April 19, 2016
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| The Malecon at Dawn |
I woke up very early and finally decided to get up and run
at 6:00. The malecon wasn’t as crowded
as it had been the night before, but there were plenty of people out running
and walking in the cool air. I ran along
the malecon from Marina La Paz to Marina Palmira, which turned out to be a round
trip of 5.5 miles. Dawn was breaking and
casting interesting light and shadows on the sculptures along the malecon. I couldn’t resist stopping to take photos now
and then. The city even provided a kind
of open air gym with clever manual versions of exercise equipment that actually
looked very practical to me, having once owned a fancy treadmill that needed
constant service.
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| Malecon Sculpture |
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| Low Tech Exercise Equipment |
By the time I returned at 7:30, Kathy was up and awaiting
the arrival of Henry the diver, who had an appointment to clean the bottom of
the boat next door and had offered to look for Kathy’s camera while he was down
there. Henry arrived and looked for the
camera, but couldn’t find it. He offered
to come back later and look again when the sun was higher and the visibility
better. I made bacon and fried potatoes
for breakfast and Henry returned about 11:00, but still couldn’t find the
camera.
Reluctantly, Kathy had to give
up hope of recovering her pictures and leave to catch her flight home. We said goodbye and then I went to the
laundromat to do my laundry.
I had not done my own laundry since arriving in Mexico and,
indeed, had never seen a self-service laundromat anywhere else in Mexico. While it was possible to do my own laundry in
the laundromat at Marina La Paz, it cost as much as having Sonia do it in La
Cruz and I kept getting dirty looks from the operator who was monopolizing all
the machines. I noticed that all the
other cruisers just dropped their laundry off for her to do. It seemed I had committed a faux pas.
After I returned from the laundry, we heard a knock on the
boat. It was one of the young men who
had first tried to dive for Kathy’s camera.
It seemed they had continued trying after we went to dinner and had
found the camera. They had even rinsed
it and put it in a bag of rice. No
wonder Henry the diver couldn’t find it!
Don and I mostly did nothing for the rest of the afternoon,
although I did work on my blog as much as possible with a very slow internet
connection. I managed to spend far too
much money shopping online for all the things I had destroyed on my trip (iPod,
sandals, watch band) and register for the summer semester when I would be
taking a grammar class in pursuit of my certificate to teach English as a
second language. Reality was starting to
encroach on my consciousness.
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| Sunset on the La Paz Waterfront |
As evening fell, Don and I went for dinner at a fast food
salad place called Club Salad, which was actually pretty good. Don had a Mexican salad with grilled chicken
and avocados and I had the Hawaiian salad with pineapple, ham, croutons, Parmesan cheese, and maraschino cherries.
The cherries were a bit weird, but the salads were plenty for dinner and
cost us 86 pesos or about $4.50 each.
After dinner, we went for a short walk past the nearby restaurant row
and back along the waterfront as the sun was setting. We spent the evening listening to talk radio
and I fell asleep fairly early.
April 20, 2016
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| Dawn in the Marina |
Once again, I woke up early, but this time it was because it
was cold. I had turned off the fan
sometime during the night, but now a chill wind was blowing in the hatch. I got up, put on a fleece, and walked up to
shore to enjoy the dawn and use the facilities.
When I returned, I crawled back in bed and stayed there, wishing I had
thought to get a blanket, until the net started at 8:00 and I reluctantly got
up and made coffee from the hot water that Don had boiled.
Cruisers are migratory birds. It was fun to listen to the net and hear all
the familiar voices that had gradually disappeared from La Cruz over the past
month, a few of which had paralleled our journey all the way from Ziuhatanejo. Some I had missed in La Cruz this year had
apparently wintered here. La Paz was the
one place other than La Cruz where cruisers often settled down.
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| Sea Mar Chandlery |
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| Sea Mar Interior |
After I returned from my shower, Don and I headed out to buy
supplies for the boat projects Don hoped to accomplish while we were in La
Paz. Our first stop was the Sea Mar
Marina Chandlery across the street from the marina. They stocked the usual assortment of items
found in chandleries in Mexico, heavily slanted towards cleaning products,
power boats, and fishing. Their
selection was larger than most and the staff helpful, but they didn’t have much
of what we needed. We bought some
threaded metal rods and moved on.
Our next stop was further into town at Lopez Marine. Lopez Marine carried more items than most
chandleries in the United States. It was
a large store with a good selection of sailboat hardware. We were looking for brass plumbing fittings
and bulbs for running lights, all of which we managed to find. They were also quite friendly and
helpful. Our friends on Hokule’a had managed to locate hard to
find brands of cleaners and varnishes there and were quite impressed.
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| Lopez Marine |
From Lopez Marine, we walked down M. Absalom to a Home Depot
like store called Traeesa Express were we bought doweling for
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| Traeesa Express Hardware |
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| Super Burro |
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| Logo Look Familiar? |
Don spent the afternoon installing an improvised dipstick
for the forward fuel tank and a manifold to control the flow of fuel between
tanks. We had been unable to determine
the exact capacity of the forward fuel tank because any overflow from filling
the aft tank flowed into the forward one.
We wanted to be able to isolate the tanks when necessary. I spent the time installing a correctly sized
bulb in the port running light (We had been operating with one that was too
large and was only loosely fastened to the back of the fixture.), working on my
blog, and trying to stay out of the way.
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| Improvised Dipstick |
It was warm and we were feeling lazy, so we ate dinner at
the Dockside Café in the marina. I had a
massive taco salad and Don ordered a club sandwich and fries, saying that he
wanted a break from Mexican food for a change.
We spent the rest of the evening listening to the podcasts that we
couldn’t get when we were at anchor without internet.
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| View from Dockside Cafe |
April 21, 2016
A month into spring and mornings were still chilly in La
Paz. The water temperature was only 71
degrees. I got up at 6:00 and took
another run along the malecon from marina to marina and back. I barely broke a sweat in the cool morning
air.
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| Running at Dawn |
By the time I finished my run and shower, Don was up and
listening to the radio net, which starts early at 8:00 in La Paz. At 7:30, a number of cruisers held a
discussion over the radio. The subject
for the day was the American political situation and the moderator sounded just
like any other political pundit. Don and
I drank our coffee and then I made bacon, eggs, beans, and quesadillas for
breakfast.
I cleaned out the refrigerator while Don went ashore for a
shower and then later vacuumed the boat and thoroughly cleaned the head. Don siphoned diesel from the jerry cans into
the aft fuel tank and emptied the forward tank in preparation for filling and
calibrating the dip stick in the forward tank. I mixed up some roach "cookie"dough from flour, sugar, bacon grease, and boric acid. We had been fighting an ongoing battle against cucarachas. We were winning, but needed every possible weapon.
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| The Tailhunter |
We relaxed during the heat of the late afternoon and then joined Jake
and Jackie for a trip to the sports bar, the Tailhunter, to watch the NBA
playoff game between the Golden State Warriors and the Houston Rockets. We walked down the malecon about a mile and a half to the
bar. The Tailhunter had three levels
overlooking the water. We ordered drinks
and dinner and then watched the game.
The game was very close with several last minute reverses, but the Warriors
ended up losing by one point. We walked
back to the marina trough the cool evening air.
I was surprised to find it was 23:30 by the time we returned to the
boat. We were almost never out that
late.
April 22, 2016
Thursday seemed like a wasted day. Don spent the entire morning talking to the
Bank of America, trying to devise a solution to the problem they created by
deciding to issue him a new ATM card and cancel the old one. Since the new card was sent to his post
office box in Los Angeles, he was in danger of being stranded in Mexico without
a means to obtain cash. We didn’t want
to stay in La Paz long enough for them to send the card there, but weren’t sure
if we were coming back or not. Don didn’t
really want his ATM card sitting in a marina office for weeks, anyway. Eventually, we decided to have the card sent
to a marina where we intended to be within ten
days. After much back and forth with the
marina and the bank, Don finally got the mailing address to the Bank of
America. We were almost out of food, but
I scraped up some bacon quesadillas for a late breakfast.
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| Heron Frequented the Dock |
By the time the banking crisis was averted, it was too hot
to walk to the grocery store. We laid
low until 17:00 with the exception of quick trips ashore to drop off the
propane tank for filling and to pick up some laundry I had left to be done
earlier in the day. At 17:00, we walked down
Abasalo to the bank and the Chedraui where we stocked up on food and drink for
our upcoming voyage. We took a taxi back
to the marina.
We had leftovers for dinner because we needed to make room
in the refrigerator for all the food we had bought. The freezer was packed with meat and fish,
but we had room for all our vegetables in the main compartment with enough room
left over for beer. Our hammocks were
refilled with fruit and tubers. We could
eat well until we returned to civilization.
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