Christianity is under attack, but The Bible Series proves its great popularity persists

Diogo Morgado,Roma Downey &  Mark Burnett  

Roma Downey and her husband Mark Burnett are setting records with their extraordinary Bible mini series. The series takes stories from the bible, beginning with the book of Genesis and it will end in the book of Revelation finale Easter Sunday.

The series outperforms all other television shows on Sunday nights, reaching close to 80 million viewers with its first three installments alone.  As interest grows worldwide, it is expected the audience will expand exponentially.

"Roma and I continue to be grateful for the overwhelming global enthusiasm for The Bible series,” says executive producer Mark Burnett.  Ireland native,  Roma Downey says "The audience reaction says so much about what people are looking for these days, we are just thrilled that we were able to bring these stories to life."

In April, the series will be released on Blu-ray and DVD which should sweep the world…It will be an extraordinary commercial success…But even more extraordinary, are the resounding testimonies for Christianity, whose religious institutions and faith have been under fire around the world.

For the past several years, anti Christianity has intensified as the Arab Spring was ushered into the Middle East and North Africa, ancient homelands to Christians.  Alarming stories of  murder and arson fill the newswires as Christians are being persecuted and driven out of their home country. If they choose to stay....live as second class citizens.

See related stories:

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 Holy Smoke! The New World finally gets its Pope

Heads roll as the religion of turn the other cheek, meets the religion of peace

The left has no respect for traditional values

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It has also been fashionable to attack and ridicule Christianity in the entertainment industry under the guise of being cutting edge, as comedians and entertainers mock Christianity.  Although it is painfully obvious these same artists lack the courage to browbeat Islam, a religion that will actually fire back at them.

Higher education got caught with its pants down last week, when a college professor at Florida Atlantic University, assigned his students to write the name of Jesus on a piece of paper, then put it on the ground and stomp on it. See Fox News story.

Institutions of Christianity have gone astray over the millennium and that invites the criticism. Man lead institutions can always go astray into evil and mischief and Christianity has suffered many a black eye for those sins in the past.

But Jesus Christ is easily the most important figure that has ever appeared in the history of mankind. However he is regarded, his teachings have influenced the course of human history more than any other human who has ever lived. From his Beatitudes, to his Sermon on the Mount, his teachings have left mankind a blueprint to live by, unparalleled by any other and that’s what is resonating with the public as the Bible Series comes to a conclusion this Easter.

CBS and the show "Amazing Race," assaults America with communist propaganda

Update 3/24-Amazing Race issued an apology for the insensitive Vietnam segment, which this piece was written about.

Last Sunday the prime time and popular CBS reality show “Amazing Race” found it’s contestants in Vietnam, racing through the streets of Hanoi in the shows  hybridized, scavenger hunt, searching for landmarks and clues.

To many of the viewers, this was an opportunity to see an everyday slice of life of a country that used to be our enemy. It was a time to recognize a new era and a time to mend old wounds from a violent time in both countries history.

But instead of a friendly view into a culture and country that is trying to mend ways with America and establish trade relations, it was an opportunity to assault America with communist propaganda….Pure and simple, it was a thumb in the eye to America, aided and abetted by one of the U.S. main stream media channels, CBS.

US Aircraft wreckage

Insulting to Americans was the enshrined twisted wreckage of an American plane that resulted in the death Americans.  This wreckage played a prominent part of the show as each set of contestants had to find a waypoint at the corner of “B-52 Street.”

But to add insult to injury, contestants had to learn a song performed for them by children in front of a portrait of North Vietnam communist leader Ho Chi Minh.  Lyrics included: “Vietnam Communist Party is glorious. The light is guiding us to victory.”

This script for this show came straight out of a communist propaganda film, the only thing missing was Jane Fond manning an anti aircraft gun.

Outrage is mounting among Americans and veterans of the Vietnam war over the insensitivity of this show.  There are growing calls of a boycott and demands for  an apology from CBS as well as the producers.

Even liberals are outraged

It’s hard to believe the shows producers couldn’t see they were being used by the Vietnamese to insult America…Even harder to believe CBS didn’t realize what a slap in the face this would be for Americans who lost family members and loved ones during this war.

But what about the contestants on the show? Didn’t it even dawn on them that they were useful idiots in a choreographed propaganda piece used to hurt their country? Why didn’t one of them stand up and refuse to be a part of it?

A shame on CBS, Amazing Race, it’s producers and contestants.

Sean Hannity says Yasir Arafat is the father of modern terror, but Arafat learned from Ireland’s Michael Collins.

President Obama's trip to the Middle East saw him making speeches and conferring with Israeli, as well as Palestinian leaders.

While Obama was in Ramallah with Palestinian President Abbas, they held a joint press conference.  Unfortunately for President Obama, the optics didn’t look good as he addressed the assembled journalists under a Yasir Arafat banner.

Arafat probably one of the worlds most renowned terrorists before Osama Bin laden came on the scene, is responsible for thousands of deaths to innocent civilians. For a President of the United States to be caught under a poster of this man, is an extremely bad gaffe. The photos will be used as propaganda by many groups around the world to recruit terrorists.

According to the group known as the “Committee for Accuracy in Mideast Reporting in America,” Arafat is the father of modern day terrorism.  Perhaps that is why Sean Hannity echoed that opinion today on his radio show, as he railed against the President getting caught under the Arafat poster. See list of Arafats terror strikes here.

But modern day terror tactics were not an invention of Yasir Arafat, they were in fact invented by Ireland's military leader and brilliant tactician, Michael Collins. Many consider him to be the father of modern day terror tactics as well as the father of the Irish Republic.

In 1916 Collins invented those tactics as he sat in a Welsh prison…put their by the British. Those tactics as employed by his Irish Republican Army, forced the British to the bargaining table after centuries of effort by Ireland’s citizens failed to do it.

According to terrorism expert James Biesterfield in a very informative article published in IrishCentral, September, 2011:

From a purely analytic viewpoint, Michael Collins was absolutely critical in the advancement of modern terrorist & insurgency organizations. In following the timeline through the 20th Century terrorist groups, it appears that virtually ALL groups have and are following, the IRA Model.

The PLO and Yasser Arafat used and improved upon this model in the 1960’s/ 70’s. This led to a vast number of terrorist fighters from all over the world attending training at PLO camps located in Libya during this period. Following this, we began to see cooperative efforts on the part of terrorist groups (i.e. Lod Airport, Rome Airport, Mogadishu, etc).

For good or bad, credit should be given where due.  One mans freedom fighter can be another mans terrorist.

America is under the tyranny of corrupt big city political machines

Elections need to be conducted fairly

Democrats are fighting tooth and nail, any efforts to clean up our election system.  Just the simple act of proving you are an American citizen to vote, is being fought all of the way up to the Supreme Court by the Obama administration, in its attempt to thwart Arizona's voter ID laws.

The simple requirement to show identification when you register to vote/ vote is also being branded as unfair and racist by democrats

Is there anything more important to a democracy than ensuring the election system is being conducted fairly? Fair elections are the very heart and soul of a democracy.

If the elections are rigged, or manipulated, a democracy can no longer be called a democracy. It becomes a tyranny ruled by those who corrupt the election. As Joseph Stalin said: It is not so important who votes, what is important is who counts the votes

Recently it was revealed Florida uncovered an attempt to hack into its elections and hijack 2,500 absentee voter pamphlets. The intrusion was discovered and blocked before the ballots were sent out, but is this just the tip of the iceberg? See the complete story in Tech News World.

Election officials are saying this is the first documented case of online voter hacking.  But is this just the first one they found?  How many others were done successfully and election officials have no clue about?  Evidently it is quite simple to gain entry/hack into many election systems electronically; some don’t even have passwords for entry.

Fox News has been doing an excellent ongoing investigation into voter fraud in our country and the results are disturbing. Time after time, it is proving out where there’s smoke, there is voter fraud fire. What Fox News is discovering about our elections. See stories

See related Fox News story on vote fraud:
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 Citizens' Group Helps Uncover Alleged Rampant Voter Fraud in Houston

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A Cincinnati Ohio poll worker is being charged with voting 6 times in the last presidential election. This is a poll worker, someone who is trusted to watch over our elections.  What else did she do to throw the election? See story here.

This poll worker was one of 19 others in just this one county who is under investigation for vote fraud. "I'm outraged, and every voter, regardless of political affiliation, should be outraged," said Hamilton County Board of Elections member Alex Triantafilou, who is also chairman of the county Republican Party. "It causes folks to have real doubts about the fabric of our very democratic process, and it's dangerous.

Would this be uncovered if there wasn’t a member of the opposite party to raise an alarm and start an investigation?

Most of Americas big cities have been dominated by the democrat party for years.   One party rule engenders corruption, especially if that party oversees most aspects of the election process. The big cities are the population centers of the state, it is usually a huge hurdle for the rest of the state to overcome that advantage. Sometimes it comes down to a few votes in just a few counties to determine where all of that states presidential delegates will go.

Many years ago someone confessed to me towards the end of his life, that in his younger days he had been a player in the manipulation of votes in one of the largest cities in America.  He was part of an organized operation that threw out the contents of ballot boxes and filed them with their ballots, in order to assure their party prevailed. He felt guilt and shame many years later, but at the time he felt he was doing the right thing for his city and country....Probably the same way the Ohio poll worker felt when she voted for Obama 6 times in the last election.

When democrats say there is little, or minor vote fraud in the country, they are "misspeaking."  In one big city, Philadelphia, some poll workers actually threw out members of the opposite party sent to observe voting practices in their precincts. How can we have trust in the outcome?  Pennsylvania is a key state in presidential elections.

With the advent of electronic voting and counting, it not only makes it easier to manipulate our elections, it almost guarantees it, especially when you hear the lax protections in place to safeguard the systems.

First we need to clean up our nations voter rolls, get all of the dead, non existent and non citizens off the rolls who are voting. All of this should be done on a local level done under the close observation of both political parties. All registration of voters needs to be accomplished using verifiable identification.

Since absentee/electronic voting is the easiest way to manipulate/rig elections, these should be scrapped and we should require all elections be done at polling precincts using paper ballots that require to be hand counted and securely tallied....closely monitored by members of both parties.

States should also look at proportionally awarding delegates in presidential races, this will help negate the power of big city political machines that dominate an entire state.

Sadly, perhaps its time to emulate other countries who have had problems with corrupt elections: After voting dip the index finger of the voter in purple ink.

President Obama’s naive foreign policy unravels as a “tiny country” threatens us with nukes.

Four years ago a newly minted President Obama assured us we had very little to fear in his new world of foreign policy.  There was no longer a Soviet Union that could threaten our very existence and besides, as a Nobel Peace Prize winner he had the moral authority to reset our foreign policy….to make America loved, rather than feared.  Unlike it had been during the Bush administration.

He proclaimed that Iran, Cuba and North Korea were tiny countries and wouldn't be able to resist his charm offensive coupled with a beer summit.

In order to show the utmost self confidence in his ability to change the world, President Obama acquiesced to the Russians and didn’t install planned anti missile defenses in Eastern Europe aimed at incoming missiles from Iran. He also cancelled/delayed planned deployment of anti missile shields on our own soil leaving us wide open and unprotected

But after over 4 years of the Obama foreign policy/charm offensive, the administration is feverishly trying to deploy the very missile shields it cancelled 4 years ago. These shields were designed to thwart incoming nuke missiles from the tiny country of North Korea. 14 anti missile batteries are being rushed into place in Alaska, along with other measures previously rejected by Obama in other parts of the world

Four years of dithering and charm offensive have let Iran and North Korea go forward virtually unchecked in their nuclear ambitions. Now those chickens are starting to come home to roost. See my interview with Israels Danny Danon warning of disastrous results from Obamas lack of leadership in the Mideast.

Last week North Korea cancelled the armistice it had with South Korea and declared their right to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on the US in retaliation for new sanctions imposed on them.

North Korea has already thumbed its nose at Obama by conducting underground nuclear explosions and successfully launched a missile capable of striking the US….All of this in the face of “stern” threats from the paper tiger Obama administration.

Ominously, in the other tiny country of Iran, the acquisition of much faster centrifuges will speed up the time it takes to get them enough enriched uranium for nuclear weapons…again all of this in the face of “stern” threats and trade sanctions from the Obama administration.

Buried in the press a few months back was the report that Iran had suffered an accident at one of their nuclear sites.  The accident killed several of their scientists, but reportedly killed a few North Korean scientists as well.

President Obama: Today even tiny nuclear armed countries can have the ability to ruin our day, not by just lobbing nuclear missiles at us, but by spreading those weapons to terrorists and other rogue, tiny countries around the world. It’s time you take the rose colored glasses off.  In this world it is far better and safer to be feared and respected, rather than trying to be liked.

Holy smoke! The “New World” Finally gets its Pope

Pope Francis

The white smoke billowing out of the Sistine Chapel chimney, signaled a changing of the guard for the Catholic Church.  Acknowledging the almost half billion Catholics who live in Latin America, the council of Cardinals finally recognized the "new world" by electing Archbishop of Buenos Aires, CardinalJorge Mario Bergoglio, as the next Pope.

The 76 year old Argentinian, will be the first non European Pope to be elected in over 1,000 years. He will be known as Pope Francis from now on, indicating he plans to model his life in the same prayerful and humble role as St. Francis of Assissi.

If it’s any indication of his future humility, Cardinal Bergoglio once went to a hospital where sick aids patients lay.  He washed and kissed their feet as he said prayers, blessing and expressing his love for them.....He is also well known for his compassion and outspokenness for the poor and downtrodden

Another first is that he is from the Jesuit order, the Church has never had a Jesuit as Pope before. 

Other “new world” Cardinals were mentioned as possible candidates for Pope as well, including Irish American Cardinals: New York's Timothy Dolan, and Boston's Sean O'Malley.

Cardinal Dolan, particularly would have been well suited to head the Church as he has a stellar reputation for accomplishing tasks, can maneuver through the world of secular politics and is a master at communicating with the media…Strengths necessary as the Church is besieged by a bevy of problems, including outside secular forces and competition from other sects of Christianity….But many other problems the Church faces, are of their own making.

Rumors swirled around the idea of having an American Pope.  Some people think too much power is already vested in America and to have an American Pope would be too much. Others said they would be suspicious that an American Pope would be working for the CIA.

Although Latin America accounts for almost half of the population of Catholics in the world, it only has 22 Cardinals out of the approximately 125 elector Cardinals worldwide. So this new Pope signals the recognition that the Churches future growth, for now, lies in the developing parts of the world.

In spite of its problems the Catholic Church is the single largest religion in the world with 1.2 billion members. It is the wellspring of world charity in places where little of that exists and has brought education to millions who would have otherwise been denied a chance to be educated.  The Church was also instrumental, under the helm of Pope John Paul, in bringing down the Soviet Unions Iron Curtain that had enslaved millions around the world.  

2800 dead pigs in China's drinking water- just the tip of the soot covered iceberg?

How this horrendous story slipped past Chinas ministry of tourism is baffling…Or is this just too horrific to bury?

Over the weekend it was announced that Chinese officials were fishing the carcasses of 2,800 dead pigs out of the Huangpu River. This river bisects Shanghai and is a source of drinking water for the city's 23 million residents.

There was a recent outbreak of swine death in China's farms due to cramped and unhealthy conditions and tens of thousands of animals died from infectious disease..

Chinese officials had forbidden farmers from selling diseased pig parts and were told to dispose of the carcasses in landfills.  Evidently it was easier to dump almost 3,000 of these diseased carcasses into the river.

Of course Chinese officials say there is nothing to worry about, just move along…But China’s citizens give very little credibility to what they are told by their government. There is growing unrest among the population, due to deteriorating air and water pollution.

One resident summed it up with: "Have we been drinking dead-pig-polluted water? We are already panicked by the polluted air, now we have to worry about poisoned water too."

China’s growing industrialization has been done at the expense of its environment and those chickens are coming home to roost…for China and the rest of the world.

Massive amounts of air pollution fueled by unfiltered or poorly filtered power plants, not only cause some of the worst smog in the world, they also send millions of tons of ash into the atmosphere to settle upon ice sheets which can cause ice melt to glaciers and ice packs. See AMAC story: Why is polar ice melting?  The culprit is soot, not carbon dioxide. PG 42

Many 3^rd world countries want what the west has: Modern society, refrigeration, air conditioning, electric light, manufacturing, etc., but they can’t afford/won’t pay for the environmental protections the west has developed over the years.

Successful/heralded American companies like Wal-Mart and Apple, import and manufacture goods from these countries escaping our environmental/labor laws.

The problem is though, when Apple employs hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers to manufacture their I Pads and other products, the pollution doesn’t stay in China.

Ironically and dangerously, the very air pollution they help create in China, drifts over the Pacific to create air pollution in California. 

The elephant in the California living room, is some of the air pollution environmental zealots are trying to crush with many of the harshest controls in the nation…Aren’t stemming from California, but instead are wafting over the golden state from manufacturing done in China, for California based companies. 

How can American companies who manufacture products in the USA compete with companies like Apple and Wal-Mart, who don’t have to respect the environment in the host countries they set up shop in?

Can American companies compete with the almost antebellum labor practices (indentured servitude/slavery) practiced in countries of the 3^rd world, like China?  Workers basically live on site in barracks and work long hours with poor pay and they are forced to buy from the company store. See CNN story on Apple/Foxconn

Conditions were so bad in some of the factories making Apple products; workers staged mass suicides by jumping off of buildings to protest inhumane working conditions. Supervisors solved that problem by installing suicide nets to catch the jumping workers.

Apples manufacturer has also taken other steps to solve labor problem with the introduction of a million robots to do the work that humans once did.

Robots don’t complain, or throw themselves off buildings in protest…Robots also don’t mind if the air or water is polluted....The best of all worlds for corporations and totalitarian countries that only care for their bottom line.

Roger Ailes nails Joe Biden-“He’s as dumb as an ashtray”

In Zev Chafets' new book, “Roger Ailes: Off Camera,” excerpts are released on the Vanity Fair website

In the book, Fox News President Roger Ailes is an equal opportunity detractor of Washington leadership.  Not only does he compare Joe Bidens self described, vaunted  “genius” to being equal to that of an ashtray, he also has a scathing evaluation of President Obama.

Ailes, in response to organized attacks by Obama supporters on Anne Romney criticizing her for not having to work:

"Obama's the one who never worked a day in his life.

"He never earned a penny that wasn't public money. How many fundraisers does he attend every week? How often does he play basketball and golf? I wish I had that kind of time. He's lazy, but the media won't report that. ... I didn't come up with that. Obama said that, to Barbara Walters."

But Ailes also had harsh words for Newt Gingrich calling him a “p***k.” 

"He's a sore loser and if he had won he would have been a sore winner,"

Ailes doesn’t hold back and it’s about time others in his position did the same. It’s time to recognize the herd of effete pseudo intellectual elephants who have grabbed hold of power in our Washington DC living room.

Ailes comments on Biden, come as no surprise to anyone who has paid attention to Joes antics for the several decades he has been in the Senate and now in the Whitehouse.

Biden has utter disregard for the truth and showed that when he proclaimed during his speech at the Democrat convention in 2012: “Osama Bin Laden is dead and the GM Volt is alive”…Inferring to us that he and Obama had tamed the terrorism situation by taking out Bin Laden AND  their marketing genius had made the Chevy Volt a huge success. See Hey Joe Biden! The Volt is dead and Al Quaeda is alive!

But around the time Biden was stretching the bounds of credulity in front of crowds at the 2012 Democrat National Convention, 21 of our embassies and consulates in the Mideast and North Africa were attacked by Islamic mobs, resulting in deaths of our personnel.

Same thing for the GM Volt. Mr. Biden knew sales of the Volt were horrible and as a matter of fact manufacture of them had been stopped due to poor sales.

But facts have never got in the way of Mr. Biden over the years, he has gotten a free pass from the press. If Mr. Biden was a member of the republican party, he would have long ago been tarred and feathered for his prevarications and run out of town on a rail.

Perhaps Mr. Biden is thought of as an intellectual giant among his electorate, we know he thinks he is. But those of us, who have actually paid attention to what he has said over the years, have a much different opinion and Roger Ailes aptly describes it.

Time for colleges to have skin in the game-They need to guarantee student loans

America’s student loan debt is in excess of 1 trillion dollars; it is believed this will be our next huge financial crisis as these loans go into default.

One of the reasons people are having a difficult time repaying their student debt, is that they can’t find jobs as newly minted college graduates. See the 10 worst college degrees by Forbes.

Granted the economy is in the doldrums and good jobs are hard to find.  But a college education was sold to these students by the education industry as their ticket to a good paying job.

Let’s use some outcome based education for a change. If you are going to let a student burden him/herself with a huge debt in order to graduate from your school, you should have some skin in the game.  Colleges should have to guarantee these loans, instead of laying that debt off onto taxpayers if the student defaults. Perhaps there would be a change in admissions, stricter standards and heavier counseling.

Right now colleges and universities have the best of all worlds.  Many are in receipt of government funding, many have endowments and almost all are the recipients of an unending stream of government guaranteed tuition. There is no incentive for them to see if the student loans ever get paid back.

It’s a one way street in the higher education system and it’s time to make some changes. . These easy government backed student loans are correlated to rising costs. Colleges have every incentive to raise costs knowing the loans will be adjusted upward to reflect those costs.

Colleges should have job placement programs for the students they graduate.  There needs to be some responsibility from the higher education system and some accountability.

Should taxpayers be put on the hook for a college graduate with a liberal arts degree who can’t find a job?  Or if the jobs available with those degrees are low paying and will never be able to justify the student loan amount?

Additionally, let’s face it, many of those attending college aren’t college material and should be learning a trade or craft.  Skilled craftsmen make on average far more than many college graduates.  Why aren’t colleges and universities offering these types of educations?

The country has a problem supplying the manpower needs of our high tech sector, so much of a problem, that special laws are being created to allow foreign workers into our country that have the math and engineering skills necessary to work in this environment.

We should be proactively pushing students to get educations in the sectors the country desperately has a shortage in, even offering discount tuition, etc. Perhaps even using a hybrid of the voucher system that the Friedman Foundation is promoting for public school choice and introduce some competition.

If a student wants a degree in ethnic/gender studies, music appreciation, law and a whole host of liberal arts that don’t necessarily translate into lucrative careers, then there should be an agreement between the college and the student over how the tuition gets paid. Let colleges aid the student in finding scholarship help, etc. 

We saw the problem that unfulfilled promises academic institutions made to students when our cities were clogged with Occupy Wall Street. Many of these young people expressed anger at their inability to find a job, a good paying job with the liberal arts degrees they possessed.  They felt they were lied to by their education institutions…in a way they were.

There is also growing unrest among students who are seeing their ever increasing college tuitions rise, while chancellors and educators don’t take a hit and in fact get raises.

Here is an excerpt from an excellent expose’ by JosephPalermo in the California State University system:

“Last year, CSU executives were paid between $240,000 and $400,000 in salary alone. On top of that, each executive is allotted $12,000 per year as an auto allowance. Campus Presidents and the Chancellor each receive either state-owned homes or housing allowances of $50,000 or $60,000 per year. Other perks available to executives include special retirement packages such as lifetime employment as a tenured professor.”

Looking at the above salaries you can see these educators are insulated from the realities that many graduates face after they leave their institutes of higher education.  Instead of raises, many of them should be fired. Let’s get some accountability into education

Blue Water Hunting and a Good Samaritan South of the Border

Several times we made the 1,000 mile drive from California down through Mexicos Baja Peninsula, to dive relatively remote sections in the Sea of Cortez. Four of us, all experienced scuba and open ocean divers looked forward to these trips

Because of the remoteness of these destinations, we took everything to make us self sufficient. Two pick up trucks each pulling 14’ inflatable boats, loaded with supplies, tools, fuel, camping and diving gear, including our own air compressor to fill our scuba tanks.

We would normally cross the border in Tijuana just as the sun was rising in order to get all of the Mexican driving done during daylight hours.

Sometimes our destination would be the coastal village of Bahia De Los Angeles (bay of angels) where we would enjoy great fishing and diving in the incredibly rich waters of this area. 

In the 1800’s a Scotsman came to Bahia De Los Angles to search the surrounding mountains for ore.   He liked the area so well that he decided to stay. He must have had extremely blue eyes, because you can instantly spot his descendants by their most deep cobalt eyes… I never found any of them to have inherited his ability to speak English.

 But after leaving Tijuana this morning, our destination was Punta San Francisquito, over 400 miles south to the Sea of Cortez.  The next 14 hours took us through a desert paradise of Saguaro cactus, prickly pear, clusters of house sized boulders interspersing vast expanses of scrub brush and sand. The last leg culminated in a hundred mile stretch of washboarded dirt and dust road…arriving at dark into the rustic encampment of Punta San Francisquito.

Our tired, dust caked trucks, made it to the edge of the beach, where we set up camp  battling heavy winds in the darkness using Coleman lanterns and lights from our vehicles.

First thing in the morning we got ready to get our boats in the water and explore this part of Mexico, when my brother Mike noticed his knapsack with identification and cash, a sizable amount since credit cards were no use here, was gone.  It could have slipped out of the vehicle anywhere along the last part of the route, as we stopped several times to check the vehicles for damage.

But just then a Mexican came driving into our camp with a big smile on his face and asked if we had lost anything.  He produced Mike’s knapsack which he had found just outside of the encampment alongside the dirt road.  Inside, everything was there including every dollar. 

Mike offered him a reward, but the man said: “no, it was only right to return the belongings to the owner.” 

Buoyed by the act of the Good Samaritan, we proceeded to enjoy the next several days exploring this beautiful part of Mexico.  We ran into the man often during this time as he worked on the property…. needless to say there was never a worry as to the safety of our possessions while we stayed here.

Every day we dived areas that were full of sea life; open ocean pelagic fish and reef fish in abundant numbers.  Every undersea cave I peered in had spiny and slipper lobsters, but many of these caves also had large moray eels, so if I wanted lobster dinner I had to dodge the moray.

 Most of the time we took our own boats to discover places to dive, using depth finders to show us where interesting rock formation laid below us in the depths.  The local Mexicans were very friendly and told us of good places to try.

Sometimes we went with the local Mexicans in their boats to cross the open water to dive the island of San Lorenzo.  In the deep blue water, we drifted in the swift current among schools of large fish, like yellow tail, tuna and Dorado.

We saw 7 gill, angel and horn sharks, some fairly large, but none of the aggressive types.   I was surprised when nudged on my side by a young sea lion who seemed curious about me, but when I paid him no attention he swam off.

Diving the deeper reefs to 130' depth using scuba gear, we saw large grouper up to 300 lb size.  

At the end of the trip, we said hasta la vista to our Mexican friends and left San Franciscquito.  This time we traveled back through Bahia de Los Angeles on a better road. We stopped for a break and got to see the most remarkably blue eyed Mexican descendants of the Scottish miner again.