La Paz

November 19, 2017 – Ah the joy of taking a shower on land – that doesn’t move – now if only when I close my eyes to wash my hair I didn’t feel like I’m swaying and lose my balance. In La Paz and loving it!

November 23, 2017 – Woke up on Thanksgiving day excited since we have tickets to the Thanksgiving dinner at La Costa restaurant. They’ll be serving turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and cranberry sauce. Yeah, because I wasn’t going to cook all that chez moi!  No siree bob!  But the girls really wanted a traditional turkey dinner. We just made side dishes to bring: Curried cauliflower, steamed green beans and mashed potatoes was our contribution. The kids all sat together at a table (kids from Waponi Woo and The Answer) while the parental units sat at another table. It was a bit crazy with quite a few people. By the time we got there we couldn’t get a table all together. They called up tables by the playing card which was placed at your table. The kids were amazingly gracious given their table was called dead last – darn Queen of Hearts. They had some adults at the other end of their table who didn’t wait for their card to be called. Instead they dove straight to the front of the line and served themselves while the kids waited almost 2 hours.  Food was good and enjoyed being there!

Later we went over to the catamaran “Tribe” withYogi and her 3 boys (Kai, Koa and Kikko) to hang out. We met them right away after we arrived in La Paz and the kids hit it off immediately.  Also, the gang from the boat “Secret Water” (Annie & Chris with their 3 boys named Josiah, Eli and Finn) were there too. We came after they ate just to socialize.  It was Secret Water’s last night in La Paz. I enjoyed getting to know Annie.  She’s such a sweetie with a big heart.  Their pup, Opal is pretty darn cute.  She’s part beagle, part basset hound so they refer to her as a bagel.

We Facetime’d with family back home and saw all the gang at Mom’s house for Thanksgiving. Was so good to talk to them. It helped reduce the sadness of not being there. Virtual hugs and kisses were sent over the fiber lines.

We enjoyed our time in La Paz, the people, the food and shopping but after nearly 2 weeks, it was time to move on.

November 30, 2017 – Let the preparation begin! The team all pitched in to get ready for departure from La Paz, as well as Dave busting a nut to get the woodwork in reasonable shape before leaving since our cheap and not so trusty Mexican workers left us hanging (didn’t finish the job they claimed would be done today). Anila’s starboard side looks beautiful while the port side looks like a scrappy dog. Oh well, the workers were on Mexican time and busy on other boats.

The girls and I busied ourselves with vacuuming, cleaning, doing dishes, stowing, assisting Dave with woodwork, raising dinghy, filling water tanks, organizing our food provisions, cleaning toilets/sinks and the ever pleasant gray water holding tank clean out. Camille asked why I didn’t feel like throwing up from the wretched odor emanating from it.  I told her, “I’m just breathing through my mouth.” She winced and grimaced with each sponge rinse.  Kyra scoured off the lid which was equally as gross. Was a productive preparation day!  Felt good so we headed out to Rustico pizza with Sassafrass (Jake, Burgandy, Violet) and kids from The Answer (Makenna and Shay). The atmosphere was amazing and the food very delicious. We topped it off with gelato from the Guilieta y Romeo gelato place.

December 1 – Left La Paz with sadness to say good-bye to friends but looking forward to exploring more towns.

Despite going to bed late after finishing stowing stuff up on deck, I woke early and couldn’t sleep so I trotted off for a much needed shower in the marina. Figured I should enjoy the full, wide, big shower before we head off. We met so many wonderful people while in La Paz: from Debbie that cut our hair to kid boats and dogs – it was a fantastic 2 weeks in La Paz. A bit hard to say good-bye but really looking forward to new adventures, islands, beaches and ports.

Some day we will have to return to go further up into the Sea of Cortez and visit the islands.

Got gas at Costa Baja – super easy and convenient location to gas up. Diesel was 18.75 pesos a liter (17.15 per liter plus 1.60 per liter dock surcharge). Seems if you stay the night at the marina you get a discount of 0.40 per liter). I suggested filling our jugs to save money while we had the rental car to fill our fuel tanks, but that didn’t go over well with Dave. Filling four 5 gallon jugs at a time, lugging them down the dock, pouring them into the tanks and repeating 10 times was not Dave’s idea of fun. We opted to pay the surcharge and pull up at the fuel dock. Well worth it and good decision!

I really wish Dave wouldn’t make a command decision to cut a corner as we swung around into the Sea of Cortez, thinking it’s high enough tide and deep enough. He claimed to be “watching” the depth and would adjust course as needed. However, at 9 feet, seeing the bottom, rocks and all the tropical fish up close was not my idea of fun (when we draft 7’9″).  I really don’t want to save time and hit the bottom. It sure got shallow really fast. Ugh!