I often tease my students when they refer to San Francisco Bay as a “bay” or to the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers as a “delta” instead of using the proper term of estuary. Not only a fine estuary, but the largest estuary of western North America, so the misnomers are crimes that call for divine justice. Alas, I was guilty of the same sin, because south of Campeche there is an almost unknown town called Ciudad del Cármen, vaguely associated with a Laguna del Cármen. It turns out that the proper term is Laguna de Términos, and is the largest and most complex estuary of the Gulf Coast. It is almost an inner sea, with a coastal lagoon that is 35 by 70 km in extent, bordered on the ocean side by an enormous sand barrier crossed by only a couple of channels, and receiving on its upstream backside the water of no less than five major rivers. As many other estuaries, this one is rich in biodiversity. I decided to devote the day to driving the 150 km south to see this natural marvel, so I woke up at 5:30 am, had a cup of coffee and a mango for breakfast, and was on the road by 6 am, heading for Isla Aguada, at the tip of the barrier island that separates the laguna from the open sea.
I got there around 9 am, eager to find a boat that would take me for a spin out in the laguna. I was bracing myself for having to wait for a family that would agree for me to join them for a share of the fee, but as I drove into a parking area I started a conversation with a friendly local. He told me that I was in the wrong parking lot, and that I should drive to the tourist wharf to hire a boat. I told him of my plight and he said I needed a lancha colectiva but he was just going to go pick up a family and he was ready to take me as a supernumerary for a very reasonable fee. Deal! He had come to this wharf because his boat was on the sand there, and he was waiting for some navy cadets to come give him a hand to push it into the water. Less than 5 minutes later, six strapping young men showed up, and with much laugh and ribaldry effortlessly launched us on the path of adventure. A short ride down the shore brought us to the tourist wharf, where two couples and their three children were squealing with delight at the prospect of taking a boat ride.
Of course we covered but a tiny portion of the laguna, but Don Luis, our Captain, knew his stuff and brought us directly to the inlet channel where a family of dolphins was feeding and playing with each other. It was so exciting to see these clever marine mammals curving their backs out of the water, perfectly happy in the turquoise waters of the lagoon. The kids would have liked to pet them, but we all had to be satisfied with “look but don’t touch”.
Later we visited two small islands where birds like to hang out (literally, it seems, because some old cormorants lose their eyesight, get caught in the branches of dead trees, and often hang themselves trying to get free). Seeing pelicans, frigate birds, and cormorants all sitting silently on the dead branches of a floating tree has a certain spooky air.
The kids loved it when Don Luis stopped the boat in the middle of the lagoon, dropped the anchor, and lightly jumped off the boat to ankle deep water. Of course everybody had to follow him unto a submerged bar formed by small shell fragments, and where excellent specimens of marine snail shells could be found.
Our last stop was in a small island, again formed by accumulated shells, where some vegetation had managed to form a thin carpet over the sand. There we found a rookery of seagulls, where hundreds of hens were sitting on their eggs, while at the same time creating an incredible cacophony of warning calls to fend off the intruders. Fortunately the kids were more interested on swimming, so Don Luis and I sat under an awning to exchange old men stories. He had the best: When he was in his 20’s, he and two of his buddies went fishing in the open sea, when all of a sudden a gale rose and they capsized. Of course they didn’t have life preservers, so they had to swim to float. They floated that day, the night that followed, and the day after, getting weaker and weaker, dehydrated, sun burnt, bleeding from salt sores. They think they saw one large ship, but couldn’t attract its attention, and later had to deal with three sharks that they managed to scare away by clapping the water. By this time Don Luis had prayed his last desperate prayer, and was ready to give up when, as he was sinking into the deep he lost consciousness. He woke up some time later on a boat which in the last moment had spotted them and, so they claimed, had barely managed to rescue them by grabbing them by the hair. I can only tell you that he told me this story with great conviction, and whether true or imaginary, certainly brought him closer to the Lord.
After disembarking and pumping Don Luis’ hand effusively, I drove along the streets of the tiny fishermen’s village of Isla Aguada and had my lunch at a beachside eatery, where I had the best seafood cocktail I have had in a long time, and a big platter of jaibas (blue crabs) fried with garlic. The latter were delicious, but a jaiba is a small and skinny crab, so to get at the meat you have to do microsurgery. At the end you learn to crunch through the legs and the endoskeleton to eat the meat with bits of chitinous shell. It was a labor of love and patience, but when I finished my meal I was a very happy customer.
I can now say with pride that I have been to the largest and
most diverse estuary of the Gulf Coast.
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