An extremely quick 22 miles due north out of Bahia de Concepcion is an anchorage providing moderate shelter from north winds at Punta Chivato - 27deg.03.920N, 111deg.57.678W. (OK; technically the anchorage is at Punta Santa Inez.) There is a nice-looking hotel overlooking the anchorage that cruisers can visit for a good meal, and the beaches are excellent for collecting seashells and other marine detritus - like this very large bone I found, that a kind Mexican boat skipper told me was from either a grouper or sea bass:
For an example of the kinds of shells that wash up on the beach, go see what Linda collected from here, over at http://www.curare.typepad.com/ and her April 23 post. I'd also like to point out that Linda photgraphed all the shells she collected, and then repatriated almost all of them back to the beach from whence they came. This is a fine example of the boaters' credo to "leave a clean wake" wherever we travel - and it's just generally very hip.
There is good snorkeling off the middle of the 3 points between the anchorage and Punta Chivato proper. We saw dense schools of small "bait fish" on the steep-to northern side of the point - which sort of explained why so many pelicans were hanging around the rocks just above the waterline. On the other side of the point the reef extended much further out and had many sandy spots amongst the rocks; and it was here in the sandy spots that we saw a number of sting rays, schools of longnosed triggerfish, and 2" diameter holes with shells and bits of bone around the entrances, that we all speculated could either be homes for large marine worms, or maybe even eels (though they were so numerous and close together I doubt the eels would tolerate one another).
Onshore views are a different story, though. Punta Chivato is a vacation-home community with nice but mostly-vacant houses lining the shore; there appears to be very little "community character" here. It reminded me of anchoring off of Lopez or Orcas islands in the San Juans and looking up at a hillside covered with empty, oversized houses. So, except for the beachcombing this was a place that made us prefer staying on the water instead of exploring ashore.
Cruising tip: if you go to Punta Chivato, be sure to anchor fairly close-in to shore in about 12'-15', inside an imaginary line that starts at the rocky reef on the hotel's point and parallels the shore - the better to get a nice sand/mud/shell hold on your anchor, instead of snagging the dense kelp forest that covers the 15'-20' depths. We saw some boats' anchors come up off the bottom with what looked to be a couple hundred pounds of kelp on 'em. And that's a lot of algal matter. Heh.
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