06-18 Bahia Candeleros
It took me all morning and early afternoon to upload pictures
and get the blog posted for up to yesterday, but I finally did it around 2:30
in the afternoon. Soooooooooooooo, we
rewarded ourselves with an afternoon by the pool at the resort, wheeeeee!! Nice!
After that we had dinner at the nicer of the two restaurants
with Bob & Sherry, who were doing pretty much the same thing we were all
day. Nice dinner and good company!
06-19 Bahia Candeleros
Today was a kick around day on the boat, catching up on
stuff, reading and napping. Another
toaster of a day!! Yesterday was 98
degrees and today feels about the same.
We had dinner aboard and will be taking the free air-conditioned
shuttle bus to Loreto tomorrow to wander around town and check it out. It looks like a lovely place.
06-20 Bahia Candeleros
This morning was Dick’s first day as the Net Controller on
the Sonrisa Net (a ham net). He did a great job, of course!! And after the net we, Bob and Sherry went to
the resort prepared to go to Loreto on the 9:00 shuttle. Well…. Because we are boaters, we have second
priority for catching the shuttle to the resort guests. It turns out that the 9:00 shuttle was full
and since we did not want to be walking around town in 100 degree heat, we
signed up for the 6:00 p.m. shuttle that evening. Sherry & I were prepared for swimming and
reading by the pool, just in case, so that’s what we did. The boys went back out to the boats to do
things like charge the batteries and other “things”. They joined us around lunch time and we ate
at the more casual restaurant. It was a
lovely day at the pool.
Since we were prepared for town, we went and changed in the
restrooms and off to Loreto we went for dinner.
It was a lovely drive on a looooooooong dirt/gravel road to the highway
and then about 15 miles to town. Since
the last shuttle pick-up was at 9:00, we had to hussle down to the restaurant old
town square area to see some things Bob & Sherry wanted to point out to us
and to get dinner, including the best margarita “in the world”. Well… it was quite good anyway. The bartender recommended a restaurant
“Papagayo’s” (I think it was), which was excellent! We enjoyed the meal quickly and took a taxi
back to the hotel where the shuttle was to pick us up. No pictures as it was already late in the day
and then dark. We will go back to Loreto
in a couple days when we get over by it with Journey.
The resort had Karaoke night going on so we stopped there and
I got to close the night with Tracy Chapman’s “Gimme one Reason”. Fun!
We were both hoping for a good night sleep, as it has been
too hot to sleep really well, but first it got rolly in the anchorage and then
the wind came up at about 3:00 a.m. Dick
got up a bunch of times trying to chase some banging noise that sounded like a
cupboard door banging, but he couldn’t find it.
Then the wind came up and we stopped rolling so the banging noise
stopped. However, when the wind came up
he had to take down the sun shade.
Needless to say, it wasn’t a good night sleep…
06-21 Bahia Candeleros
We were going to move on today, but we decided to stay
another day. It was looking to be
another HOT one as well although there was a nice breeze in the morning. Dick went to shore so he could order more
books on his Kindle and I did some cleaning on the boat. We are having a dinner party with “Nirvana”
tonight. Wheeee, always fun!
The wind kicked up this afternoon to 20+ knots, so I had to
take down the sunshade! We are grateful
for the winds though as it keeps the temperature under 100 and a sense of
coolness (you notice I said “sense”).
While I was “sensing” coolness, I tried to recreate this sweet jalapeno
paste we had at the restaurant last night.
Recipe: You take equal
weight of jalapeno and your choice of Pinapples, Strawberries or Mango, or
pear. Any fruit that is sweet. Put in the blender together with honey (to
taste) and a little oil. Blend until
smooth. Bring to a boil for however long
it takes to get to the texture you would like.
Mmmmmmmm Yummy! Serve with fried crisp tortillas (chips or
tostada rounds work too). (Muy yummy –
D)
I fixed a delicious white-wine sangria, marinated chicken
fajitas with tortillas and fixin’s, Sherry brought rice and refried beans and
Bob brought his home-made guacamole!
Excellent!! OH and Sherry brought
a rum cake for with sweet cream for dessert!
Another lovely evening in the anchorage.
Beautiful stars and sliver moon! (Bob informed us it is waxing). A great way to spend the longest day of the
year.
06-22 Bahia Candeleros
Yep…. Still here! Not
leaving today either. The boat “Tantori”
showed up with Roger & Tori on board with their cat Mordecai. We havn’t seen them since La Cruz, where we
only saw them briefly. They are going to
have a sundowner party tomorrow night, so we will stay for that. We just did some more “hang-out-on-the-boat”
stuff today. There is always HOOTB stuff
to do (just made that up). (Amen - D)
Another lovely day in paradise! We decided we wanted to try the palapa restaurant
on shore by the kayak and paddle board rental place for lunch/brunch today
(depending on what they are serving). It
is amazing how much hotter it is on shore than on the water. The guys at the Palapa are super nice and
today they are serving fresh clams, quesadillas and fish tacos. Dick had the tacos, which he said were the
best he’s had yet in all of Mexico, and I had the quesadillas with sliced
avocado and ceviche.
Once we got back to the boat, I prepared turkey wraps with
cream cheese and that jalapeno paste spread on the tortillas, rolled up and
sliced. It was a really fun night with
Nirvana & Journey on Tantori. Lots
of catching up to do, lots of laughter.
“Whatever Happens in Mexico, Stays in Mexico”
06-24 Trip to Loreto
by Car
Bob made arrangements yesterday for a minivan to be delivered
to the resort so the six of us could go into Loreto by car. So, we met at 8:00 on the beach and headed
into Loreto. We were specifically
looking for the farmer’s market so we could get fresh veggies and fruits. It took a while, but we found it on the edge
of town. We all selected our pickin’s
and headed to town for brunch. We ate at
a lovely hotel on the malecon with a great view of the Sea and nice cool
breezes flowing through the restaurant.
Loreto is a really clean town, we all noticed! They also host the oldest mission on the west
coast. (Serra’s first – D)
We visited the super mercado they have in town and picked up
some more provisions. We drove around
town some more (Basic discovery – D) and then headed back. We stopped along the way at a new condominium
community that is still under construction.
It appears that a lot of units were built and then when the economy
tanked, the construction halted. It had an
odd feeling to it! We also stopped at a little
community called Juncalita (pronounced hoonkaleeta). This is a community of folks who came with
RV’s or trailers, started with sunshades and ended up building all kinds of
things around them, so that you can’t even see most of the RV’s or trailers
from the outside any more. Very
interesting! We also stopped at Puerto
Escondido to see what the lay of the land and water was, since we will be going
there next and probably tomorrow.
Sorry!! I didn’t take
ANY pictures :--( What a dork!
The wind blew hard last night, 20 knots sustained and gusts
25+ so sleep was difficult. It was flat
calm when we woke up in the morning though.
We had to pay our bill at the resort so Dick went in to settle it and we
readied the boat to weigh anchor and move to Escondido.
Well….. no wind was the story for the day. It was flat calm on the 6-mile trip. We actually turned it into a longer trip
because we needed to make water. So, we
cruised a couple of the islands, turned around and headed for the harbor.
It is an interesting harbor, in that they don’t have
slips. Well….they have 11 slips that are
taken up by charter fishing boats. The
rest of the harbor is filled with mooring balls and a big open space for
anchoring in about 45 feet of water. It
is what we call a “hurricane hole”, in that it is VERY protected from sea
surges, surrounded by land and break-water it is protected from wind to a fair
degree as well. Unfortunately, it makes for
a very HOT anchorage with very little wind.
As we found out on the land trip, they have a well-stocked store, yummy
restaurant, showers, laundry, lap pool and a hotel with nice restaurant up the
road.
We pulled in and figured out how the mooring balls worked and
picked one up. We decided to have a late
lunch/early dinner at the restaurant after Dick checked us in at the
office. He didn’t realize that he hadn’t
put our registration renewal in the ship papers when our friends brought us
mail back in April, so he had our expired registration in the ship papers
binder. He wasn’t sure he even had them at that point. So, they were going to
kick us out until we were able to produce a current registration. They let us stay the night though and
tomorrow to get the current copy to them.
Marilon, with Michael & Tiki are here so we went by to
visit them for a spell (it was Tiki’s birthday – D) and back to the boat to
settle in for the night and hopefully a good night sleep.
Well, sleep was not in order for the night. It was HOT, in the 80’s and no wind. We tried the big fan in back, but it wasn’t
enough to keep me asleep. I went up and
tried to sleep in the cockpit, but fish were jumping and keeping me awake, so I
went into the salon and slept on the couch off and on. At some point, Dick came and put the small
fan on the coffee table pointed at me. (Her hero – D J) I think I’ll be having siestas off and on
today.
The good news of the morning is that Dick found the current
registration amongst the pieces of mail he had stashed in the guest room. When our friends came to visit we got busy
doing stuff and he forgot to put the mail in its proper places by the time they
left. At least we have it!!
Since it was not a good night sleep, we both took siestas and
felt much better. It is another scorcher
today, but the breezes came up in the afternoon. We went in to the shore in the afternoon to
dip in the lap pool, which was nice and refreshing. Then we took showers and had an early dinner
at the restaurant there.
Bob and Sherry invited us over to play a board game called
“Dread Pirate”!! What fun! We followed that up with what we were hoping
would be a good night sleep.
06-27 Puerto Escondido
Indeed we got a much better night sleep. I slept in the salon on the couch with the
fan on me and the breezes, when they came up, coming through the hatch. I feel much better this morning and Dick got
a better night sleep too, but not quite as cool as mine.
This is our last day in Puerto Escondido as we are going to
start our trek back to La Paz. We have
to be back to catch a flight to the States on 7/9. We are going to a friend’s 60th
birthday party, so will be visiting for two weeks.
Didn’t do much today.
We were going to go to shore, but Dick started a back-up on the computer
and it did not go as planned. So, we
were babysitting the computer all day. Didn’t
really feel like doing much anyway, nor is there that much to do here besides
dip in the so-called lap pool and eat.
One could take the trail to Juncalita, but it is too hot for that.
Had a nice dinner aboard and looking for another good night
sleep.
06-28 Trip to Agua
Verde
We both got a pretty good night sleep! I was quite pleased!! We readied the boat after the morning nets
and dropped the mooring around 10:00. It
was a four hour trip back to Agua Verde, bypassing Candeleros. I was very happy to see Agua Verde again. It is such a pleasant anchorage and remains
my favorite in the Sea so far. We had
delicious breezes blowing across the boat keeping us nice and cool. I fixed a nice sautéed fish & veggie
dinner, we read a bunch and “hit the hay”.
06-29 Agua Verde
Since we love this anchorage so much, we are going to stay
today, float around the water and enjoy the cool breezes. They blew all night and kept us cool, so we
slept well, and are still blowing nicely this morning. We want to be back in La Paz by July 4th,
so we can celebrate with the local expats and get prepared to leave the boat
for two weeks. It will only take a
couple more days of travel to get to La Paz, so we can enjoy Agua Verde today.
We saw Las Brisas with Rich & Cathy aboard. Rich was our landlord at the Alameda Marina
for our office unit. He is the Harbor
Master there. They took a leave and did
the Ha-Ha this year too, and have been cruising the Sea of Cortez the whole
time since. They are flying home this
mid-July until October. They are
planning on doing the mainland this next season.
Also! Our friends
Mizzy & Brian on Alegria came sailing into the anchorage around lunch time.
They heard Dick on the morning net that
we were here and wanted to stop and say hello.
We hadn’t seen them since we left La Paz. They had been working on a couple of boat projects
that ended up taking a month to complete and had finally gotten out of the
harbor. We got to chat with them for a
bit before they headed farther north. It
was good to see them, they are such sweet people. We will be looking to see them later this
summer when we get back up here.
We got in the water to cool off, read, napped and had a nice
steak dinner before bed. We will leave
tomorrow.
It was a calm morning in the anchorage. No wind and we took off after the net. It was an uneventful day trip, about 7 hours,
to Everisto. The beautiful mountains are
just incredible. All wind was off the
bow, of course. This is the time of year
for winds out of the south. We arrived
at about 5:00 and dropped the anchor. We
anchored a little too far in with a high tide, so at 1:00 a.m. we were banging
on the bottom (ooops”!!!!) So, we had to
raise anchor and move a little away from the shore. Good thing too, because at 4:00 a.m. a big
“blow” started. We went from zero to 25
knot winds with gusts to 30. Thankfully
it ended about another hour later.
Neither of us were sleeping well anyway.
Oh well!
Nice breezes this morning.
Since we didn’t really get much sleep last night we will hang here a
day. Strong southerlies are blowing so
it will make beating against them difficult.
It was a pleasant day temperature wise. The nicest in a while! We never got too hot, just comfortable. We napped, read, had a nice Orange-Ginger
Chicken dinner and watched a movie before bed.
The winds never got above 10 knots out of the southeast, but the seas
were coming into the cove from the east.
This caused lots of boat noises in the aft cabin. So, it was an unpleasant evening for me. I was not able to sleep very well, yet
again. Dick slept out in the salon this
time because of the noise and so he could get up quickly and check things if
necessary.
It’s still rollie this morning, but a little better. I must have fallen asleep after sunrise and
after the swells settled down a bit, because I slept until almost 8:30!! I usually wake up before 7:00. We left for Caleta Partida after the nets.
The sky was hazy today and this is about a five-hour
trip. We will hole up there for the
night and head to La Paz tomorrow.
Well… what should have taken 5 hours took nearly 9
hours!! We were only able to do about
1.5 to 2.9 knots for our first 3 hours and then only between 3 & 4 knots
for a few after that. The seas were VERY
lumpy and short-period, plus the winds were between 15 – 20 knots right on the
bow. Yuk!! Oh Well, we made it just in time to prep for
dinner and try to get a good night sleep.
07-03 Trip to La Paz
Well the winds continued strong all night, but we had 180
feet of chain out, so we didn’t worry about dragging anchor. We also backed down on the 180 feet with 1500
RPMS and didn’t move! So There! Ha!
We’ve been “on the hook” now for over a month and I’m
looking forward to some dock time and getting excited about our quick trip to
the States. Headed back to Marina
Palmira today. We were up with the
sunrise and ready to go. The winds are
still up, but it doesn’t look like there are white caps out there. We’ll see.
Let’s hope this doesn’t take another 8 hours.
It wasn’t too bad at all.
We got there around noonish.
Right back in our usual slip.
Almost feels like home now. We
got all checked in and rested up. We
decided to dinner at the Dinghy Dock restaurant right there in the Marina and
get a good night sleep.
07-04 La Paz
4th of July!
We listened to the net this morning to find out if any local
celebrations were going on. We heard
some old friends on the radio, Nick & Nancy on “Jessie-Marie”. Got a hold of them and decided we’d go to the
party at La Costa restaurant. They have
their mini-van down here with them now and came and picked us up. It was $110 PESOS per person for a BBQ rib
dinner with vegies and BBQ beans. Pretty
yummy! We hung out for a bit and then
hit the road. We went by the Shack, but
Travis wasn’t there. The whole place is
a wreck because they are remodeling.
They have now rented the place next door and are going to have a 6-table
Italian Restaurant. They have changed
the current restaurant all around and are adding a little kitchen. We said hello to Rosie and the kids and went
home.
07-05 La Paz
I am working on figuring out what to take to the States and
Dick & Nick went off to do some “man shopping”. We had agreed to all meet at Marina Palmira
in the afternoon for the pool during the hottest part of the day. I did some cleaning around the boat and
rinsed the outside off. It was terribly
dirty, dusty and salty and we’ve got to put sail and rail covers on and get
them secured before we leave.
Nick & Nancy came over at 1:30 and we hung out in and
around the pool for a couple hours, then we went and tried this fabulous
restaurant we heard about from Mizzy & Brian called “Il Rustica”. It is an Italian restaurant with
pizza’s. It was fabulous! (I want to come back here often – D) Come to
find out they have a B&B associated to them as well. The rooms were $55 & $65 US dollars per
night! Excellent dinner! We went back to the Shack to check on their
progress. They got the new grill &
hood installed in the new location and some cleaning done, but it still looks a
wreck.
07-06 La Paz
It was a HOT morning this morning. It is already hot at 6:30 a.m. and no wind or
breeze, so it will probably be another pool afternoon. Gotta get stuff done before it gets hot! Today was “girl shopping” day. I met Nancy down town at 9:30 am to do a
little looking around and have lunch.
Went back to the Marina about 2:00 and got in the pool immediately!!
It was Travis’s birthday, the owner of the Shack, so we went
there for a fabulous shrimp spaghetti dinner. There were only 11 of us and it
was a private dinner that Rosie cooked up, with cake for dessert. It was wonderful! (A good time was had – D) Yum Yum! The breeze came up finally at night after we
got home.
07-07 La Paz
Gotta run some more errands, get packed and work on this blog. It was another scorcher today too however
there was a cloud cover, which only meant it was humid for a change. It was 94 degrees, with a heat intex of 99
degrees at 7:30 in the evening, after sundown.
We went to the Panga restaurant for dinner because we know it is air-conditioned. It was very difficult getting to sleep. We are ready for some Bay Area weather.
07-08 La Paz
One more day…. Just
trying to get through the heat. Have all
the last minute things to do to the boat before we leave tomorrow. It is already hot this morning at 7:30. We spent this day getting ready to go and IN
THE POOL!!
