Second day of riding in Todos Santos. You know what hurts the most after 4 months of not riding is the part you park on the bike seat….
….after riding up and down hills during 30+ degree Celsius we stumbled across a fab Oceanside restaurant, el Faro! It was quite the culinary experience where we enjoyed Tartar Atún and tacos pescado/camaron.
I woke up after had slept in a bed that didn’t move and headed to the coffee shop! Compared to la Paz, it’s very lush on this side of Baja.
After coffee we went to the bike shop to rent bikes and we hit the trails.
Spectacular service was provided to us by the owner, David from Arizona with a cold cervesa after our ride. Mucho Gracias!
I took the bus from La Paz to Todos Santos…. Todos Santos is a MUST. Fun art is displayed all over town!
And had a long shower…
That’s my morning… and I love it. The gurgling of the current rushing by the hull woke me up this morning. It was super strong As it had been a very high tide. I keep trying to scrape the haul but the current is too strong… every morning while enjoying my coffee, the dolphins swim by. They are usually a gang of 10ish. Then I swim with schools of fish. Today, I joined the morning yoga at the little club for expats. I’m not sure who pays for this but it’s free to participants. It felt good to stretch and do some light strength training. Most definitely a routine I’d like to get into. After yoga, I joined the members for coffee, $1/cup. They have the radio running so boaters can connect throughout La Paz. People call in and ask to borrow tools, ask questions and stay connected. It is quite the community!
Last night a group of us went to TRIVIA night in one of the bars. This is every Thursday and you can just join a team and play. The theme last night was holiday, winter sports and weather. Super fun!
Back on the boat I fed my kombucha, filled up the water tank, baked some bread and went for another swim.
Tonight, “S/V Willow”, a couple from Toronto, is coooking pasta on their boat for a few people.
Time to jump into the water again to see if the current has settled down enough to scrape the bottom….
I’ve been looking for some type of transportation device, while on land, for awhile now and I finally found the one…. a “one-wheeler”!!! Now I have to just learn how to use it well. It is small, can go fast, will provide hands free for blogging 😜…and will give me some ankle and core stability and strength..LOL! WINWIN!
It’s going to be fun!
I also managed to get some information about windsurfing and wingfoiling, and spearfishing lessons. Another good day!
After an evening of music, good food and connecting with the sailing community I went to bed fairly early! The town of La Paz has a 0700 wake up alarm, so a sleep in morning was not an option! I strolled the Malacon while waiting for the port office opened so I could pay my monthly anchor fee of $37 US. Today is a bit cooler than yesterday as wind and clouds are present! I also found a decent size supermarket where I bought some staples! Back at the boat I spent another couple of hours in the water scraping the barnacles off the hull and replacing the worn gib sheet.
Yesterday, I walked around La Paz to get the lay of the land. I found coffee shops, a Marine store, SEARS (where I bought a new phone for 200$, with a monthly plan of 30$ to be renewed if I WANT to, or it just expires, how civilized!) and lots of cute shops. I checked out the dive shops and booked snorkling for when Nanaimo peeps come next week. The whale sharks are just starting to arrive to La Paz. There are six in the bay currently however many are expected to arrive by mid December. The marina I tie up my zodiac to is a secure dock with showers, restaurant and an “expat meeting place” and a small library, run by the expat organization. I also ran into a few bajahaha sailors that I had met in Bahia Santa Maria. Great day with connecting with many sailors from B.C., Canada and California.
Today felt like a real La Paz Day. I went into town early to have coffee with the local Ex-Pats. They were setting up a swap meet so I scored some items for the boat. Back on my boat, I decided to change the zinks on the prop shaft. I tied screw drivers and Allen keys to a rope and tied it to my weight belts and started the job. Pretty soon, schools of fish joined me. Wow, what a play ground I have for my back yard!!! I also scraped barnacles off the rudder, and inspected the rest of the hull. A bajahaha sailor popped by and reminded me that the final bajahah party was tonight… So off I went…
I’ve now had two full days in La Paz and I’m really enjoying the downtime and not chasing wind… and sometimes avoiding it! We arrived on Friday mid–day tired. Tired from waking up at 03.00 to make the favourable current through Lorenzo channel. Coming into la Paz, it was evident that this is a popular and a growing community. Elaborate homes along the coast are being built. However mostly smaller than what the rest of North Americas new homes are. Sarantium motored into the long miendering channel with sand bars on either side of her. This channel is dug out in some places to allow for decent clearance of 4-6 meters of depth. We looked around and decided to anchor outside of Marina La Paz, but on the outside of the channel, as traffic might be busy with boats coming and going.
We dropped the anchor, got out of our sail clothing and quickly jumped into the zodia. I was so looking forward to fresh fruit and vegetables and of course a stiff drink with a big Mexican meal. We started with the stiff drink and worked backwards. After our meal by the beach of the Melacon, we found a dark alley with fresh produce and loaded up as much as we could carry. In our possession, we had fresh dates, mangos, prickly pear, avacodo, small bananas, to mention a few. It was time to get back to the boat and organize food, have a swim and go to bed. I slept like a log!
Sailaway Sarantium 