splendid isolation: February 2013

LA PAZ pt.2

Well we are still in La Paz everyone! I wish i could say that we are still here because its the greatest place we’ve stop so far. We are waiting for packages. Claire’s father Rob was nice enough to send a family package to us in Cabo. We must have gotten lucky. It came within the same week, on the hour that it was tracked for! The fed-ex guy was even holding the office door open for me, with our package in his hand! Not to complain too much but we’ve been in quite the wild goose chase at both our ends. Hopefully soon enough we get our package and can move on, because we have quite the route planned from here! A quick recap of my log. I left off 2/10 after the swap meet and carnaval. Carnaval was a great time. Parades and street vendors. Hotdogs (bacon wrapped, loaded with mexican crema and other toppings) were only $10-15 pesos. Thats a dollar! Cheeseburgers (cooked on the flat top using mexican crema as their oil, great buns, mayo, lettuce, more crema, avocado, etc.) were only $20-25 pesos. Around two dollars! Fresh churros cranked into the frier! $10-15 pesos for a small paperbag full. 2/15 I pulled out our automatic bilge pump for its usual cleaning. Mostly cat hair and muck, whatever we track in. I also rewired the automatic side of it due to corrosion. So that’s running great again. 2/17 ‘sweet dreams’ left this afternoon for the island of Espiritu Santos which is just on the outside of the bay. About 15 miles away. They are hanging around the La Paz area for March and April because their families are both coming separately to charter boats as a vacation. We took a dinghy trip deep into the bay of la paz. Quite a lot of ship wrecks. The past few days and nights have been blustery. Along with heavier tidal currents, makes weird anchoring conditions. It’s not good when the wind is blowing hard from one direction, while the tidal current is sucking in or out in the opposite direction. This makes the boat almost ‘heave-to’ on anchor. Causing the anchor line to get caught up under the boat. Not very safe and extremely nerve racking. 2/18 yesterday afternoon cleared up nicely. ‘breezo’ left today for the islands as well. We wish we could get out of here! I caught a 25 inch gafftopsail catfish. I looked it up and I think the World record was 27.8 inches or something close to that. 2/20 we went to the post office for the 5^th time. Still no package. As one more rant, let me explain to you our procedure for just getting to the post office… pack our days supplies into a drybag (computer to check emails on shore, drink, snack or lunch, extra clothing layers and flashlights incase we’re gone after dark) dinghy across the bay and over a 1ft. deep shoal/sandbar, across the channel, into the marina, tie up illegally at the dinghy dock (15 pesos a day! Screw you!) walk at least 2 miles across the city to the post office. Over an hour later once we’ve made it to the post office we have to wait in line. Once we get to the front of the line we’ve learned the hard way...don’t say anything in english. If we say one word in english they turn around and stop helping us. Ok enough ranting. Hopefully we get these packages! We miss our secluded anchorages with no civilization. For the rest of our day we came back to the boat. Where a big ‘la paz waltz’ was going on. I pulled in 50 ft of line, which caused us to literally sail in perfect circles over our anchor! This lasted for about an hour as the tide switched over. Refilled propane tank. Later claire and I sat down to plan out an itinerary for my mother’s visit at the end of March/beginning of April. A few sites include sailing to Isla Coronados, Easter Sunday at the 16^th century Mission of Our Lady of Loreto, and possibly mule rides through the desert to cave paintings. We also mapped and charted our course from la paz to loreto, which includes at least 8 stops in 140 miles! 3 (or more) of those stops are on uninhabited islands! We also have been planning our trip northward from loreto to santa rosalia. From there we plan to cross the sea of cortez to Guaymas. We have gotten multiple recommendations for Guaymas as a summer hurricane season haul out. Best service and prices. We have set our haul out date for mid-May. From there it is only 300 miles to Tucson, Arizona. Back to the good old united states. This is where our plans stop. Maybe some readers can help us? We are looking for somewhere in america to live and work from June to most likely September or October. Because by Autumn we will be back to the boat, continuing on with our Quest! We would like to live somewhere that we have never lived before, preferably in the south or south east. Feel free to send an email if you could help us locate a free or cheap living situation! Who wouldn’t want a private chef and licensed cosmetologist under their roof? Michaelcalvino@gmail.com or insley33@gmail.com