Dates, Goats, and Abarrotes: Making a Living in Bahia Agua Verde (BCS)

We stayed a few nights in the popular and occasionally crowded anchorage at Bahía Agua Verde (Baja California Sur), where there is a small village with a school, a few tiendas (stores), a large goat dairy or huerta, a tiny beach restaurant, and many panga fishermen. The first day, we hiked to a date palm oasis north of town, accompanied by an independent-minded dog that greeted us as we beached our kayaks and joined us on the trail. "Chico Grande," as Sue called him, stayed with us most of the day, until our slow birding and botanizing pace wore him out.

We wouldn't have known about the date palm oasis if we hadn't run into Vincente, the local policía who drove up and introduced himself as we hiked along the road with our binoculars and daypacks. Vincente asked us what we were looking for, and when we said aves (birds), he told us about the oasis. He also explained that he was in charge of seguridad (security) and turismo (tourism) for Agua Verde, including making sure that locals did not pester visitors for money or handouts. He was proud of his town.

The anchorage at Bahia Agua Verde, looking southeast.

Date palms (Phoenix dactylifera) were introduced to Baja by eighteenth-century Jesuit missionaries, who planted them near their missions as a food crop. Since that time, the non-native palms have spread on their own up and down the coast; solitary plants can often be seen on beaches far from settled areas. The palm grove at Agua Verde was extensive and bordered a fresh or more likely brackish lagoon separated from the Gulf waters by a low sandspit. Some of the palm trunks coiled up off the ground like giant serpents; others towered above us as we walked. The lagoon was a magnet for birds, so Curtis spent time photographing scrub-jays, orioles, and others as they nervously approached the water to drink or bathe.

Some date palm trunks were coiled and twisted on the ground like gigantic scaly reptiles.

The date palms (Phoenix dactylifera) at Agua Verde grew as tall as 30 or 40 feet. 

Date palms along the lagoon at Agua Verde.

A Western Scrub-jay gets a drink from the lagoon.

A male Hooded Oriole waits his turn.

Safety in numbers: White-crowned and Clay-colored sparrows line up for a drink.

The following day, we hiked the main arroyo that leads through the town of Agua Verde and up toward the mountains, passing more than a few herds of goats attended by their goatherders. The wide gravel wash featured many white-barked palo blanco trees (Lysiloma candidum) and one gorgeous Palmer Mesquite (Prosopis palmeri), an endemic tree species with bright yellow flowers and serious thorns. Woolly desert-lavender (Hyptis laniflora), another Baja endemic, waved its white pompoms in the breeze. Curtis tried his best to photograph the Baja endemic Xantus’s Hummingbird, but we had to settle for mere excellent looks. Sue collected plant specimens, but apart from trees and shrubs, the "pickings" along the wash were rather slim due to hungry goats! When we were a couple of miles out of town and started hiking uphill, the understory plants finally began to appear.

Green hillside with palo blanco trees (Lysiloma candidum).

Bright yellow catkins (clusters of tiny flowers) on the endemic Palmer Mesquite (Prosopis palmeri).

Woolly desert lavender (Hyptis laniflora) with small purple flowers in large "pompoms."

Senita or "old man" cactus (Lophocereus schottii), named for the gray beards on its stems.

Chuparrosa (Justicia californica) growing up through a clump of senita cactus.

The endemic Gray Thrasher was a common songster in the beach scrub.

After our hike, we stopped at a tienda near the beach to resupply before kayaking back to the boat. The tienda was a square concrete block building with two doors, shelves on every wall plus freestanding ones in the center, and a small cooler or freezer powered by a car battery and an inverter. The tiny building held an amazing variety of abarrotes (groceries), including fresh produce, flats of eggs, boxed milk, cereal, Craisins (!), chips, flour, rice, beans, canned salsa, canned vegetables, hard candies, motor oil, laundry detergent, baggies of dog kibble, and sunscreen. A young girl came in looking for palomitas (popcorn), and the storekeeper asked if she wanted it popped (cocida) or uncooked. Outside under a shadecloth were large refrigerated cases holding bags of lettuce, cucumbers, cabbage, carrots, calabacitas (squash), salchichas (hotdogs), chicken, and ground beef. From Agua Verde to Mex Highway 1 is 25 miles of rough dirt road, followed by another 50+ highway miles to Ciudad Constitución where Sue was told the vegetables came from. Talk about entrepreneurial commitment!

We bought delicious avocados, firm Roma tomatoes, garlic, tiny sweet bananas, fresh flour tortillas, iceberg lettuce for the crunch, excellent cucumbers, a can of Clavel (evaporated milk) to try in our coffee, and a thick slice of fresh goat cheese from the local huerta. We wanted eggs, too, but had forgotten to bring our plastic egg containers with us, and paddling back to the boat with 12 to 24 loose eggs in a sack sounded like a recipe for, at the very least, disappointment. As it was, we were relieved that our tienda goodies, shoes, backpacks, cameras, binoculars, and Sue’s plant press all made it safely back to Cilantro, stuffed into various recesses of the narrow kayaks. At some point, we’ll have to inflate our dinghy to do some proper provisioning, but that day hasn’t yet arrived.

Goats and goat dairies are apparently a big part of the Baja way of life. Goat cheese is popular with visiting cruisers and beach campers, and goats themselves are often the main course at fiestas. They are well suited to the rugged landscape and talus slopes of the Sierra La Giganta, the rugged mountain range that defines this section of the Baja Gulf Coast. We have seen the occasional cow or cow pie on this trip, but there appears to be very little grass for them to eat, and nimble caprines (from the Latin capra or caper, "goat") far outnumber the lumbering bovines. 

A herd of well-fed goats returns to Agua Verde from the nearby mountains.

Although the goats had munched heavily on the landscape around the bay and town, it was hard to lay blame on their herders for trying to make a living. We all participate in many different local economies—where we live, where we work, where we travel, where the items that we purchase come from—and there are few perfect choices. How do you tell a small-town goat tender that his charges are eating too many native plants? And we admit we enjoyed our goat cheese for many days after leaving Bahia Agua Verde.

Sunrise from the anchorage at Bahia Agua Verde.

Next post: A tidepool picture show.