April 24, 2019
La Paz is a nice town.
The Malecon is beautiful, the food is great, and there is a great
community. It isn’t really my community,
however, although most of my cruising friends pass through when coming and
going from the Sea of Cortez. La Paz is
a place where cruisers go when they are tired of cruising. People live aboard long term or move
ashore. The average age is older than on
the mainland. Not that we don’t have our
share of “retired” cruisers in La Cruz, also.
La Paz is just more convenient to the United States and it’s a big city. It’s hotter, but less humid. It works better for some people, but I miss
the music in La Cruz and the more “Mexican” culture. Baja is different. Not better or worse. It just doesn’t resonate with my
preferences. I am a mainland girl. I prefer to visit La Paz for short periods.
 |
| Jamming at Club Cruceros |
We came back to La Paz to ready Scout for the bash back to Marina del Rey. We gave her a good
rinsing after returning from the islands and filled the water tanks. Our first day back turned out to be a big music
day for me. There was an acoustic jam in
the late morning where four or five of us got together and played. The local flamenco/classical guitarist, Jesus
Gallo, stopped by to post flyers for his upcoming concert and I lent him my
flamenco guitar to play for us. It was
always nice to hear someone really play my guitar. It sounded great and he was impressed with
it. My guitar is the Gypsy Kings model
by Cordoba, and they are quite popular here in Mexico. Several successful guitarists in La Cruz also
play them, a fact that reassured me I had chosen well. The other popular one is Yamaha’s flamenco
guitar, which would have been my second choice.
 |
| Vendor Stalls |
 |
| New Skate Park |
We met Juliana, Josh, and Alex from the motor vessel Serenity for dinner at Fuego y Lena for a
pizza dinner and then we all headed to Bob Marlin’s for open mic. I had a little trouble singing due to the lingering
effects of my cold, but the set still went well. There were also a lot of other talented musicians
and a pretty good crowd. We stayed until
after 21:00, a late night for us.
April 25, 2019
Having stayed up late the night before, I didn’t get up in
time to run. Feeling guilty, I decided to
walk to the Chedraui to pick up some toiletries I needed. It was hot, but I managed the roughly 1.5
mile walk each way. I stopped at a few
hardware stores looking for charcoal water filters for the boat but failed to
find any.
Greg and I went to La Costa for the Thursday night dart
game. Events at La Costa always started
at 19:00, which presented us with a dilemma about where to eat. Greg wasn’t fond of La Costa’s menu and our
favorite haunts didn’t open until 19:00.
That night, we decided to go to Super Burro for burritos. They weren’t Gina’s burritos, but they were
good and very large.
 |
| A Super Burro |
 |
| Greg Playing Darts at La Costa |
April 26, 2019
I got up early and walked down to Marina Palmira and
back. It was a pretty morning. I was very far behind on my blog and I spent
nearly all day working on it.
 |
| The Anchorage in La Paz |
 |
| Pearl Sculpture on the Malecon |
 |
| The Mezquite Grill |
We met up with John and Elinore from Nakamal, friends of mine from La Cruz, for dinner at the Mezquite Grill. Greg and I shared a giant fillet Mignon for dinner. It was easily enough food for both of us. The steak was about two inches thick and I could have cut it with a fork. I had never had a better steak. The 350-peso price was a lot for Mexico, but a tremendous value for the quality of the meal. John and Elinore were equally pleased with their menu choices. Greg and Elinore shared a piece of flan but John and I elected to save our appetites for ice cream later.
 |
| The Skate Park Was Crowded at Night |
 |
| Textured Strips to Guide the Blind |
The Malecon was crowded. We stopped at La Fuente for ice cream and then sat on a bench to enjoy the view and people watch, remarking how many families and elderly people were out at night in “dangerous” Mexico. We could not have felt safer. The Malecon even featured a bumpy stripe down its entire length so that the blind could safely follow the Malecon unguided.
April 27-28, 2019
I walked on Saturday morning. Someone had managed to get his panga trailer
stuck in the water at the launch ramp near Marina Palmira. They had detached it from the truck and were
attempting to push it further in to float the boat off as I passed by. At least the truck was not endangered like
the one we saw in San Evaristo.
 |
| Panga Trailer Stuck in the Water |
I spent another big chunk of time catching up on my blog on
Saturday and Greg changed the oil.
 |
| Unloading Our Provisions |
We made a quick trip to Home Depot where we managed to buy
the water filters we needed but couldn’t find plumber’s putty. Then we returned to Walmart at 9:00 to pick
up the alcohol that we failed to buy the first time. We and the cashiers all had a good laugh
about how desperate we were, but we only had the car for another hour.
Our third crew member, Bob, arrived just before dinnertime
on Sunday. We were relaxing with drinks in
the cockpit when Tom and Cary from Dragon’s
Toy pulled up in their dinghy. They had
been trying to text me, but my phone was dead.
They had just arrived from La Cruz that afternoon.
Koko’s, the restaurant around the corner, had just started
serving tacos and drinks on weekend evenings and were offering free drinks to
the first ten patrons. We all headed up
there and had a round of free drinks and some excellent fish and beef
tacos. There was another big table of
cruisers and it was quite a party atmosphere.
We had another round of drinks and then they brought us shots of their
house liqueur made from tequila, cream, and peanut butter. I hadn’t had that much to drink in
years. It was fun to see Bob, Tom, and
Cary again.
Back on Scout, we
stayed up to watch an episode of Grand
Tour (Amazon’s version of Top Gear), although
Bob had a long day of travel and rapidly faded.
April 29, 2019
 |
| The Malecon Past Palmira |
Bob and I got up early to walk on Monday morning. We walked past Marina Palmira and around the
corner until we could see Marina Costa Baja.
My pedometer app wasn’t working because my phone had received a software
update that confused many of my applications, but Bob’s said we had walked 7.7
miles. I thought that was as exaggeration,
but we probably walked at least seven.
We were hungry when we got back, so we collected Greg and
walked up to Olimpia for breakfast. Olimpia
had a breakfast special with eggs and bacon, chilaquiles, beans, and hash
browns with coffee and juice for sixty pesos.
I finally succumbed to temptation and ordered a big plate of liver and
onions with beans, coffee, and juice for seventy. It was delicious.
We did a few things around the boat, but mostly napped and
lounged until happy hour when Lance from Shamaya
stopped by. We munched pretzels and
had gin and tonics. We didn’t have time
for dinner before Jesus Gallo was playing flamenco guitar at La Costa at
19:00. We headed over there and shared a
plate of nachos. The concert was sparsely
attended. I enjoyed the show, but the
music was more classical than flamenco.
He played good Spanish guitar, but lacked the gypsy fire of a true
flamenco player.
April 30, 2019
Bob and I got up early to walk and I led him the opposite
direction to the Fonatur marina so he could see the facilities there. It would have been a six-mile round trip
except that we made several detours on the return trip. We were trying to avoid walking
on Abasolo, the main drag, and ran into various dead ends.
We had worked up an appetite and returned to Olimpia for
another big breakfast. We were too late
for the breakfast special, so we all ordered mixed omelets with chorizo, ham,
bacon, and sausage (hot dogs.)
Unfortunately, they also included mushrooms which I could have done
without. Still, I had plenty to eat.
Bob and Greg headed off after breakfast to shop for filters
and plumber’s putty while I returned to the boat to scrape the old plumber’s putty
off the hatches before it got too hot.
Greg had sealed the hatches with plumber’s putty to prevent them from
leaking during the previous year’s bash but had neglected to remove it upon
reaching Marina del Rey. After a year in
the sun, it was hard and flaky and had been raining down on us every time we
opened a hatch. I had removed much of it
earlier but needed to complete the project.
I scraped it off with the handle of a plastic fork and vacuumed up the
crumbs with a handheld vacuum until the battery died. I then went below and finished cleaning the
oven which Greg had sprayed with oven cleaner the day before.
Greg and Bob had taken their time returning from shopping so
as to avoid cleaning the oven. They
returned with a supply of shock cord and I relaxed in the cockpit, threading
new shock cord through the cover for the life raft while they dug out the shop
vac and scraped the putty off the last two hatches. We had a 14:30 deadline to complete projects
because we were meeting Josh, Juliana, and Alex from Serendipity to go to the movies at 14:30.
 |
| Movie Theaters in La Paz |
 |
| Luxury Seating |
Greg and I were not the Avengers fans that the crew members of Serendipity were, but Alex filled us in enough on what had happened in the previous film that we could get the gist of what was happening. The movie was entertaining, and it was fun to see all the Marvel characters together in one film. We enjoyed the luxury theater and the film was a bonus.
We couldn’t find a large Uber or a taxi when the film ended
so we walked the two miles back to our neighborhood, heading straight to Chino’s
for tacos as we had promised to meet Bob there at 19:00 and were already late. Fortunately, Bob had met up with some other
friends from the dock and was not sitting there alone. They had waited to order, so we all ate
dinner in a big, noisy group. Those of
us who had been to the movies weren’t very hungry, but I still managed to eat two
tacos, although I passed on the always delicious beans. We were too stuffed to even consider ice
cream for dessert.
No comments:
Post a Comment