Spin a globe in search of a close-set cluster of islands in the Tropics, and chances are you'll finger a place where a well-outfitted, ocean-going kayak will allow you to live out, at least for a little while, your Robinson Crusoe dreams. But warm-water kayak touring is also one of those rarities that yields addition by subtraction. I set forth and the whole distracting hurly-burly is filtered out—it is an uncomplicated business, without even the sort of attention-hogging challenges paddlers find in other situations, say, a set of boulder-strewn rapids, or a cross-river ferry against a strong flow of 400F water. There is only benign water, wind, and sun, and the steady rhythm of my body deploying one smooth stroke after another, sending my boat sluicing along, straight and fast.

Paddling Baja Palau Paradise Bahamas Kayaking GORP Paddling

Reduced to this rhythm, I am just eyes, ears, waiting for the world around to give me a frank glimpse of some unsuspected wonder. I've seen manatees languidly roll away from my boat's passage. I've watched dinner-plate-sized jellyfish slowly convulse along, just inches from my paddle blade. I've nosed along in shallows just yards from huge heron rookeries-had I approached by land, the spooky birds would likely have erupted into a panicky storm of beating wings and harsh alarums, perhaps abandoning their nests for good. My wet exits can simply mean that I'm atop a pristine reef, ready for a swim among parrotfish and coral. Kayaking the Tropics gives me a chance to feel a little as John Steinbeck described, in his classic Log From the Sea of Cortez:"We slipped into a new frame and grew to be a part of it, related in some subtle way to the reefs and the beaches, related to the little animals, to the stirring waters and the warm, brackish lagoons. This trip . . . was a thing whose boundaries seeped through itself and beyond into some time and space that was more than all the Gulf and more than all our lives. Our fingers turned over the stones, and we saw life that was like our life."

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