From EMA

From EMA, Seattle Washington:

I ran into your extremely informative website - after I had taken a kayak trip from Loreto to San Cosme. What a stretch of coastline!

You are so right on with your "Visual Pollution" story. I wish you weren't, but that's the sad truth.

Our guides had the good sense to sort of prepare us for San Cosme. But, ug. There was that highly offensive destruction so obviously going on. On the way out of there then, by taxi, most in our group talked about what a let down it was to finish off a rather great trip with that slap in the face!

What kind of a government could possibly allow such a defacing of an area that should remain a protected wilderness area. Are those people who are doing that "thing" that insensitive? I guess that's a rhetorical question.

Thanks for keeping that Window Rock beach, and the other close-at-hand beaches like they are, and thank you for making your fight. I wish you good luck, my prayers are with you. And, too, I'm passing the word on your website.

Sincerely,

EMA

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Dear EMA:

Your poor guides...having to break the news.

As to the kind of government that would allow such a thing, keep reading my junk. I'm sure you'll catch on.

As to what kind of a person would do such a thing, I guess they'd have to be high on ego gratification and possess a really incredible lust fer $. Not all that rare of a breed. I think they're generally known as developers.

Thanks for passing the word on the fight. After all...the more eyes watching, the better.

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From Judy, Loreto, B.C.S. Mexico:

You probably don't remember me but I'm a kayak guide operating out of both Loreto and Conception Bay. During the past six years I've participated in guiding groups almost too numerous to count down the coastline you have been so vigorously fighting to save.

It really is a tragedy what's happening there at San Cosme. Alejo and Guadalupe can't imagine how this is all affecting their families' livelihood. Some of us guides simply don't want to expose our clients to "that!" We are avoiding the area.

Thank you for fighting your fight. More and more people are reading you.

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Thanks Judy.

There's no question that Alejo and families' combined business are suffering. One kayak group, Tophino, I don't know if you're with them? Is paddling to Window Rock beach (Playa Carrizalito) and then turning around and heading back.

I can't say that I blame them.

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Don David:

Thank you for your interesting stories.

I am a resident of LaPaz with a U.S. education in civil engineering. Through a friend I became exposed to the promotion of Marina San Cosme. Because I'm always looking for ways to invest limited money's that I control, I decided to go and take a look for myself. Not too much of a physical examination of what those pushing this project are proposing to do was necessary for me to decide "not" to risk resources there.

I left the area scratching my head, wondering what kinds of substances those planning such things could be imbibing in?

In my research of S. Baja investment opportunity, I've not run into anything that would suggest anything but an "extremely" thin market for what they are proposing. If they are planning on "El Escalara Nautica" to somehow fill the Sea of Cortez with the sails of the ultra rich Americans, well, they've got a long and fruitless wait in front of them. Mexico simply has not the funds for such a wild idea; and market research most certainly indicates that that is not going to happen.

Briefly, in one of your writings, you brush upon the question of what could be done with all the spoils generated from the dredging of a marina there. As an engineer I considered that while inspecting the area. You can't just level it with a machine. The resulting material would be highly saturated, requiring a long time to dry and then it would be so salty that nothing that I know of could be grown atop it. There would also be a significant challenge in keeping a canal open, given the amount of material a north-wind-drive sea could move down that coastline, I believe it's Playa San Cosme, in a really bad storm. According to people I talked to there in San Cosme, for long periods of time, decades, the sea has sealed off the opening where the tide waters now flow in and out.

I found you to be correct in you assessment of the importance of saving such ecosystems as that tidal estuary. The state and federal government claim to be committed to preserving such places. I am talking to others about this rather regularly now. I don't think a permit will be issued, at least not without a protest.

One of your problems here is that there is only a handful of people here in LaPaz that can read your English. Have you given any thoughts to doing what you're attempting to do in Spanish?

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Whew! A long one.

Let me go backwards through it and see if I can answer some questions:

First, I've been working on the Spanish things. Over the past five years that I've been doing this website, I thought I had affordable translation arranged but the situation always seems, for a whole host of crazy reasons, to keep sorta evaporating in front of me.

Since there's been other's responding from LaPaz and Los Cabos, Mexico too, I'm sure that I'm reaching out to at least some concerned people. Not enough, though. I know that too.

You are right about waves along Playa San Cosme sealing off what is now that living lagoona. For the first ten years we stayed in the San Cosme area it was a salt flat that could be easily walked across but not traversed by vehicles. Believe me I've seen the results of others attempted efforts. It took a really big rain for the arroyo that feeds in there the to flush out the natural beach-line plug, since then it has been open and that ecosystem that exists there now rather quickly evolved. We lived close by it then and I remember how we delighted in life's thrust there.

Another thing that one would have to consider is how much material (silt, sand, rocks, boulders) that arroyo that feeds in there carries in a really rip-roaring flushing! A large area of that insanely proposed Marina could become very shallow very quickly.

No question about the dredged waste problem No good solution exists that I'm aware of; and, too not much question as to the fate of Escalera Nautica. Almost all the information I've gathered regarding it paints it as a dead pigeon.

David

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To Don David.

My name is Pablo, I'm a long time resident of Los Cabo and in fact know the "Investors" you are writing about. In regards to Sr. Mendez, who is the architect or head engineer on that project, not much digging around in both LaPaz and here would be required to keep you in "not quite legitimate" story material to use up many pens and lots of paper. Be careful of that one.

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Well, Pablo. I have to admit that I haven't met or heard of this Mendez character as yet. I will do some scratching and see what I can come up with. Thanks.

David

Email: david@dondavidonbaja.com