Repairs in Bahia Concepcion, Surfing Trip to Scorpion Bay/San Juanico

State-of-the-art weather station predicted good weather for our trip. Read on...

This year our annual trip to visit the McGuires in Bahia Concepcion was by land, not by sea. After assessing some of the damage to their property (courtesy of Hurricane Odile) Mike sent us a shopping list and Tom and I headed off to the La Paz Home Depot to pick up items such as outdoor lights, ceiling fans, bags of dry-wall repair, buckets of stucco repair, and much, much more. It was quite an experience to try to find the correct materials when reading directions in a foreign language! My eye gets a nervous tic just thinking about it. Luckily, our relationship survived the shopping trip (barely), we loaded up the tundra with the materials and the next day (March 24) drove north to Bahia Concepcion.

We arrived about an hour after dark, and were soon comfortably at rest in the private Casita of Casa de los Suenos. It felt very odd to be perched high up in the Casita and not have Cinnabar anchored below as part of the view.

What's missing from this picture? No red boat!!

Luckily, the Casita seemed untouched by the hurricane. The only drama was one night a huge centipede tried to eat my arm, but luckily Tom managed to squash it after a high speed chase through the Casita. Did you know that centipedes can run up to 16" per second?

Picture from "What's That Bug?", but my centipede looked JUST LIKE this one, same size, but a pretty green color.

The next few days were spent enjoying the area, snorkeling (me), and helping out with repairs (Tom). 

Tom and Mike doing one of the numerous light/fan repairs.

The annual surfing trip to Scorpion Bay was on the agenda, so after a few days of Home Improvement, we loaded up our two trucks, Tom and I in one, and the McGuires (including cousin Preston and friend Mackenzie) in another, and set off across the Baja for the Pacific side.

Preston, Mac and Savanah make breakfast for us before the trip.

There were many spots along the highway, including entire bridges, that had been washed out by hurricane Odile. Most of the sinkholes were marked merely by white rocks, dead cacti, or other debris, so we had to drive carefully to avoid the treacherous areas. 

Random rocks and stuff = Warning! Sink hole or road washed out!

This entire bridge was destroyed by the hurricane and flooding.

We missed our turnoff, and ended up on an hour or so detour across the Baja outback.  Stephanie and I were skeptical that we would ever make it to our destination, and wondered if we would be camping outdoors or taking shelter in a goat farm...

These goats were the only traffic we saw on our off-road adventure.

...but we eventually popped out at the highway and soon found our campsite at Scorpion Bay/San Juanico.

We made it! Maybe we'll survive after all.

The campsite overlooked the entire Scorpion Bay and the view was stunning...

Sunrise over Scorpion Bay

...but one night in the mosquito-infested palapa was more than enough for me, and I moved myself back into the Tundra so I could get some decent nights' sleeps.

Go ahead...ask Stephanie and me what we think about palapa living.

The first day everyone grabbed their boards and headed down to enjoy some of the some of the best surfing in the world, while Stephanie and I enjoyed some relaxing "alone" time reading and walking along the bluff. Scorpion Bay has something like six different surfing spots, ranging from long beginner waves to very advanced waves out around the point.

The kids head for the most excellent surf break. (photo M. McGuire)

The town of San Juanico is all about surfing, but they do have a couple of stores and restaurants. We ate at El Burro restaurant a couple of times.

Mesa para uno, por favor?? (photo M. McGuire)

Mac just turned 18 and is old enough to drink in MX! Just kidding, give our drinks back girls.

...And had the best fresh halibut tacos ever at Christy's Tacos and Burgers.

Christy rules her kitchen with a wicked spatula.

We had heard that Bobby and Denise Davidson might join us, and sure enough, our second day there we spied the familiar Vanagon driving into the camping area. These road warriors had just completed a 3-day marathon trip from Santa Cruz California to join us! 

The Davidsons and their intrepid Vanagon. 

Tom and Bobby were happy to be back on such world-class waves, and Mackenzie, Savanah and Preston were soon surfing like champs. The waves at Scorpion Bay were so amazingly easy, and the water so warm, that even I gave surfing a shot. 

It kinda looks like I'm about to catch this wave with expert surfer BobbyD. Looks can be deceiving, LOL!! (photo M. McGuire)

I got as far as surfing on my knees and never actually made it up, but I still had a great time. 

Tom and BobbyD after a great session.

We had arrived just before Semana Santa, the Easter holy week, which is the traditional time for families to camp at the beaches for a week of celebration. While we were there the long beach became absolutely packed with families that had set up large compounds with tents, fire pits, outdoor showers, and a stage for entertainment. 

Public beach PACKED with families.

Families enjoying the water.

The McGuires had to get Mackenzie back to Mulege for her flight home to the SF Bay Area, and Kelston would soon be arriving from Colorado so, much to Stephanie's dismay (NOT!) the McGuires left us and only the Vanagon and the Tundra remained. 

After BobbyD and Denise had made the long trip down to Baja no way were Tom and I going to leave so quickly, so we spent another glorious 2 days surfing, enjoying the local color, and meeting other surf vagabonds.

All happy after the guys enjoy their last day of surfing.

Denise and the hunks.

Denise tries to remove all the nasty stickers from their rug.

These little buggers (aka goat heads, devil's weed, puncture vine) got everywhere!!

When it was time for BobbyD and Denise to continue their road trip to Arizona, we followed them along the washed out roads all the way to Ciudad Insurgentes...

We follow the Vanagon to Insurgentes.

...and then we went our separate ways. They headed back up the Baja and Tom and I continued our return to La Paz.

We had heard about a little town on Bahia Magdalena famous for its whale watching, so we turned off the highway to Lopez de Mateos to check it out. 

The whales had pretty much gone for the season, but the town was busy with fishing and we enjoyed a tailgate lunch on the beach.

We arrived back in La Paz before sunset...

Cows on the freeway? Yep, we're back in La Paz.

...tired from our adventure, but happy to have spent an exceedingly fun time with great friends.

Now we just had to rest up and get ready for meeting Tom's cousins in Cabo, the arrival of my friend Dina, and our trip to Antigua for Classic Race Week. More on that soon!

Album: Bahia Concepcion and Scorpion Bay

Once again our beloved Tundra gets it done.

Dinghy Name Has Been Decided! And We Finally Leave Bahia Concepcion

First of all, a huge shout out to the McGuire Family and Casa de Los Suenos for letting us anchor out and use their facilities for an entire month. Wow! If it weren’t for Joe we would likely still be there, but read on for more about that.

Second shout out to our friends Joe and Lisa who not only came to visit us, but brought us some of our favorite supplies so we could restock our stores. Thanks to them Cinnabar is now brimming with my favorite, super strong TJ’s Irish Breakfast Tea, Tom’s favorite Peet’s Coffee, TJ’s granola bars and TJ’s chocolate covered almonds. Yum!! Lisa even brought me a bonus pack of assorted black and green teas. Love her.

We Leave Bahia Concepcion - Joe was quite keen to see more of the Sea of Cortez, so two days after our infamous “Best Day Ever” in Bahia Concepcion, we weighed anchor and motored out of our favorite anchorage bound for Puerto Escondido, just south of Loreto, as our ultimate destination. I wish I could say our departure was uneventful, but we motored over a shoal and Cinnabar stubbed her toe in the sand, so to speak. Joe, Lisa and I leaned WAYYYYYY over the side of the boat while Tom plowed us out.

The chart said we could go there! But the sand said "NO".

The rest of the day was absolutely beautiful with no more mishaps. As we passed Isla San Idelfonso, where Tom and the others had caught all those yellowtail, we saw hundreds of pelicans soaring over and diving into the water. Birds in a feeding frenzy? That’s always a good sign for fish. Naturally Joe and Tom had the hand lines out, and a short time later we hooked a small yellowtail. While the guys discussed whether or not it was too small to keep, I grabbed the bottle of tequila and made a beeline for the fish. A few sprinkles into the gills and our beautiful catch went calmly to sleep forever.

Small but delicious.

Caleta San Juanico , Snorkeling and Fine Dining - By late afternoon we made it into the beautiful San Juanico anchorage. We decided we had just enough time for an afternoon snorkel before our happy hour, so we grabbed our gear, slipped into the water and kicked over to the nearest pinnacle. Yowza! We were amazed at all the sea life! There were schools of all sorts of reef fish swimming around the rocks, a turtle, schooling puffer fish, angel fish, schooling brown chromis, mullets and many, many more. To top it off, high atop the tallest pinnacle was an osprey nest with the two osprey gazing down at us with jaundiced eyes the whole time.

Dinner that night would be my favorite, our beautiful just-caught Hamachi thinly sliced sashimi style, and served as a tiradito a la Muelle Tres, my favorite restaurant in Ensenada. This had our Bahia Concepcion twist of serving it hand roll style, with fresh avocado, sushi rice, and nori.

Tom, Joe and Lisa enjoy a perfectly delicious dinner.

Add some cold beer and chilled white wine and it was pretty much a perfect meal, sigh. (Recipe at end of post.)

Heading to Puerto Escondido - The next morning we completed our trip down to Puerto Escondido. The sea was absolutely alive with all sorts of life, in the air and in the water. It seemed that every few minutes there was something new to see, whether they were hundreds of sea birds, sea lions basking in the water with fins up, or leaping mobula rays. One of the most exciting events was when I saw a weird standing wave off in the distance. What in the heck was that thing? Turns out it was hundreds of Pacific White-Sided dolphins in what looked like an absolute feeding frenzy. We headed their direction and tried to stay out of their way as they leaped in the air and dove toward their prey beneath them. We saw one or two more of these large dolphin boils and they were so close I even managed to get some shots with my little camera.

We sailed alongside Isla Carmen toward Puerto Escondido, enjoying the jaw-dropping view and lunching on freshly made fish tostadas. Thanks to Joe and Tom we got two great meals from our little yellowtail.

Our final excitement before pulling into Puerto Escondido was a couple of whale sightings. What a trip! We motored into the bay, carefully watching the depth of this notoriously shallow entrance, but managed to make it (barely) without stubbing our toe again. We found a mooring, and thanks to Joe and Lisa’s experience from their bare-boat charters we easily grabbed a mooring and secured Cinnabar.

We figured our friend Nick from Iolanthe was still in the area since last we heard he’d gone on the hard to wait for parts to repair his boat. We wondered if Telitha was still around, and as I stood on deck with binoculars, searching the anchorage for our friends, who should come gliding into the bay being towed by another boat, but Telitha!! Holy cow, what happened?? Turns out they’d had transmission problems and ended up being towed practically all the way from Agua Verde (about 22 nm) by the good Samaritans aboard Huck Finn. So, due to bad luck for everyone but us, the unlikely group of Cinnabar, Iolanthe and Telitha would be together once again.

That evening the Cinnabar crew spiffed up and took a taxi (driven by taxista Nestor) into Loreto for a last bit of shopping for Lisa and Joe, and our final dinner together. Loreto was practically deserted, with the only excitement being a claxon of mission bells followed by a parade of people entering the mission for 5:00 mass. We were in Loreto to enjoy the beautifully temperate and perfect evening, and after a starter of Margaritas...

 

...we managed to find a restaurant that served Tom’s favorite Baja Brewing Company microbrew! That, paired with a yummy Chile Relleno and Chocolate Clams Gratinee made for a delightful last dinner.

Almejas Chocolates Gratinee

Adios Lisa and Joe - The next morning, after helping us clean Cinnabar’s deck (Lisa and Joe sure know how to get invited back) our guests packed their bags, we stuffed a cooler full of frozen fish for them to transport home, and we loaded them into Nestor’s taxi, bound for Loreto airport.

Joe, Lisa, Tom and taxista Nestor

Pictures of Weeks #3 and #4 in Bahia Concepcion, and our trip down to Puerto Escondido, can be found HERE.

Since Lisa and Joe departed, we have spent time cleaning the boat, enjoying the beautiful Puerto Escondido anchorage, and trying to entice our cruising pals away from spending all their time doing boat repairs. Actually, that’s not too difficult, but more about that in another post…

Dinghy Name Update – Believe it or not we finally decided on a dinghy name. Yes! After all this time! Thank you again to everyone who submitted all the absolutely brilliant names. Here they are and I hope I remembered every one:
Cinnabarbary Coaster
Cinnabun
Dinghy Dong
Galena Ballena
Minibar
Mini-Cinni
Minipad
Quicksilver
To-the-bar
Vermilion
 
We might not have picked your favorite, but we went with the one that “felt right” to us.  A couple of weeks before they decided to come out, Joe submitted Quicksilver as his entry. Miraculously, we both liked Quicksilver, also mercury, associated with Cinnabar, also a common name in the Santa Clara Valley, and with the likely nickname of “Quickie”. So Quicksilver, aka “Quickie” it is.

Joe and Quicksilver, aka "Quickie"

And the grand prize was…winner got to visit us on Cinnabar! OK, in the interest of full disclosure, let’s just say that anyone who submitted an entry was eligible to visit, as well as anyone who thought about submitting an entry, as well as anyone who thought we were bonkers for even thinking we should name our dinghy. In other words, EVERYONE is invited to visit us! Come on guys, last chance is NOW because in a few weeks we will be in La Paz putting Cinnabar away for the summer.

But if you can’t visit us this time around, you should at least try making our favorite yellowtail dish. Here is our recipe. If you don't have yellowtail you can use any type of sushi grade fish...

RECIPE - YELLOWTAIL/HAMACHI TIRADITO

Ingredients:

• Very fresh yellowtail, thinly sliced into bite-size pieces, chill on platter; (or use any kind of sushi-grade fish if yellowtail is not available
• Soy sauce or Tamari
• Toasted sesame oil
• Toasted sesame seeds
• Minced fresh ginger
• Juice from 1-2 small limes
• Chopped fresh cilantro or basil
• Avocado, 1-2 sliced
• Freshly ground pepper
• Optional: diced jalapeno/Serrano peppers or dribbles of Salsa Martajada

Method:

Spread fish slices out onto large plate overlapped or in a single layer. (I like to chill for 30 minutes if not already refrigerated.) Dribble lightly with soy sauce and sesame oil. Sprinkle with minced fresh ginger and sesame seeds. Add fresh, diced peppers or Salsa Martajada, or serve on the side. Just before serving squeeze some fresh lime over the top and sprinkle with freshly ground pepper and fresh cilantro or basil. Arrange avocado slices on top of or around yellowtail, or serve alongside if making hand rolls.

Serve with chips or tostadas, or use for sushi or hand rolls by serving with white or sushi rice, nori and a ponzu sauce made of soy, lime juice and wasabi.