June 2005 La Paz to Agua Verde

This is a brand new marina in La Paz. It is called Costa Baja and we left Fortuitous here when we went off to Vancouver. It is now the beginning of June, 2005. It is a very safe marina and, because it's new, no one is here. We got a couple of months free here, so it was a deal we poor cruisers couldn't refuse.

We could tie Fortuitous right across the two slips because the marina was so empty. This is great because we are now in hurricane season, although the danger isn't usually until September or October.

The marina is blasted out of rock, and there is a large sand spit in front of it where they are building condos. The only problem, in a hurricane, would be all the debris from construction.

Here we are trying to stay cool...that's my story, and I'm sticking to it! The pool was inconvenient because you had to walk right around the whole marina to get to it. Most of us took our dinghies over because, if you walked, by the time you got back to the boat, you were all hot and sweaty again!

Ralph went off for one of his usual hikes through the cactus. This is a a cactus flower he discovered.

And yet another.

One of the local stores in La Paz.












This is Balandra Bay on Isla Carmen. It looks tropical and green, but that's just the sun.









And yet another beautiful sunset, courtesy of the cameraman.

When we anchored, in Evaristo, we found it to be quite shallow, as you can see. We anchored first and Endeavour (Kim and Linda) anchored, inside of us, and closer to shore. Unfortunately, with a lower than normal tide, and a swing toward shore, they were awakened, at 6:30 am, when their boat was aground and listing to starboard.

Kim had the nerve to wake us, at this ungodly hour, to give them some help and advice. We have become great friends, so we had to “rise” to the occasion. Unfortunately, we couldn’t really do much until the tide came back in…and in it came about 4 loooong hours later. All learned a valuable lesson about keeping more water under the keel!

From Evaristo anchorage, we, along with other cruisers (Al on ‘Effie’ and John on ‘Java’ pictured here) hiked over to the salt flats. Here they pump seawater out on the land and let the sun do the work of evaporation.

They are left with large crystals of salt, which they shovel into bags labeled “azúcar”…which means sugar in Spanish…go figure?? There were a lot of animal droppings in this area so one wonders about the quality of the salt!

These were palapas for the fishermen.

Not exactly a comfortable way to live.

John, on Semonship, was getting ready to head home but decided to go for one last sail up to see us.

Next stop, Agua Verde. This was a lovely anchorage and was full of boats. We arrived here just before Canada Day.

There we are, with our sunshade up, farthest to the right. Endeavour is beside us.

This shot, believe it or not, is taken inside what passes as a tienda (store) in Agua Verde, north of Los Gatos. In the background, you can see me stooped over. I’m getting eggs. You bring your own cartons, and fill them up and then they weigh them. This was a very unfortunate purchase because I got two dozen rotten eggs!! No one refrigerates eggs here, and I haven’t had a problem before. I’ve kept them, on the boat, for up to 3 weeks with no problem. However, these were rotten right from the start. They passed the sink/float test, but were just gross!!! Ahhh, the joys of provisioning in the wilds of the Baja!!

It is just this little palapa and Maria, the proprietor, gets deliveries of fresh stuff once or twice a week. There are bags of things hanging from the rafters, a couple of coolers, a “freezer” and a few boxes of odds and sods.

This is, unfortunately, as good a picture as we have taken of the rays we have seen. All you see is their little wing tips sticking out of the water. These little ones travel in large schools. They leap out of the water and land flat on the surface.

We were in Agua Verde for our Canada Day celebration. ‘Endeavour’ put up several flags and we, not to be outdone, dug out all of ours and raised them for the day. In honour of this occasion, Ralph put on his teletubby suit! Not really, he was just going to do some snorkeling. You can see him getting into the dinghy. This is as close as we’ve gotten to an actual photo of us in the suits…we’ll wait until the digital returns (that’s my excuse for not being dressed in mine, and I’m sticking with it!). Fish swim right up to us, when we’re in these suits, I think they think we’re just a much larger version of themselves! You can see it was a little windy that day!

We had a potluck, on the beach, for Canada Day. We had just as many Americans there…or maybe more! One cruiser, Margaret on ‘Effie’ made each Canadian a fancy card and a pair of red and white earrings for the ladies. She didn’t have maple leaves, so they have oak leaves at the bottom. It was a great gift.

Her husband, Al, and another American cruiser supplied guitar accompaniment to a sing-a-long on the beach, after dinner. We had a great time!!

Next, we planned to hit San Juanico but it was very windy and there was big swell coming right into the anchorage. So, instead, we headed around the corner and into a little bay called Ramada Cove.

From here, we hiked over to have a look at San Juanico. What a beautiful Bay!








Linda and I walked back around by the road, while Ralph and John hiked back to Ramada.








On the way over to San Juanico, we saw some of the biggest cactus we had seen up close. You can see the size from this photo. We’ve been told they only grow 2 cm a year…that makes this one really old…older than me!!














This is a terrific shot looking out towards the water.












While we were in San Juanico, we left our names on a shell at the Cruisers' Shrine. No one knows how this got started, but all are supposed to do this as they pass this area. We looked for an offering from Dazo, my brother's boat, but couldn't find it.