Tom and I have heard the jokes about cruisers referring to La Paz (The Peace) as a place that is difficult from which to leave, calling it Velcro Bay and Bungee Bay, hard to get unstuck and always getting pulled back.
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| Tom, Gene (La Brisa), bartender Conchita, and Nick (Iolanthe), hangin' loose in La Paz |
In addition to La Paz being a wonderful city where there is always something going on, turns out it's a great place to just hang out, fix things and do numerous boat repairs. There seems to be a plethora of repair shops and resources, not to mention numerous cruisers and ex-pats who know where and how to get stuff done. Here in Marina Palmira we have our boat managers Ross Marine Services, plus the fairly new La Paz Cruiser's Supply, Techs Mex, and finally Cross Marine Works, whose expertise has been invaluable to us. In La Paz a simple task like shopping or purchasing a part usually only takes 1/2 to 3/4 of a day, not the entire day as it does elsewhere. Heck, the other day I did a morning run to the pharmacy, left via shuttle at 9:00 and walked back to the boat by 11:00 a.m., a record!
In the past few weeks we have entertained ourselves with a couple of days and nights of Carnaval...
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| La Paz Police Force gets ready to keep "la paz" at Carnaval |
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| Juguete, Swan, Cinnabar and Victory enjoy the parade from Tailhunter's third floor patio. |
...including nightly fireworks, parades, and persistently loud tuba music until 02:00 a.m. At about 02:05 the music would be drowned out by a cacophony of sirens which must have been the La Paz Police Force's way of saying "SHUT UP!!" The sirens continued until about 02:30. After a couple of nights of this we escaped to La Ventana for the remainder of Carnaval.
The marina has a shuttle that will drop us off in town and I have been enjoying exploring the downtown with its little shops, markets and coffee houses, and then the walk back through the neighborhoods or along the Malecon.
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| Planter of recycled materials at DoceCuarenta, my favorite espresso bar. |
La Paz is the capital of the state of Baja California Sur, and it feels like a capital compared to other places we have been in Baja. There are numerous resources, very few unhealthy stray animals, and even the sidewalks seem to be much better than other places we have been in Mexico. Even so, they are not perfect and we see a lot of this...
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| One of the nicer sidewalks (but unmarked, 3-level change!) |
...and scratch our heads at this:
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| It was funny watching her trying to walk down that sidewalk. |
We have enjoyed hanging out at Marina Palmira and meeting other cruisers who have chosen a liveaboard lifestyle.
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| Sylvia, crew of Pac Cup's first all female doublehanded boat (2004), with Jeanne (sv Eagle), crew of Pac Cup's first all female fully-crewed boat (1994). |
I'm amazed at the number of cruisers who have pets on board. Most are small as you might imagine...
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| Gene and Ace from La Brisa |
...but check out this pet owned by our dock neighbors aboard Victory!
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| Dawn and Odin the Great Dane |
Last week a "Classic Northerly" blew threw and caused quite a bit of excitement in town. We had plenty of warning so that morning we re-secured the boat, pulled down the canvas, and battened down the hatches before heading down to Marina La Paz for the monthly swap meet. Waves were splashing over the Malecon, high winds carried sand and earth throughout the city, and several boats dragged anchors and drifted to shore. Down at Marina La Paz the patrons of the swap meet were entertained by one boat that came in, tried to dock, and was promptly blown into some other boats.
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| Tom and others fend off with boat hooks, while others try to pull the boat to their dock. |
Everybody jumped to help and eventually the boat was secured safely to its dock with little or no damage to it or other boats.
Over the past couple of weeks we have worked hard to get Cinnabar ready to cast off her lines in La Paz and head north. The Ross's helped us get some engine and genset parts down here via personal courier (other cruisers flying back from the U.S.) and Rob from Cross Marine Works helped us replace our engine injectors.
Tom worked a couple of days replacing a failing part (exhaust elbow) on our diesel genset but was frustrated and baffled when he couldn't get it to fire up. Good fuel, clean air, strong starter, electrical engine cutoffs operational - yet the motor just would not start. Finally, he suspected some dust/crud had fallen down into the exhaust port around a valve seal, not allowing the exhaust valve to close, and thus causing insufficient compression; but he couldn't figure out how to easily fix it. Rob Cross, mechanic extraordinaire, arrived this morning with some magic "Engine Cleaner" spray. Tom's thinking "yeah, right - these miracle elixirs never work". After one spray into the intake manifold and a 5 minute wait, the motor jumped to life. "No Way!". The cleaner cleared the crud. Bravo!
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| Miracle worker Rob, tools of the trade, and his happy customer. |
Our sails are on, dodger/bimini/solar panels installed, our neighbors on A-Train drove us to Chedraui Supermercado yesterday for a big provisioning run...
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| Who says you can't find what you need in Mexico? |
...I've downloaded books from the e-library, and we hope to cast off Wednesday morning. It will be sad to bid adieu to some people whom we are just getting to know, but we look forward to getting to know some more folks better when we return to La Paz in May. Anyway, since our homes are boats who knows where we might run across these crazy cruisers again?
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| "I thought it was an adventure, and in reality it was life." |
Life is an adventure.
More pictures from the past few weeks are HERE.
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