Goats on Espiritu Santo…?
While hunkered down at Ensenada Candeleros on Isla Espiritu Santo, we went to shore by kayak and explored the trails, hills, rocks surrounding the anchorage. We made friends with Juan de Dios, the leader of an organized small camping group on the beach. While chatting with him, we discovered that goats had been introduced a few hundred years ago by a French businessman who needed to feed his workers on the island. Since then the wild goat population has grown to over a thousand and the goat has even evolved to drinking sea water. In 2016, Mexican environmental authorities decided to eradicate the wild goats from the island to protect the native species of cactus by bringing the goats to the Baja mainland. That initiative was not totally successful as there are still lots of goats left, the funny story here is that Juan de Dios asked us if we wanted a piece of goat, channelling our usual adventurers, we said yes! He then went back to camp to fetch a piece of goat he had killed to feed his group of campers. We thanked him profusely and brought the piece of meat back on Viva. Marie cooked us an amazing Moroccan goat dish. The next day we went back to shore and brought some of the goat dish to Juan de Dios, needless to say, he was super happy. The moral of the story is we love interacting with the locals, exchanging and learning from them.
