can still see the thing in my mind’s eye hooked on the pointy end of my hammer, I’ll never look at that hammer the same way again. Some moments get frozen in time, and that will be one of them.

Turns out what had rolled off the ledge was only the front part of the skull. Just the face. Which completely confuses me. Don’t things need to be round in order to roll?  I believe the bone I had pulled on was part of the back of the skull, which makes me feel mildly ill. I think about those ribs tumbling apart and how strange that was and STILL I DIDN’T SEE THESE AS POSSIBLY HUMAN BONES BECAUSE WHO WOULD THINK SUCH A THING? When I go back through photos I took,  I think to myself that of course they look human. And they look larger than I remember.  But at the time, it literally never occurred to me that we would find human bones in the desert. I guess from now on it will. But I do feel badly that I may have obscured important evidence through sheer ignorance. Where’s a nice sea turtle skeleton that no one cares about when you need one?

“Oh my god! I have the oddest sense of deja vú”, I said to Mike. Like it was surreal the feeling. We have all had those feelings, like we have been somewhere before when we know we haven’t, or we have had a conversation before when it’s the first time, actually. Scientists explain this in terms of how the brain records those things. But that’s only part of the picture and it’s sad to be so reductionist about human experience. I tried to put my finger on the feeling, Was it a dream I had? No, And certainly I had never found a human skeleton before. But then I recalled my little mind worm of a story the day before and it did send a number of chills down my spine. Mr. Galapagos Man? Was that you? Did you want to be found?

No longer interested in exploring, we returned to the boat to plot our next move. I felt unaccountably sad, troubled even, about leaving the skeleton on the beach now that he had been found. This had been a human being. And, naturally, the bones had been there a long time. But still, I felt oddly as though I were somehow responsible for them; like there was some expectation of protection of them laid upon me by forces beyond my reckoning. I realize it’s silly in the light of day, but that was the feeling anyhow and it’s still there. I was hoping that if we could go show someone where he lay, I would feel finished with this chapter, this episode of the travels. But I’ll have to find another way.

Here’s a different and more cheerful beach with no skeletons.  And some mighty fine rocks.

After contacting our friend Curt Brownlow (retired Coast Guard so he pretty much knows everything about happenings on the sea and also I credit him for the title of this post) we followed his suggestion to call the United States Embassy in Cabo San Lucas. They were so sorry we had experienced this (well, there’s no reason to be sorry. It’s not like we suffered a trauma) and suggested that we go to the Navy Base in Bahia Almejas, just a few miles away. We should report it there and they would know which other authorities to tell.

Linblad Expeditions had one of the National Geographic labeled ships in the area and we tried to contact them via radio. No luck. I thought commercial ships were supposed to have a manned radio but apparently not. This was two strikes for the cruise ships, which we had also tried to hail for a radio check last week. They may have been too far away yesterday, but today we tried to hail another one which was easily within range. Nope. Our hope was that they had some kind of hotline to the Navy base since they operate their cruises in Magdalena Bay all the time, leaving out of Puerto San Carlos. No one would answer the radio on the base, so maybe they had a phone number. BTW, they are leasing the National Geographic moniker, not actually sponsored by National Geographic.

Nothing doing with radio contact, we pulled anchor this morning and left Galapagos Man by himself on the beach, much to my internal distress. I totally wish we had been able to contact someone without leaving the anchorage. That way I would have seen with my own eyes that people had found the bones and would do right by them. But it was not to be. Anchoring in an area marked with an actual anchor on our charts, an area that is listed as an actual known anchorage in both guidebooks (along with comments about friendly Navy personnel who might give permission to go ashore), we called the base on the radio. We called and called and called. Channel 16. Nope. Channel 22. Nope. 11?12?Nope and nope. Try 16 again, double nope.  Honestly, getting people to answer a damn VHS radio in these parts is extremely frustrating.  But we figured since they were military, they already knew we were there and knew who we were.

The two communicators.

We were at least partly right as we watched a launch head in our direction. Waving them to the boat with all the friendly ‘Yes! Please approach us so we may speak to you!’ sign language we could muster , we watched as they circled us completely before pulling alongside. One man spoke fairly decent English, for which I was grateful. He began by saying this was a restricted area but I found myself cutting him off to tell him that we were there to report that we had found an ‘escueleto humano en la play en Isla Magdalena sur!’. (A human skeleton on the beach of the south part of Magdalena Island)  If only I’d had a camera for his expression! “You found a body???”.  No, no, señor, uno escueleto. No body. A skeleton of a human.  He confirmed our meaning a couple of times. Now, I speak muy poquito Español, but I do know how to use Google translate. When I say ‘escueleto’ I mean skeleton.

Out came the radio to communicate this to his commander. (So. Their radio DOES work. In fact, they did hear us calling them on the base. They just chose not to answer. We think they sent the launch because this one seaman speaks English.) After a long back and forth with many questions and an opportunity to show photos of the find and then airdrop them to an iphone for the commander to view, it was decided that they needed to board our boat to inspect it. Well then, welcome aboard, seaman. Come on down.

At this point they wanted our travel papers and we took that opportunity to not be able to find them, even though they are always in the same place: a blue notebook in a certain location. I think the stress was catching up with us as neither of us could think clearly. Mike finally found the damned notebook exactly where it was supposed to be. They photographed everything in the notebook and then photographed the salon of our vessel. Fine. Too bad it was messy but that’s what you get when you drop in unannounced to visit people who have been at anchor for many weeks and only wish to do the right thing by the skeleton on the beach. The fellas felt badly about intruding but honestly, we didn’t care much.

It was a wild hope that they would take us back to the beach with them and allow us to show them where to look. I would have liked to say goodbye to the bones that used to be a person and that somehow chose me to find them. But my hopes were dashed when the young radio man asked if we had GPS coordinates for the location of the skeleton and Mike confirmed that we did. Now, I would absolutely have lied to the guy and said so sorry we don’t have coordinates, alas, to force them to let us go with them and show them ourlselves. But Mike isn’t the liar I am and he cannot lie with a straight face. I blame his mother.  Also Mike is ex-military, so there’s that.  Good lord, my husband, who is supposed to be on my side in these things,  actually showed the seaman on our Navionics chart plotter where he had made some kind of little icon to indicate where we found Galapagos Man. The trouble is that I am also ‘ex-military’ in that I grew up in the military and that’s how I learned the necessity of a good lie. It’s pretty much the only way to survive a military childhood. Regardless, the commander sent a launch to find Mr. Galapagos without the nosy Americans who find dead skeletons on their beach and cause all kinds of trouble and probably paperwork as well. I watched them go, filled with unaccountable sadness and maybe a little rage.

After they left, the port commander’s office radioed us and confirmed all the information about us and our boat, just to be sure. Then they told us we could not anchor there for the night and we would have to leave. I mean, thankfully it was only 2 miles up to Puerto Alcatraz. Against the 18 knots of wind and with those 18 knots against the outgoing current. All I have to say is this: those cruise books are outdated. I cannot even imagine asking to go ashore there, something both books referenced. Things change and so if you are heading down Baja way, do not expect to be warmly welcomed by the Navy in Almejas Bay. Even if you are there to report a dead countryman,

Now we are waiting to know whether anyone will bother to tell us what will happen to Galapagos Man. Is he old? How old? Is he from the indigenous people who lived here eons ago? Or is he more recent?  He doesn’t seem that old, but how do I know? Do we know how he died? Was this an intentional burial? Are there more people buried there? Were those shell middens we saw? We had hoped that when the launch returned from investigating they would stop by our boat and let us know they found him. But they didn’t.

After over an hour of searching, I finally found an email address for the commander at that base. I emailed him and requested information and a contact where we could follow up. Maybe he will get the email and reply, or maybe my email will enter the black hole that exists for my emails when I do things like email Mexican marinas using their own contact forms. They disappear, never to be seen or replied to. Or maybe he’ll ignore me like he did our radio calls. I’m pretty sure it’s the language barrier that gave him pause, and this I understand. I’ll give him a couple of days before going to Plan B.

Plan B is to contact a researcher I found on line, one who works for the Mexican government, if I can find an email address for her. Curt recommended we get a port captain to call the navy base at our next stop, so we can try that if we can communicate with them easily. Always a little luck of the draw, that.

Not human bones. Sea lion clavicles and spine.

We were supposed to leave two days ago. Then this happened and now we have missed our wind window. Tomorrow looks like it will be a motor boat ride. The seas will be extra sloppy with so little wind since it’s blowing like stink tonight. It’s not like we are really in a hurry, but we also feel overdue for leaving. We’ll wait and see what things look like in the morning.  But if we don’t go, maybe we’ll go anchor over by  Galapagos Man again so we can say goodbye, even though it’s actually quite a long way to go. I’m pretty sure he’s still there. Waiting for people to do right by him.

Edited: I have removed a number of photos to help protect the location of these remains.

S/V Galapagos, standing by and ANSWERING THE DAMN RADIO, on channel 16/22