Puerto Escondido

From Agua Verde, we went to Puerto Escondido, where we picked up a mooring. Oddly, the mooring balls are arranged in such a way that the moorings for the biggest boats are closest to the dock, while the mooring for smaller boats are waaay out in the back of the harbor. I say oddly because bigger boats are more likely to have powerful, fast dinghys, and so would seem to me to be best equipped to have a longer way to travel to get to the dock than would smaller boats. Whatever. We tied up to a mooring for a boat of our size and then proceeded to go beg Raphael, who is in charge of the harbor, to let us tie up to a mooring ball about 30 fet from the dock - no doubt intended for some hundred foot mega yacht. Since there were no boats fitting that description here at the time, he was more than happy to let us have it.

Having a close in mooring that meant we didn't have to deal with putting the dogs and the motor on the dinghy, which turned out to be a very good thing, as when Art looked at the motor, there was a crack in the integral fuel tank. We went through various possibilities - try to find a new one in Loreto? Get one ordered and sent up on the bus from the place where we bought the motor in La Paz? Convert the motor to use an external fuel tank (possibly voiding the warranty on what's basically a brand new engine)? None of these seemed like particularly good options. Luckily, Alvin, who runs the shop at the yard here, put us in touch with Mitch, who thought he might be able to epoxy it back together, and if not, was driving down to La Paz in a couple of days and could try to get one for us there. Luckily, the epoxy job seems to be holding, and we'll order a new tank when we get back to La Paz.

We rented a car here, and took a few side trips to Loreto, San Javier and Mulege. We also did some provisioning. Loreto is a surprisingly great place to provision - there is a store called Dali that has a fantastic selection of frozen meats and imported stuff like good wine and crackers, and also a fairly large supermarket called El Pescador.

Puerto Escondido is very protected - lucky for us, as it's been extremely windy here, so we've wound up staying a few more days than we'd planned.

Agua Verde

Agua Verde is a huge bay that's protected (in places) from virtually all directions - you just need to pick your spot based on the predicted wind direction. Since we were expecting winds from the north, we went into an area off the beach at the north end of the anchorage that's protected from all directions except the south. The wind protection from the north there isn't great, but the beach definitely protects you from the waves. It was pretty windy the whole time we were there, so we didn't actually make it into the little town (too bad, as I'd been hoping to buy some of the goat cheese they make there) because of the surf on the beach, but I did row around some, and one morning we put the dogs (pontoons) and engine on the dinghy and tooled around the entire anchorage.



The second morning we were there, I got up early enough to take a few pictures of the beautiful sunrise:

Los Gatos

Our trip from San Evaristso to Los Gatos was a slog. The winds had died down, but the seas were large, confused and right on our nose. Los Gatos is basically a roadstead, and since there were two boats in there already when we arrived, we were preparing ourselves mentally for a fairly unpleasant, rolly night, when along came a Panga. We talked to the two men aboard, who had introduced themselves as "los dos Migueles", for a while, and then they got to their point: Would we like some lobsters? Well, sure. We'd love some lobsters - how much? $100mx/kg. Who wouldn't want lobsters for that price? A couple of hours later, los dos Migueles returned with five lovely slipper lobsters, we gave them $240mx and a Ballena (large bottle) of Pacifico, I dug out the crab boiler we hadn't used since we were in the Pacific Northwest, and we had ourselves a fine dinner. It made the trip to get there almost completely worth it.

Ginger Steamed Lobster:

Cut the heads off the lobsters and discard. While there may be some meat in there, it's hard to get at and makes them really unwieldy to work with. In a large pot, bring about an inch of water to which you've added 1 c of dry sherry, 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, a shake of siracha, a few drops of sesame oil, four smashed and chopped cloves of garlic, the juice of four or five limes and a teaspoon of dried ginger to a boil. Add the lobsters and cover. Cook on high for about 10 minutes, or until the shells turn reddish and a skewer encounters some resistance when you poke between the plates of the shell.

I had thought about making some sort of ginger lime sauce to dip them in, but in the end couldn't resist plain old garlic butter. The were delicious.

The next morning, with much calmer conditions, we took of for Agua Verde. We'll look forward to seeing los dos Migueles (and eating some more lobster) in a month or so.

San Evaristo

We love San Evaristo. It's a little fishing village of about 20 families in a cove that's protected from pretty much all directions. It has an interesting shoreline for gunkholing in the dinghy,

a fairly well stocked little store, and the pangueros are happy to sell you extremely fresh fish right on the beach. It was mostly the lure of a nice fresh pargo perro (snapper) - a fish that we can't catch with our trolling rig- that drew us in, as we didn't technically need to make another stop so soon (only 9 miles) north of Isla San Francisco. We figured we'd stay two, maybe three nights.

We had a nice hike over to the salt ponds on the far side of town:


Just as we'd planned to leave, the weather suddenly turned on us, and very early in the season, we had northers. Since north was where we were going, this was unwelcome news. So we waited. And downloaded weather on the sat phone. And listened to weather on the SSB. And waited some more. Finally, on Saturday, the winds had pretty much died down. The seas, however, had not, so we had a fairly miserable trip up to Los Gatos. The dinner that was waiting for us there, though, made the 6 hour bash through large and sloppy southbound chop completely worth it.

Going North

After getting a late breaking problem with our refrigeration fixed (sometimes, it's like the boat knows when we're trying to get out of dodge and tries to thwart us for some reason, in this case with a shorted switch), we left La Paz on October 20th.

Our first night at Caleta Partida was pretty bouncy, (but with 85˚ water, which allowed us a bit of swimming). From there we had planned to go straight to San Evaristo, which is almost completely protected, so that we could get a decent night's sleep. We decided to tow the dinghy, which turned out not to be such a red hot idea, as about 8 miles south of Isla San Francisco, Art noticed that the dinghy had about six inches of water in it. It was way too bouncy to try to bring it aboard, so we diverted to San Francisco.

Going to Isla San Francisco turned out quite well - the wind had calmed down by the time we got in there, and we were, at least for a while, the only boat in what is usually a wildly popular anchorage. The weather was cooperating, so we wound up spending three nights there, swimming, snorkling and hiking in this very beautiful and protected place.

We had a rare cloudy day in the Gulf of California that was perfect for hiking, so we went up the spine of the island and around to the back:










After three days at Isla San Francisco, we were off to our original destination, San Evaristo.

Loreto

I'll have a post about our trip up here in a bit, but first from a beauty parlor at about noon yesterday in Loreto, another for the collection of funny signs:



(The second second sign reads: "Open all day. Every day")

Día de la Independencia

For the past two weeks, we've watched as La Paz got more and more dressed up. First flags started appearing on buildings, then on the municipal dock, then large displays that are lighted at night, and finally garlands over the street that abuts the Malécon. Last night was the beginning, and the celebration continued today.

We didn't go down to the municipal palace, having been warned ahead of time that it was a) a bit of a zoo, and b) something we needed to arrive at by 7:00 at night. Since the festivities wouldn't start until 10:00, and the high temperature yesterday was something like 104f, that was a non-starter.

Instead, we went to this morning's parade, which featured lots of schoolkids marching, very seriously, in their uniforms; lots of military, including tanks and an overflight by some planes in formation, and horses, ridden by men and women in traditional Mexican dress.

Kids:





Marina Rescate - I felt sorry for the divers, who were wearing full wetsuits and tanks in the heat:


Navy:


Military band:


Riders and caballero with lasso:






The crowd was as much fun as the parade itself.

A Mexican viking? Why not?


There were a lot of very dressed up little girls:



These two kids had clearly found something absolutely fascinating in the water:


After the parade, a bunch of the horses and riders congregated on the north end of the Malécon:


Including this guy and his gorgeous dancing horse.

Tecolote

On Monday, we went to the beach at Tecolote. This is one of those things you really can only do if you have a car - it would probably be a $40 cab ride each way, which takes a bit of the fun out of a day at the beach, for me at least. It's a bit of a hairy drive because of all of the construction going on around the new Costa Baja resort, but even with that, only takes about a half hour.

What a beautiful beach! There are chairs and umbrellas set up that you can use if you buy some food and/or drinks (we had our own chairs and umbrella but opted for the ones that were set up - their umbrellas were much larger).

It looks right out at the bottom of Isla Espiritu Santu, which is a lovely view.


It was much, much cooler there than in La Paz. We swam, we ate, we drank, we lounged around. The people watching was fantastic. There were musicians - two brothers with a guitar and an accordian, who were wandering around performing and were quite good. All in all, it was a lovely day, and a great getaway from the heat when we don't want to or can't take the boat out to the islands. A+++, would beach again.

Parts

I was sewing a screen for the companionway this morning, having finally gotten frustrated enough with the mosquito net we'd been using to keep the cats inside (which has an annoying habit of falling on your head while you're pushing it out of the way to go in or out) to do something about replacing it, when the presser foot on my sewing machine slewed off to the side. The thumb screw that holds it to the presser mechanism was stripped. Unfortunately, that's one of the few parts for the machine that I don't have a spare for. Crap. I was really on a roll with the companionway screen, too.

Off to Ace hardware I went. Juan, their resident expert in threaded things, had about 20 parts that were almost right, but nothing that would actually work. One thing about La Paz that can make it hard to find your way around, is that only maybe 20% of the intersections are signed with street names. Of these, 10% are turned the wrong way. So you find your way around counting blocks from where you are. Well, I do, anyway. Thus, I always carry a map. Juan drew an x on the map directing me to Taller de Maquinas de Coser, three blocks over and four blocks down from the hardware store. He also wrote the name of the place down on a scrap of paper, so that I'd know it when I saw it.

Juan's map and keywords were good - I found a sign on the courtyard wall of a house just about where he said it would be with "Maquinas de Coser" on it. In I went. It was a little upholstery shop in the courtyard of a house. After I was able to explain what I was looking for, the guy who was working there said "uno momento" and disappeared into the house. About five minutes later, he came out, very apologetic that it wasn't slotted like my original part. It was, although sans slot, otherwise exactly the thing I needed. I thanked him profusely and asked how much. 10 pesos. Amazing.

It worked, and our screen is almost done. Now I know where to go for sewing machine parts. I am very glad this afternoon for two things: that we have a car and that we took the time to learn a decent amount of Spanish. Without the car, this would have taken at least three times as long, and cost at least 10 times as much as my 10 peso part. Not to mention hot - the sewing machine broke around noon, so I was doing this at the hottest part of the day. Without the Spanish, barely past basic though mine is, it would have been flat impossible. That's been well worth the work and classes we've put into it.

Isla San Francisco

With Art back in town and a favorable weather forecast, we decided to take off for a short cruise on June 2nd. Our friend Crit came along on her boat, too. This was great, both for the company and because we shared meals pretty much every night, which meant only half the cooking and cleanup for each boat as we otherwise would have had.

Our first stop was Caleta Partida. We've been in this anchorage quite a few times, and it remains one of our favorites. The water, though, was still too cold for comfortable swimming - I need to be really, really hot before I'll voluntarily jump into 24c (75f) water. It was hot, but it wasn't that hot. Still, there was plenty to do - we spent some time enjoying our new outboard motor and tooling around the anchorage. That was a great way to create some breeze in the middle of the day, when there was none otherwise, but we both got a wee bit baked from the sun and the fact that we stupidly forgot to bring any water with us.

After two days in Partida, we headed up to Isla San Francisco. Isla San Francisco is a drowned, extinct volcano. The anchorage is in the crater. It has beautiful white sand beaches. It is so very much the perfect Sea of Cortez anchorage that it is the cover of the main cruising guide for this part of the world. It is, in short, gorgeous. I'll shut up now and post some pictures. These next five were taken by Art, as I cleverly managed to break a toe our second afternoon at the island - no hiking for me.


Arione at anchor with the Sierra Gigante mountains behind:










Looking across at the Sierra Gigante, early in the morning:



Crit's boat, JASDIP*, at anchor at Isla San Francisco:




*JASDIP = Just Another $#!^^y Day in Paradise

Driving down Baja

Art took four days getting down Baja - if we'd both been on the trip, we could have done longer days, but by yourself, it's harder, so four days broke it into manageable chunks. Day one was from El Cajon to El Rosario. He had a car full of stuff - boat parts for friends and things that we either can't find here or that are much more expensive than in the US. I've brought this sort of stuff back by plane before, and have never been charged any duty - I just hand the customs guys a copy of our import permit for the boat and that's that. Unfortunately the customs guys at Tecate had either never seen one of these permits (seems unlikely) or didn't want to deal with it. Either that or the guys at both the Cabo and La Paz airports are doing it wrong, because they charged Art duty on every last thing he had in the car. Not a huge amount of money, but it had to be paid in cash, which he didn't have, so finding an ATM and settling up took a while - good thing he'd planned on short days.

El Rosario was a stop that a lot of people had recommended. Boy were those recommendations spot on. The Baja Cactus hotel had beautiful rooms for just a little more than $30 (US).

Baja Cactus:


From El Rosario, it was on to Guererro Negro, then up and over the mountains to the Loreto on the Sea of Cortez side of Baja.

This was the view from Art's room in Loreto. He arrived in La Paz early the following afternoon.

It was a long drive, but now we have a car. Totally worth it (easy for me to say as I wasn't the one doing the driving).

Dockwise

The Saturday before Art took off for San Francisco, we helped our neighbors on Lily, a Beneteau 48, load their boat onto Dockwise. Dockwise is a service that ships boats all over the world on semi submersible vessels. It's like a cross between a ship and a dry dock. They pull into a port (in our case, Pinchilinque) and fill their ballast tanks so that their deck is low enough for the deepest draft boat they plan to load.

The dockwise ship arrived in La Paz with several boats already aboard from previous stops:



Lily went in to port of the boat that is the furthest right in this photo:



The boats all drive on, their crews leave, welders construct stands under the boats, and they pump the water out, raise the boat to its normal waterline and take off. It's pretty cool, and in our neighbors' case, saved them a minimum of a couple of months of upwind sailing to get back to the Pacific Northwest. This way they get to spend the summer up there, rather than getting there. They'll unload in Nanaimo.

This boat loaded behind us:


It was a really interesting way to spend the morning. They took us all off the boat via a launch to Costa Baja, and we caught a cab from there back to our marina.