Sunny sailing in La Paz

Jon and I are currently back in California visiting the family. We will be heading to southern California tomorrow to visit universal studios for a 2 day vacation within a vacation, within another vacation.

But first, I am going to back peddle: to the last month where we have been spending time in the surrounding bays of Bahia de La Paz.

La Paz Harbor

We try to stay away from the town and harbor of La Paz. Mostly because a town means we want to visit, then our friends wants to visit, next thing you know you are in a cantina and spending half your budget for the month on your food and bar tab. SO we avoid the main hub, only coming back in when we are completely out of food. Plus there are so many places to stop and grab snacks from road trucks and carts! Everything is so YUMMY

buying the best tamalies with Jess

 

snacking on fresh curios

 

What is this delicious smell???

 

MEXI CORN!!!

We have been out to the island only once, but we were out there for over a week, and visited 2 different anchorage. Mostly because there was a northerly blowing and most of the anchorages are not fun to hang in when it is blowing 30 knots. Never the less, it is still beyond beautiful. Minus the wind, rain and overcast “cold” conditions. When we headed down to Mexico, we thought it would be so much sun we would be living only in our swimsuits. That has been true for about 90% of our trip so far, but the last month has been different and cold. Sure it is really maybe 68 degrees, 72 mostly, but it feels like the sumner time in the San Francisco Bay, AKA COLD!

a rain storm passing though

 

sun set in caleta lobos

Sean and I decided that Prism needed a good bottom scrubbing and we should bust out the dive gear before I forget the difference between a din and a yoke valve.(Diving reference… look it up if you don’t know 🙂 So we go t Jon to fish out all the dive gear, which lives in the far back corners of the deep lazarett. I start going through the gear, setting up what I will use and what Sean will use ( Sean was going to use Jons gear). When I hooked up the dive computers  to the tank, we found that they both did not work. (both digital) Damn! I guess that will happen when they get stowed away in a box and not used for almost 6 years. Yea.. that came a shock to me when i realized that I had not been scuba diving in about 5 years. Coming from someone who was at one point was doing almost 11-15 dives in a week, it was kinda sad that I had not partaken in my favorite hobby and old job. So I did not let Sean dive (as he has only been once), and I dove with out the computer JUST for the bottom cleaning. Sean did the water line, while I did the lower part of the hull, the keel and rudder. It was tough not to wonder around and to dive with the matarays that were swimming right under us eating all the deliciousness we were scraping off. But not really knowing how much air I had was a large remainder that i can go play with the cool animals. NEXT TIME! Luckily some friends of ours had a few spare analog depth and pressure gages and gave them to us!!!!

 

 

We have met so many great people and have made amazing memories. When we head into town to get more food and booze, we always go to the same “cow” market. We call it the “cow” market cause it has a fake cow hanging out in front above the street.. kinda weird really. But the BEST part of this market is the woman out front who sells her home made fresh hot tamallies. OMG are the to DIE for.. and even better they are only 15 Pesos each. SCORE. Oh and the market has everything and anything we could ever need, all under the same roof.

 

The “Cow” market

 

We have explored all the bays that line the entrance into the La Paz Harbor, with our favorite being Caleta Lobos. The large bay has room for many boats, it is protected from pretty much every direction and there is really good snorkeling and diving.

 

… ok that is enough typing tonight, I am heading to bed.

OK now its monday morning, Jon is currently grinding coffee beens with the new manual coffee grinder we bought, its loud and seems like long process so I’m glad he likes making the coffee in the morning.  I need to bring my thoughts back to Mexico.

Caleta Lobos

 

We have been fishing as much as we can, mostly catching trigger fish that stink SO BAD! but they are very yummy.

little bass

 

a smelly trigger fish

The day before we had to be in the marina we stopped to check out the whale sharks. Finally some SHARKS!!! We had heard from other cruisers that the local panga tour guides guys can be rather pushy and mean, making you anchor way out and dinghy into the shoal area where the sharks hang out. But we got lucky. There were only 2 panga boats out there with us. The wind was blowing and causing some annoying chop, so Jon stayed on the boat while Sean and I jumped in as soon as we saw the first shark. Sean and I had to swim as fast as we could to keep up with the shark. Jon ended up towing us around to bring us closer to the sharks. The Chop and cloud cover made it hard to see where the sharks where, so Jon also acted as the look out. He would yell to Sean and I to  swim left or right. The visibility was only about 5 ft so it was a shocker when swimming as fast as you can, then WHAM WHALE SHARK! So far it is the highlight of Mexico.

WHALE SHARK!

 

Sean and I chasing the sharks

 

Sharks are so cool

 

anchored out in front of the Magote looking for Whale sharks

Our trip home has been amazing. We are leaving in the morning, we had a party last night with friends and family who came up to see us! We woke up this morning to snow! It was a nice little topper to the end of our trip. Our side trip to southern california was also great! We all went to Universal Studios. None of us had been there for 6 to 10 years, it was so cold to see all the new attractions, and even the same old classics ones. My friend Jenna and her son Carter came out one of the days and spent the day in the park with us, It was so great to see her!

The Neely Family: (left to right) Tess, Baby Truman, Jon, Mom, Marissa, Chris, Shannon, Troy

Jenna, Carter and myself

I am kinda drawing a blank on what else to talk about. We have been so busy! Mt brother Sean took a side trip to Nicaragua to go surfing with a friend. When he gets back he is going to get on our friend Rieds boat and help him sail back up the coast. Yep he is doing the BAJA BASH, something that Jon and I never want to do.  Jon and I will have the slip for about a week once we are back, so that we can work on a few projects while we have shore power. So we will see how that goes.

Our friends Jess and Josh are more than half way down the baja coast and we can’t wait to see them once they get into La Paz!

Cheers!