Cabo to La Paz

Well I am now back on Cop Out after a chilly visit to Canada!!!
Arrived in Calgary as the temperature was plummeting but got to Kelowna before it hit
-40 in Calgary. Had huge snowfalls in Kelowna but at least it was warmer—well kind of.
I spent a week greeting the newest member of our family, Adelyn Elise Lunman, Kristen and Kyle’s beautiful daughter who was born November 15th. Spent many hours walking her—Kristen and Kyle have spent many since—oh the joys of “newborn’s” definitely for the young!! After helping reorganizing Kristen’s kitchen cupboards—did I forget to teach her rudimentary housekeeping—I guess I was so busy making sure she got her career, I forgot--sorry Kyle!! I headed back to Calgary for a couple of days. Got to run around trying to get what we had discovered is not available in Mexico and visiting as many friends as possible in such a short time. Had a nice pre Christmas with Amy, Rob, Alora. Isaac, Mike and Aaron and enjoyed watching Alora’s horse back lessons and Isaac’s karate.
I arrived back in Cabo where Ken had returned to after having gone up the coast with another few boats while I was gone. We restocked our groceries and headed out the next day. Cabo is definitely a party town and not a great “cruiser” port. The anchorage is rolly and the town noisy.
We had a rough passage into a 25 knot head wind and choppy nasty seas going up to Los Frailles which was our next port. We were able to make about 3 knots an hour and managed to blow out cringle at the end of the sail. We were beating into it but were thankful for our stable boat as we passed Arctic Willow, a Canadian boat from Victoria which was having a much worse time. About 4 other boats were going that day and everyone had some story with some damage. It was not at all life threatening, just uncomfortable and we were all happy to anchor that night.
We spent the next day there going for a walk. After I had been pushing through the bush to photograph the lovely butterflies we came across a freshly run over rattlesnake—I guess I will be more careful in future. Los Frailles is a desert bay which has a small fishing village and a number of US and Canadians who come with their motor homes and camp on the beaches for the winter. Vultures were everywhere and it all reminded me of some old western movie and I would not have been surprised if Buch Cassidy hadn’t ridden out from the cactus covered hills.
The group of boats had all arrived together so we had another happy hour in our cockpit exchanging weather stories.
The next day a weather window was forecast so we all headed up to Muertes, another day sail up the coast. This was a much nicer trip and ended with a visit to the Giggling Marlin for a burrito dinner. Muertes was another desert bay but as we are getting used to the scenery are staring to appreciate the beauty of the lovely desert light.
The weather window continued and as none of us wanted a repeat of the earlier trip we all continued to La Paz the next morning.
La Paz is a lovely town which has been revamped with a beautiful waterfront walkway and is undiscovered as a tourist town—so far. Great for cruisers as the anchorage is comfortable and for $1.30 a day we can bring our dinghy in and use the marina facilities. It is a place where all cruisers hang out so we were reunited with many of the boats we had traveled with previously. Great provisioning is available and we had our sail fixed for $120, I am sure it would have been $400 or so in North America. The workmanship is good and everyone gets whatever they need done there. Yoga classes were held each morning so I started doing that every day again, perhaps that will get me back to a more regular schedule again.
Soon after we arrived La Chiva, (the goat—ram I am sure) the soccer team from Guadalajara which is the only truly Mexican team in the league down here won the season’s cup. It was much like Stanley Cup celebrations although less drinking seems to take place. The whole town appears to drive through the streets in circles cheering, starting at 1pm and still going at 11pm when we went back to the boat—I think they quit when they run out of gas for their cars. It was a lot of fun as everyone was elated.
We spent an enjoyable week in La Paz and left to go up to the Isla Espiritus Santos, an Island group 20 miles north. It is stunning, with red cliffs, desert hills and blue ocean. A few more cactus than palm trees but at about 26C who’s complaining!!!
We finally had time to snorkel, explore and kayak. We are learning to see the little things as we kayak and explore. There are great colourful crabs, pelicans who own the coves, vultures, lizards and beautiful flowers amongst the desert landscape. We must find a sea life book as we are coming across all varieties of exotic creatures we can not identify.
It was a great few days but unfortunately was cut short a day as we wanted to head to Mazatland, across the sea of Cortes and 220 miles away and the weather is forecasted to deteriorate after tomorrow. We plan to spend Xmas with Barry Toni and Roland who will be there for a month.
We copied a set of 30 CD’s which Light Wave, (another Canadian boat) gave us. They are an intensive Spanish course and we now know how to ask if they speak English or Spanish as the case may be and say that we only speak a little (very little!!!—actually we could have found that out before the lessons!!!). Oh well we are only on lesson 4 and there are 60 so hopefully we will improve. We try and have Spanish conversations with each other but the topics are limited!!!
It is sad to leave so many newly made cruising friends. La Paz is the place where everyone travels to from North America but then they each have different plans beyond here so we may not see a lot of them again. The most amazing part of the trip so far is the strong bond between cruisers. Every morning on the VHF radio in all cruiser ports here there is a “net” where the weather is given, trades and local information is available and afterwards everyone connects with their friends to arrange where to have lunch or go shopping. It is easy to see how people get into this lifestyle and never leave. Even people who no longer own boats and have settled in the area join in.
The two most important omissions in Mexican culture is that they do not have tea, black tea from the supermarket is of poor quality and I put 4 bags in my pot, the other serious problem is that the milk I have been getting, low fat, does not foam for my cappuccinos. I will try a different fat concentration next. Anyway as those of you who know me well will understand these are serious issues for our sailing future!!! Any visitors must BRING BLACK TEA!!! I suppose decent foaming milk will be more difficult.
I will next post a blog after Xmas from Mazatland so in the meanwhile we wish you all a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year. Stay warm and keep in touch!!!
Love to you all, Wendy and Ken