The pleasure of a pelicans hunt

The plan was to get to Punta Allen (another 30km or so down the coast) in one go. It's only 30km - how bad could it be? We almost disappear into another galaxy down one of the thousand or so potholes, only to dodge it and end up in another death trap of rocks and holes. So by the time that we hit halfway and see a sign for cabañas and cold beer, we don't even have to ask each other if we're stopping.

We enter Xamach Dos and meet Dan Hazard, artist / real estate agent from Seattle and King of his Own Empire down here in sunny Mexico. The beach is silky white sand scattered with a generous amount of shady palms, lazy hammocks dot the property and a shallow reef about 600m out turns the bay into a calm turquoise swimming pool. Five low impact bungalows are scattered around, one of which Dan built from driftwoo0d, washed up bamboo and rope, and conch shells. Dan let us camp on the beach and we had the whole place to ourselves. At night the bushes around us light up with fireflies. The food here is terrific - Francisca is the keeper of over a thousand recipes I'm sure and she treated us to a huge breakfast upon arrival, fresh caught snapper for dinner, home-made chipotle with every meal and the best banana-coconut pancakes in the whole universe.

I don't know if any of you have had the pleasure of watching pelicans hunting fish. I could (and did) lay for hours in a hammock and watch their kamikaze hunting techniques. First they sit in the water for a bit. Lord knows why the fish stick around for that. Then they clumsily take off, the whole time looking like an overloaded D6 airplane threatening to crash. But they make it up in the air, do a half circle and then hurtle themselves beak first and breakneck speed back into the spot they came from. Oh boy, and if there's two of them hunting the same fish? A delightful pastime indeed...