Osprey - 10-2-2011 at 04:50 PM
The Big Baja Separation
I did a little research for the essay post that appeared recently about water in Baja Sur. Now some locals have opened my eyes to things I couldn’t
find in the WWW, only here on the spot.
It is my belief that the Baja peninsula snuck away from the mainland, over the last 4.5 million years, a crazy little millimeter every day. That
concept is hard to get your head around but if that’s the way it happened, it brought everything with it – nothing left behind. So that tracks with my
new theories:
1. If the rain that fell on the then west coast of Mexico (5 million years ago) formed pools of underground water, fossil water, there might be a lot
more of it under our sandals than I spoke of.
2. No magic to imagine there are museum boxes full of bones in Baja that are from the same kinds of prehistoric animals that roamed Mexico.
So, over coffee the other day after a trip to the ancient watercourses along our beach I was surprised to hear from locals that they once held caiman
and rare fresh water turtles. Then I was incensed when I learned our new marina people (this is second hand) poisoned the inshore water all along the
beach just after they bought the property. Their reason was simple and direct: kill all the animals that might be classified as Indigenous Endangered
by SEMARNAT or other regulators who could withhold permits for development.
These locals also confirmed what I had heard before: that natural gas is seeping from the ground, unbidden and naturally between the pueblo of San
Antonio and down through the foothills into the flats of Los Planes to the north.
If there were untold natural resource riches beneath the surface of Mexico’s left coast, we still may have them over here and they have yet to be
tapped.
I’ve been here less than 20 years, not nearly enough to be an authority but if they call me some day as a witness in a legal battle over the stuff I
think I can prove it was never our intention to steal any water/oil/gas/gems/shark teeth from the country we love and honor.