We weren’t enthralled with San Evaristo, mainly because the beach was kind of skanky with fish carcasses all over the place. Swimming is pretty important these days. It’s hot and the kids are loving the water.

So after a nice quiet night at anchor we pulled it up and motored out with zero wind for a twenty-five miler up the coast to Timbabiche. A big, relatively open roadstead anchorage with an interesting house on shore to go have a look at. That’s really about it.

Along the way today there were a couple of these impossibly remote fishing villages. Dwarfed by the massive mountains rising up behind them. It seems like an impossible existence to me. Something I can’t even fathom. No road. Open boats. Generators for electricity to power what? No cell signals. No food other than what you brought in yourself. Those families are tougher than I could ever be.

We seemed to be the only boat headed north today while the southbound lane looked like a highway at times. Hurricane season officially starts on the fifteenth and I suppose a lot of people are about ready to call an end to this season’s cruising. We won’t be venturing a whole lot further north ourselves this season, but are in no real hurry to head back south just yet either.

After arriving and getting the kids their naps we dinghied ashore and hiked a short ways to the pink house. The story is that in the 1920s a dirt poor pearl diver found a five carat pearl, bought a fleet of boats, built this big house in the middle of the desert and generally lived the good life. A few generations on and the money is gone, the house is almost gone, and all that is left is a smear of a community in one hellaciously hot place. We couldn’t walk on the sand. Not like when you say, “Ouch that’s hot.” More like, “Oh my god my feet are blistering.” Damn beautiful backdrop to this place though. The Sierra Gigantes.

So we took a look at the house, didn’t see any people, visited a horse and a cow, and returned to the beach for a swim. We’d been playing a while already when I took Lowe out into waist deep water for a dunking and some swoops and spins. One second he was laughing, I was laughing, and the next I felt like I was dying.

I stepped on a stingray and he instantly sunk his spine in my ankle. The initial split second of shocking pain was followed closely by horrendous debilitating pain as the barbed spine buried in my flesh was shaken back and forth a few times while he made his escape. I’ve never in my life felt a pain that even enters this pain’s neighborhood. It was almost like an electric shock. I yelled and struggled to get Lowe to the beach while dragging one leg. Once on the sand all I could do was yell and cry out like a wounded animal, all while trying not to scare Ouest. I feel a little sissy-ish saying that, but I tell you if I could have chopped my leg off at the knee in that moment I would have. I’m not even sure how to describe it other than an aching throb so intense my whole body felt ravished. I squeezed and squeezed my calf the same way you squeeze your thumb after hitting it with a hammer. Somehow you expect that to help ease the pain, or at least localize it.

After twenty minutes not moving from the edge of the water we decided we had to get back to the boat. The kids were roasting and I wasn’t improving.

Back onboard the pain was still as intense as those first moments. Ali grabbed an Onboard Medical book that had been left on the boat by the previous owner and breathed a huge sigh of relief when she found stingray in the index. The book showed a drawing of a person stepping on a stingray and the spine being sunk right smack dab where mine had been. We followed the directions, cleaning the three pronged puncture hole and then soaking it in scalding hot water. The pain had still been incredible up to this point, but immediately upon sinking my ankle in the hot water it was gone. If we hadn’t had that book I’m certain we would have tried ice instead of heat and I’d probably still be sitting here screaming out in agony.

That picture of me and Lowe was taken about two seconds before I got stung. And Ouest is laughing because I would follow my agonizing yells with hysterical laughter so that she couldn’t figure out if I was really hurt or if I was just being a goof. It’s hard with kids, on the one hand you want to teach them about things like this so that they can learn how to avoid it (shuffle your feet in shallow water), but on the other hand you don’t want to do something to make them afraid to go in the water.

Anyway, a few hours later now my foot is pretty swollen and my leg feels a little stiff, but the pain is gone completely. After being chased by an eel and now stung by a stingray I’m not sure Ali will ever go in the water again. At least along the beach.

Speaking of Moray Eels, the book also had a section on them. It talked about how they are generally pretty shy but if you stick your hand in their rocky hole they will bite down so hard that the only way to detach them is to decapitate them. That is messed up. That eel of ours was not shy and was nowhere near any hole. He was hunting. These Baja beaches are feeling decidedly unfriendly at the moment.