We are back from a week in Baja California Sur, and there is much to contemplate about humans, turtles, the environment and Daniel Boone.

The "Cabo" area at the bottom of Baja comprises a twenty-five mile long strip of development that ranges from Cabo San Jose on the Sea of Cortez side, to Cabo San Lucas, at the edge of the Pacific, and the 18 miles between comprising sand, arroyos, bays, and rapidly increasing squalor.

Fifteen years ago there were three hotels in Cabo San Lucas; before that a sleepy fishing village of maybe 400 souls. Now there is construction everywhere. Every day 30 new families seeking employment arrive from the Mexican mainland. Behind the coastal strip is the rest of Baja, a land rich in desert and oasis, shoreline and mountain range; beautifully diverse and largely unspoiled.

It is the turtle that most clearly demonstrates what is happening here.

Scene One: On an open-bar three-masted pirate ship snorkel cruise we stopped at Chileno Bay, one of the most beautiful coves in Baja. Floating in the warm water we watched dump trucks on the beach, setting up another resort development.

One of the fake pirates dove in and retrieved a highly distressed young turtle that had been sunbathing on the surface. Drunken snorkelers admired, petted, photographed and drooled over it. Turtle legs slapped loudly as it tried wildly to get away. It was thrown back over the side. In Hawaii, simply touching an endangered turtle makes you subject to an enormous fine and loss of Drunk Tourist Snorkeling Tour licence.

Two: We are walking along a seemingly deserted beach. There are tire tracks everywhere and trails where mother turtles crawled out of the sea at night to bury eggs in the hot sand, not far beneath the surface.

Everywhere on the beach vehicle tracks cross turtle tracks. We are dismayed. Our guide tells us many turtle nests are empty because locals dig them up and eat the eggs. He digs into a nest to show us. No eggs.

Three: Our resort is located behind a perfect turtle beach. Along the shore are stakes and crime scene tape to protect live turtle nests. People walk the beach day and night. There is loud music, there are soccer games, there are lights. In 300 yards of beach there are two nests. There should be many more.

Four: A couple of Americans describe their All Terrain Vehicle adventure. "They told us to stay away from the turtle areas. And those areas are clearly marked. But really, they let us go anywhere we want."

So I was wondering: Why does Mexico bring out the worst in us? Why do so many north Americans travel so mindlessly?

I brought along a copy of Boone, A Biography by poet Robert Morgan. Daniel Boone read Gulliver's Travels by the campfire, and by day hunted beaver, deer, elk, panther, mink, otter, pretty much anything that moved.

"One of the reasons that Boone was attracted to regions that still had Indians," Morgan writes, "was that when the Indians left, the game soon disappeared... As the settlements moved westward, there was a window of a few years when he could hunt the way he preferred...

"The collision between love of hunting and hunting skill, and a sustainable ecology, is at the heart of the contradiction in Boone's life, and the history of modern America."

Aired Sunday September 30, 2007 at 10:55 am and Wednesday October 3, 2007 at 1:00 pm

Orders/Information:

Boone, A Biography by Robert Morgan. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill hardcover $29.95, ISBN 1565124553.

About the term "Kanta-ke" (now Kentucky) Morgan writes: "...the word comes from the Iroquois, Kanta-ke, 'the meadowland,' a combination of kenta (level) and aki (place). As early as 1753 a traveler referred to the Shawnee Blue Lick town as on the 'Cantucky River.' The Shawnee name for a town on the tributary of the Red River was Eskippaki-thiki. It is easy to see why the early explorers and surveyors preferred the Iroquois word Kanta-ke as a name for the region."

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