Lost Angel Walkabout is a Winner

My travel essay collection Lost Angel Walkabout-One Traveler's Tales filled with chills, spills, giggles and squeaks is the winner of 

2012 International Book Award in the Travel Essay category 

For a complete list of winners

Lost Angel Walkabout-One Traveler's Tales

It was also took the Bronze in the North American Travel Journalist Awards  in 2010 

February is Dolphin Love Month – Being Part of the Pod

One of the most exciting incidents in my life took place in the Sea of Cortez. I was kayaking up a deep, narrow channel when a pod of at least 100 dolphins came up behind me and swam all around me. The chuffing air puffing rhythmically from their blow holes as the arced with powerful grace in synchronicity all around me for about fifteen minutes was incredibly exciting. For a few fleeting moments I was a part of the pod. It gave me the real sense of a connection with the natural world. They soon were gone and off to a party I wasn’t invited to, but I will always cherish that incident.

There is a big difference in swimming with captive trained dolphins then an encounter with those in the wild. In captive situations with dolphins that are trained and used to interacting with humans people enjoy a much more intimate contact. At the Kiwalo Basin Marine Lab in Hawaii, Lou Herman has been training and testing dolphins for decades. He has learned that they are great mimics. If you roll over in the water they will. Even if you are not in the water they will take directions by imitating your movements. He has not broken the Rosetta code of their language, of clicks and bleats, but he is definitely communicating with them with hand and verbal signals.

He has found that dolphins are highly adaptable and clever. They will admire themselves in mirrors indicating self-awareness. They can understand numerous hand and voice signals and have cognitive skills that are much more advanced than even the chimp. There are 2,000 different sentences that they understand and will respond too. They also have their own language! Bleeps, whistles, clicks make up a constant conversation they have with one another. Each dolphin has his own identifying whistle, just as we have a name. Their language is not just made of words it is made of touch and they intuit a good deal in their tribal interactions.

Lost Angel Walkabout Now In Kindle Version

Lost Angel Walkabout, the perfect travel companion, is now available on Amazon’s Kindle. This eclectic collection of 28 travel essays is filled with thrills, spills, giggles and squeaks. Adventure travel writer, Linda Ballou, takes you river rafting in Alaska, trekking in New Zealand, kayaking in the Sea of Cortez, sailing around the Napali Coast and horseback riding in the wild west of America. Have fun with Linda, while getting to your own adventures, without tipping your canoe or straining one muscle.


I walk in beauty on the good red road.
Linda Ballou

http://www.lindaballouauthor.com/

Purchase at amazon;

Wai-nani, A new voice from Old Hawaii

The Land Time Almost Forgot - SeaKayaking Adventures - Day Two

By Linda Ballou Special to Baja Magazine

Day 2

The second day, we slid into the opalescent water early in the morning to beat the afternoon winds and were welcomed by a comfortable eighty degrees with a teasing breeze and rocking swells; it was a perfect paddle day. The deep water crossing from Danzante to Carmen Island is a wide stretch of open water that can present a challenge. Fernando, our local guide from La Paz, was paddling in perfect rhythm in the cockpit behind me, so I enjoyed a great sense of security.

The cliffs on the backside of Danzante display red sandblasted arches carved by ferocious Chubasco winds. Fernando pointed to a window in the rocks several stores up that navigators use to get their bearings. There are no beaches or trails on this side of the island, so kayaking is the ideal way to explore. We slipped up close to the cliffs to get a closer look at the sea caves. It was there I spied the nest of an osprey.

On the water, the natural flotsam consists of moss algae, sponges and the occasional jelly fish - the size of a dinner plate. We glided over boulders populated by magenta starfish and spiny purple urchins. Because there is no engine noise in a kayak, the wildlife doesn't scatter upon your approach. It allows you the sensation of being part of this translucent water world while remaining safe from the dangers of the deep.

The Sea of Cortez is the youngest sea on earth, a mere 25 million years old. It is cradled by rugged lava-rock cliffs that are embedded with numerous sea caves. Earthquakes generated from the San Andreas Fault created deep water canyons and separated the peninsula from the mainland. Strong ocean currents continually mix and lift food and nutrients from the deep ocean canyons, making this the perfect feeding ground for all types of marine mammals.

We quickly made the crossing to Punta Baja, where gulls greeted us with what sounded like hysterical laughter. A troop of pelicans flew close to the water in a "V" shaped wedge, webbed feet lowered for a splash landing. A lone, great blue heron held his station on the point, undisturbed by our arrival. The littoral was thick with shells, big corkscrew spikes, small orange cones and bivalves of every description. The shells in the fossil bed at Punta Baja are said to be as old as the sea itself.

Just as quickly as the ball drops on New Year's Eve at Time Square, the sun slid behind the windblown mountains, leaving a chill in the air. While others chose to sleep under the star speckled skies, I unraveled my tent poles and set up house. When I unzipped my bedroom at sunrise I was greeted with the sight of soft, muted mauves and purples draping over the Isla Montserrat. I watched the sun lift its warm face over the shimmering mirrored surface, turning the sky to an opalescent pink. In the distance, dolphins did somersaults.

It was time for breakfast; eggs with cactus, tomatoes and guacamole. We were a tribe now, accustomed to each other's morning face. We were becoming deeply immersed in the peaceful and unhurried rhythms of Baja. At Arroyo Roja, we enjoyed a view of lava cliffs. A row of rock fingerlets, where Sally Light-foot crabs scuttled at my approach, made for fun tide-pooling. Underwater, I spied on Sergeant Majors, parrot fish, stickfish, and Rainbow Wrasse as they flitted in and out of the oatmeal-colored algae. I floated over boulders peppered with starfish and anemones. I felt light years removed from my ever-present thoughts of danger and worries and from the question that eternally plagued me, "what's for dinner?"

Read more here

or check back with us on Thursday, August 12, for the adventure of Day 3

Linda is the author of Wai-nani, The High Chiefess of Hawaii - Her Epic Journey, and Lost Angel Walkabout: One Traveler's Tales. Find both these books at her website, www.lindaballouauthor.com

The Land Time Almost Forgot – Sea Kayaking Adventures - Day One

By Linda Ballou - Special to Baja Life Magazine Spring 2001

I am certain that the sights that surround me are much the same as those experienced by John Steinbeck and his crew of naturalists when he explored the region in 1941. As I recall their early adventures, our head guide Jackie, brings me back to reality as she tells us that we are about to be introduced to muscles we never knew we had. Our group of twelve, all in varying degrees of physical fitness, receives instructions to push, not pull the paddle, so as not to become overtired. We are to use a flat palm, and a loose thumb on the paddle, ore else suffer from tendonitis.
As I donned my life vest, I began to fear that I might have made a terrible mistake. Much like the pelicans I had been watching just moments before, I too was an awkward disaster just waiting to happen. I prayed that like them, I would acquire grace once in action. I remembered the outfitter's literature, promising that by merely practicing a few exercises prior to the trip, any reasonably fit person could enjoy the thrill of gliding over serene waters in a sea kayak. None-the-less, my stomach churned as I contemplated the fact that within moments, nothing but a thin shell of fiberglass would separate me from the deep blue waters of the Sea of Cortez.

Before I could further consider my fears, we were off. At three miles an hour, it would take us an hour to reach our first stop at Danzante Island. I soon found myself enjoying a unique sense of freedom. There I sat, balanced neatly on the bow, watching as swarming shoals of fish darted below and pelicans scooped dinner into their fleshy pouches. I felt like a dolphin riding the crest of the waves - finally fearless! . . . .

By the time we stopped for lunch, I was thrilled at being in this vast ocean wilderness. As we cruised across the waters, the brilliant sun beat down upon us. I was eager to escape the heat and experience the underwater world of marine life. Clad in snorkel gear and fins, I prepared to enter the waters Steinbeck had dubbed, "ferocious with life." Biologically the richest body of water on the planet, the Sea of Cortez supports over 900 species of marine vertebrates and over 2,000 invertebrates. As I slipped into the transparent waters that lure outdoor adventurers from around the globe, all that was visible was the rust color of the cliffs surrounding our beach camp and a few darting electric blue fish. The sea shelf dropped off abruptly to depths where there is no visibility, so I headed back to my group and the lunch that awaited me. Just moments after leaving the water, a fin whale the size of a city bus emerged, arching its great girth. Stunned that I had been just feet away from this behemoth creature that swills krill by the ton, and has a heart the size of a Volkswagen, I realized I needed to be more alert during my explorations!


read more here


Stay tuned for more of Linda's adventures on Day 2 in the The Land That Time Almost Forgot.