La Paz, Mexico

Friday, April 29, 2011

024-10.972 N
110-18.218 W

Ahoy from the well relaxed and rested crew of the BlueJacket!

We've been "stuck" in La Paz, Mexico for almost 2 weeks waiting for the delivery of a part for the generator. "Stuck" is a subjective word as La Paz is a really nice place to wait for a part. Believe me, we've been stuck in much worse places. La Paz is the capital of Baja California South (BCS) which comprises most of the Baja peninsula. La Paz, which is just about to celebrate it's 476th anniversary, has about 220,000 people and as a result you can find just about everything that you might want. At this time of the year the climate is wonderful, with lows in the low 60s at night and highs in ranging from 85 to 98F. The good thing is the humidity is quite low, so the heat is quite bearable.

There are quite a few marinas in the area and I'd say that the vast majority of the boats in the slips are from the US. As a result, it's very easy to communicate as most of the staff speaks some English. Between their broken English and our broken Spanish, we have very few issues. We had wanted to pull into the La Paz marina, which is located directly down town, but it was full. Instead we ended up at the Marina Palmira, which is about 2 miles east of downtown, but is a much nicer marina with more modern facilities, nice grounds and a great pool that we take advantage of almost every afternoon. They have shuttles which take you down town 3 times a day and the walk back is actually quite nice and we walk it daily.

A beautiful, wide tiled walkway known as the Malecon runs for 5-6 miles eastward along the azure waterfront from downtown all of the way out to the Costa Baja marina. It's lined with sculptures and is clearly a major activity center for the citizens of La Paz. Once the heat of the heat of the day disappears, the people appear and it becomes full of life with families, couples and kids wandering along it. Shops and restaurants line one side and beaches line the other. We've regularly walked back from restaurants at 10 PM and felt absolutely no fear.

While we were here we decided to rent a car for 4 days to explore areas that we'd never see via the boat. We had a little red car which had National Car Rental in green painted on it. At first I thought this would be a bad thing, as it advertised that we were tourists, but due to Samana Santa (Easter week), the police had roadblocks up everywhere, but we were just waved through. I guess that they didn't want to deal with some dumb gringos. We managed to put on about 400 miles, with our first destination being Todos Santos.

Todos Santos is a small artist town about 50 miles south of La Paz. The drive there is there is through flat desert and not very interesting. However, the town is near the coastline and nestled in some high hills. Todo Santo's major claim to fame is that The Hotel California, which gained fame in the Eagle's song, is located there. When they wrote the song, the hotel was a run down surfer hangout. Since then it's been converted to a boutique destination hotel filled with Americans and over priced goods. In general I found the whole town too touristy and wouldn't rush back.

The next day we headed N along route BCS 165, which runs along the ocean and terminates at a small mining town. This was a beautiful drive with us starting out in flat desert and then winding along the mountains which come right up to the ocean. The roads have steep cliffs descending to the ocean and sometimes run right along the beaches. As this was during Easter week, the roads were filled with cars loaded to the gills with people and camping gear headed to the beach. It appears that during Samana Santa, that the population of Mexico heads to the beach and camps. It was pretty humorous watching all of the stuff that everyone brings and how they strap this stuff to their vehicles.

The next day we headed S along BCS 288 and then MXC 1 to the beach town of Los Barriles. What made this trip so interesting was the varied terrain that we went through. One might expect that desert is desert, but the desert varies quite a bit in what grows there. In some places it's small cacti and scrub plants. In other's it's huge towering cacti and trees. As we went along we crossed a mountain range it was really interesting to observe the various types of plants and trees that grow in various areas and the roads were fun as they twisted through the mountain passes.

On Easter we had expected to attend a religious ceremony similar to what we know occurs in Guatemala, where Easter is celebrated with great pomp and circumstance. Nope...not in Mexico. We couldn't find anything, so we did what the Mexican's do and headed to the beach. We headed to Bahia Balandra and Tecolote. Balandra is a beautiful deep cove with mountains on one side. Tecolote is a typical beach which was packed with people. We spent most of the afternoon sitting at a beach restaurant slowly sampling their food and drink. It was a wonderfully relaxing day.

Once we returned the car we started exploring La Paz. We would typically take the 9 AM shuttle into the city and get off at various locations to explore and shop. We would go into the local markets and buy fruit, meat and fish using our limited Spanish. No problems and we ate a lot of good food at the small food counters where we were clearly an unusual sight. We also "discovered" a lot of good normal restaurants which served up some wonderful meals. As I said before, if you need to get stuck somewhere, La Paz is a very nice place to get stuck.

The generator part that we were waiting for kept getting delayed and delayed. It was supposed to have taken 2-3 business days to get here. Well, it took 10 days. But during that time we got a lot of boat projects done and now we should be able to head to the islands just east of here.

My next log will be a cruiser information log with information about the area. This is already too long, so I'll end it now. We hope that all of you are doing well. We've been watching the NBC nightly news via the Internet, and it's just amazing what Mother Nature has been unleashing on the US.

-- Geoff & Sue

Log ID: 1440