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| Itzel, Ana, and Trisha |
We had to get up early on Thursday because Bayfest was in
full swing and Greg had entered Scout in
the “Rock to the Dock” sailboat race that started at 11:00 off Roca Lobos. Our crew, was scheduled to arrive at the boat
at 8:30 because we needed at least an hour and a half to reach the starting
line. Greg had agreed to bring the
Municipal Director of Tourism and her assistant along as guests. They were late, so we didn’t leave the dock
until after 9:00 and had to hurry. We
did manage to arrive at the start line before the committee boat, which had to begin the starting sequence before they got an anchor down.
Itzel and Ana, from the Tourism Board, brought Greg a very
nice carved conch shell as a thank-you gift.
Sailing was a new experience for them and they had a good time. I chatted with them in Spanish when I wasn’t
busy trimming the main or serving lunch.
Greg let each of them drive for a little while.
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| Gift from the Tourism Board |
In addition to the girls from the Tourism Board, we had
Trisha and Derrick from Interabang, Ray
from Sea Note, and Paul and Carol
from Unleashed as crew. It was a crazy race because we
started with our spinnakers up, the whole race being downwind. It was a pursuit race, but not handicapped,
so the catamarans soon left the monohulls behind.
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| Our Nemesis, Talion |
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| The Foredeck Crew Working Hard |
I was trimming the main sail. The main sheet was so stiff with dirt and
salt that I could not trim it without tugging it through the chocks a few
inches at a time. I vowed to remedy that
situation at the first possible opportunity.
The race was over by mid-afternoon and that gave me a
much-needed chance to relax. There was a
wine tasting at Club Cruceros at 17:00, but the wine was disappointing. From there, we strolled over to La Costa
where Greg was hosting a Texas Hold’em tournament. I’m not a poker player but I had a good time
playing darts with the other cruisers and met some new people. I hadn’t played darts in a few years, but I
had my moments. I held my own, at least.
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| The Racing Crew of Scout |
April 5, 2019
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| Sweeping the Malecon at Dawn |
I got up early on Friday to run along the Malecon to Marina
Palmira and back. The street sweepers
were out, sweeping the sand out of the bike lanes with brooms and off the
polished concrete of the new section of the Malecon with giant dust mops.
I went to a seminar on boat electronics in the late morning
and then walked downtown to get my nails done.
I never found the salon I usually used in La Paz, but found a local
place where I got them done for a mere 150 pesos.
That afternoon, I began the process of washing the main
sheet. I removed it from the boat and
soaked it in a five-gallon bucket with the Mexican equivalent of Woolite. The water was soon black with dirt. It would take nine buckets of water before I
was satisfied that most of the dirt had been removed. Finally, I rinsed it in fabric softener and
stretched it out to dry. When I
reinstalled it, I switched it end for end so that the really crispy part was
then out of the sun. We would see if it
ran any better when we set out to sail to the islands.
There was a dinner at La Costa that evening which was
supposed to have a disco theme, but no one was dancing and it seemed rather
sparsely attended. The food was mediocre
and we didn’t stay long.
April 6, 2019
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| Work Underway on the Malecon |
Saturday, I went for a walk along the Malecon in the
morning. The renovations continued and a
large section was cordoned off. When
completed, the new section would reach all the way to the theater. They were also renovating the parks and
plazas along the Malecon and were removing the concrete from the area around
the bandstand with jackhammers. It was
very busy in the cool of the morning.
I had finally heard from Don on Comet and visited him in Marina Don Jose after breakfast. I hadn’t seen him since September and we had
a lot to catch up on. It was good to see
Comet again. I missed her nimbleness and the ease with
which we had explored less popular anchorages.
Scout was a beautiful boat,
but Greg was disinclined to risk her in unfamiliar waters.
I attended a seminar on the sea life and park regulations later
in the afternoon. I was interested to
learn that residents of a municipality (the equivalent of a county in the USA)
do not need to purchase wrist bands to visit the parks in their home
municipality. Everyone else, Mexicans
and foreigners, needed a day pass or an annual pass which was available at any
CONANP office for 371.91 pesos or from other vendors for an additional
fee. Technically, these passes were
required to visit any of the islands in the Sea of Cortez, although in three
years of cruising, no one had ever asked me for one. This was news to me. We were told that passes were available
online, but that turned out not to be the case.
Saturday night was the big Bayfest party at La Costa. The dinner was exactly the same as the
previous night, but they had a fairly decent blues band and people danced.
April 7, 2019
Greg gave a seminar on the Baja Bash on Sunday morning and I
attended that. We gathered contact
information from the boats planning to bash for later use when we began the
journey.
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| The Crowd at La Costa for the Chili Cookoff and Awards |
The highlight of Bayfest for many people was the chili
cookoff on the last day. Chili was
served at 13:00. There were nine
contestants, although one of them didn’t arrive until after we had already
voted. Some of the chilis were
interesting. My favorite was one made
with shrimp. There was also a vegetarian
one with chocolate that tasted more like Indian food than chili but was
unique. One resembled thin refried
beans. We were disappointed to see that
the winner was a bland concoction that our large group of chums all thought was
the very worst one. We had a big noisy
group and enjoyed the food and beer.
Awards were presented to the winners of various contests during Bayfest
and then, exhausted, we were finally finished.
It had been hard to proceed directly from the crossing to a full slate
of activities without a chance to decompress and catch up on domestic tasks.
Daylight savings time had begun in Mexico on Saturday night
and our internal clocks were not yet aligned with the actual time. By the time we were ready for dinner, it was
already 19:30. We decided to walk along
the Malecon to a Chinese restaurant that Greg liked. We got a little turned around and it was
20:00 by the time we arrived. The
restaurant, Dragon D’Oro, was closed. We
then tried to go for fish tacos, but found that place closed, also. We continued down the Malecon, looking for
someplace to eat, but found nothing but bars and dessert. The Malecon was packed with locals enjoying
the evening light.
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| The Malecon at Dusk |
Eventually, we found a restaurant in Callejon La Paz that
served tacos and excellent pozole.
Sixty-five pesos got me such a big bowl of pozole that I had to share it
with Greg. His tacos were also nicely
presented and our waiter was friendly and attentive. We were so full after dinner that we actually
passed up ice cream at the Polka Dot Trees, returning directly to the boat to
watch Jack Ryan on Amazon Prime which was our latest obsession.
April 8, 2019
I got up to run on Monday morning, but my joints didn’t feel up to it so I walked to Marina Palmira and back (about 5.4 miles.) It was a pretty morning, but promised to be hot later.
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| Still Morning in La Paz Harbor |
After the net, Greg and I scrubbed the boat in preparation for sealing the teak decks, a project that was long overdue. We relaxed after our exertions and then met Trisha and Derrick, Ray and Chaquila, Paul and Carol, Lance, Kevin, and Greg for ribs at Bandido’s at 17:00. They were a bit overwhelmed by such a large party at that hour, but they managed and everyone got his or her food eventually. The plates of beef ribs were huge but all but one of us managed to finish them. We had been talking about ribs for days and had saved our appetites.
After dinner, Paul and Carol from Unleashed and Lance and Pam from Shamaya came over to play Mexican Train Dominoes. We all managed to stay up until 21:30 when people started to fade. Greg and I then stayed up until nearly midnight watching the last episode of Jack Ryan and starting on Narcos: Mexico.
April 9, 2019
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| Sealing the Teak Decks |
I woke up at 5:45 and couldn’t go back to sleep. I finally got up at 6:30, showered, made coffee, and sat in the cockpit until after the net. As soon as the net finished, we tackled painting the decks with a sealer called Semco. It was thin and easy to apply. I cut in along the edges and around the deck fittings while Greg painted the wide spaces with a large brush. By noon, we had completed the side decks and it was too hot to continue. The sealer was drying before it could soak into the wood and my feet were burning.
It was ninety-four degrees out and too hot to do much. We took a short walk around the corner to Koko’s for a quick lunch and then hid in the boat all afternoon. Greg hosted another poker game in the Vista Room that evening and I remained in the boat to catch up on my blog and practice the guitar.
We were hungry when Greg got home, having won the poker game. Unfortunately, they hadn’t been playing for money so we decided to go to Gina’s for fifty peso burritos, or burros as they are called here in La Paz. Lance and Pam from Shamaya joined us. Gina was closed, so we walked into the surrounding neighborhood a couple of blocks and ate tacos at Chino’s. Chino’s made fabulous beans and a delicious dessert called pastel de galleta which was made from many layers of white cake alternating with a pudding-like concoction and topped with strawberries. We shared a piece. Chino’s was crowded with boat people, being the only place open at that hour on Tuesday night. We enjoyed our dinner and then returned to the boat to watch Netflix.
April 10, 2019
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| More Deck Sealing |
I was determined to get an early start on sealing the deck, so skipped my morning walk/run. As soon as the net ended, we started work on the deck. I cut in around the edges and under the lines while Greg did the open spaces. We finished by 9:30, before it began to get hot.
Once we finished the deck, we hiked up the hill and had breakfast at Olimpia, a hole in the wall café that served a complete breakfast with juice and coffee for seventy pesos. We ran into Trisha and Derrick from Interabang who had finally taken our advice to try the restaurant. They were duly impressed.
Strong winds were predicted to arrive from the north that afternoon. It was windy in the morning, but the wind was coming from the south. It calmed down momentarily about noon and then started blowing up to thirty knots from the north. The radio was swamped with calls for assistance as several unattended boats dragged anchor and began to wander around the anchorage. One fetched up against the breakwater at Marina Cortez and was eventually lassoed and brought inside to safety. Another went aground on a sandbar and a third became tangled in some pilings along the Malecon where the navy tried to free it. Residents of the anchorage launched their dinghies and rushed to assist with securing the drifting vessels.
I had already had a gin and tonic and was practicing the guitar about 18:00 when we rather suddenly decided to go the the open mic at Bob Marlin’s. I hastily put together a set and decided to try to play. Lance and Pam came with us and we headed up there shortly after 19:00. Bob Marlin’s was an outdoor palapa bar a couple of blocks inland from the Malecon.
Someone was playing country music when we arrived. Lance and Pam ordered guacamole and chips. I stuck with mineral water as I was still trying to recover from the gin and tonic I had consumed earlier so that I could play with some accuracy. They had a drummer and a rudimentary bass player available to accompany those of us who wanted to play. A fellow named Russ played some nice rock ‘n roll and then it was my turn.
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| Me on Stage at Bob Marlin's |
My set went very well. I played a mix of familiar and original songs, which were well received. The Mexican audience especially liked my song, Da Me Un Beso, and laughed in all the right places. I played four songs and then ceded the spotlight to others. They asked me to play another set later that evening.
A few other musicians got up to play with mixed success. One Mexican fellow played endless Jaracho songs and appeared to be high as a kite. He was a stark contrast to Sergio, who played a few lovely, romantic ballads in Spanish that we all enjoyed very much. I played another couple of songs, later, mostly as a means to get the stoned guy off the stage. I hadn’t had time to prepare more. Greg got a chance to take a couple of photographs and record some of my performance. We all had a really good time. The organizers were hopeful that I would hang around La Paz, but I had other plans. I promised to return if I found myself in La Paz on another Wednesday.
Greg and I hadn’t eaten and it was then after 21:00. We stopped by Gina’s on the way home and finally got our burritos. This time, I asked for mine without mustard and mayonnaise. She left out the mustard, but just couldn’t believe I’d want it without the mayo. I did, but at least it was edible without the mustard. Mustard just made me gag. The hot sauce mostly disguised the taste of the mayo and I was hungry.
It was late by the time we got home but we still stayed up to watch another episode of Narcos. It was interesting to learn about the history of the marijuana trade in Mexico since we were living there.
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