Crossing the Sea of Cortez

Sorry, it's been a while! I think something in me changed somewhere along the way as we crossed the Sea of Cortez. I went from counting the days until we might return to San Diego to... (get ready for this one) simply enjoying myself, enjoying being on this amazing trip and simply living in the moment.

Could that explain why I've neglecting writing on this travel blog? Maybe...

In my last days in La Paz and in Baja California, a wonderful friend of mine, Rocio, dropped in for a visit. Since she's actually from La Paz and needed to visit her family and establish business contacts for the scuba diving store she manages, her visit was not for us. Yet we still totally took advantage and had her bring us our mail. Crazy things happen when you go through months and months of mail in one sitting - over 80% of it goes straight to the recycling bin!

I'd never realized how much junk came in!

With a hitchhiker we crossed the Sea of Cortez. This took nearly 3 days. She was nervously headed towards Guadalajara to meet up with her boyfriend. Why was she nervous? She hadn't seen him in over a year! Long time to be away from the one you love...

As we got closer to Mazatlan, two things startled me to no end. The first was the humidity. Baja is a desert. Mainland Mexico is a tropical area. The difference is overwhelming! More trees, more birds, more flowers, more insects, and much much more moisture in the air. Suddenly everything in the boat felt wet.

Our final morning as we neared the crossing, we discovered a dozen new hitchhikers on the boat.

They didn't make it.

Squids! I stopped counting at 10. It was a mass suicide. They were everywhere. I kept finding them until days later hidden and tucked under boat parts.

Mazatlan is a cool town. A big town. We spent 3 days harbored near the Old Town of Mazatlan. This harbor is also conveniently located where the city spits out its sewage. Although we thoroughly enjoyed  taking the bus to the public market, our prime goal of being able to jump out the boat and enjoy the water was simply never going to come true here. So we headed South in search of warmer waters, and a place to anchor and play in the water maybe even the waves.

We visited la Isla San Isabel. A small island for the birds and fisherman. An island where the birds have no prey and allow you a bird's eye view of their hatchery. I will leave you with chirpy pictures...

What Do You Do?

Full Moon Over La Paz

People often ask: "What do you guys do over there?"  The majority of our time is not spent sailing, or actually boating around if you want.

I'd say the majority of our time is spent either just sitting, reading, listening to the music or Howard Stern on Sirius, and our evenings are spent watching our favorite shows (right now that would be Shameless, Walking Dead and Californication).

One of our new activities is to just sit and talk with or without music in the background. We're actually talking! We never really talked during our racing years. Our lives were consumed with racing. But now we talk about our dreams, about our future or about certain feelings of hopelesness we often feel in regards to societal change.

I know right? How byzarre!

And then there are the attempts at being social. We're discovering really cool places for live music and art in general. We do our best to stay away from the mainstream popular gringo places "where the Americans hang out to listen to real rock & roll" (barf) and try to find locals singing and strumming the guitar.

We have errands. Often. As I've mentioned before, everything can pretty much be found in Mexico, but most often the things we want and find are in smaller quantities. There are no mega packs of 40 AA batteries here... Four to six MAX to a package! Everything is like that. No super family pack sizes, and that forces us to return to the stores often and regularly.

Which means a dinghy ride to the public dock for walking around town, or to the Marina de La Paz where our bikes are locked up. I think its more about a new lifestyle than anything else. As soon as we spot a dolphin in our midst we stop whatever we're doing (or not doing) and just watch them.

Maybe we're becoming a little bit more zen?

Vedi, Vini, Vici

A souvenir of their visit: a mickey of tequila
with our picture on it. How fitting!

They came. (yay)
They saw. (us and we them)
They conquered. (the bars: ouch!)

But then they left. (booo!)

And then they (as in US) were two. A week in Cabo with a gang of friends from our "old life" or our "ex-life" doing some serious collateral damage to our livers, losing massive amounts of much needed beauty sleep and just having a grand ol' time as they say... Yes. Fun indeed.

It's odd seeing people we thought or assumed we'd never see again. The key person is the larger than life character Jerry. He's from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Jerry knows the Captain through racing. And since the Captain is no longer the Crew Chief, and I'm no longer Crew Bitch but First Mate... And since racing is most likely a thing of the past... And since our chances of ever going back to Sioux Falls - South Dakota for any reason at all are slim to none... We figure its a safe bet to think unless our friends from Sioux Falls - South Dakota come to see us wherever we're at, we're not going to see them again.

Sigh.

We've got good friends in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Not surprising because there's some pretty good people in Sioux Falls - South Dakota. There better be good people there, because let's be honest here. What else is there? In Sioux Falls, South Dakota? Wind? Spinach soup lakes? Fields? The Cornmaze and some kind of castle made of corn? Oh yeah, there's Mt Rushmore! That's cool.

And now they're gone. The friends. Wrapping this story up here, try to follow. We were left with hurting livers and a vast emptiness. Our promise to ease off on the drinking for a few days did not take more than 3 hours to break as we sat down at the Baja Cantina to spend our hard earned free coupons Jerry got us the night before on our last outing with them.

I totally hope we're wrong in assuming we'll never see them again. I so totally hope we're wrong!

Sigh.

Stop and Smell the Roses...

What a show-off! This young whale was putting on quite a display!

Since the beginning of our journey, we'd barely seen any whales at all. Which is atypical of this area... Normally they're spotted daily. When chatting with other travelers we discover we aren't alone in this world of no-whale spotting.

And then...

Yesterday south of Los Frailes on our way towards Cabo San Tacky (our friends arrive manana! Can't wait to see them!) we followed a group of whales. A momma whale and her offspring to our right and bigger larger louder whales further off to our left. Yeah. Most cool. 

And scary.

"Don't you just want to jump in the water and swim with them?" Leonard asks me with a huge grin. (Remind me to tell you about my attempt to swim with the dolphins) "Are you crazy? You never go near a baby and its mother! They can be ferocious!" I shudder as I think about how wicked post-partum could be in a mountain sized animal!

"Yeah but... I don't know, I still want to jump in!" Yeah. Signs of an ex-race-car-driver right there. Always in need of finding the most thrilling way to die, that way the memory of you never goes away. "Hey, remember Leonard? You'll never guess what happened to him!"

Moments like these though... they sure remind me of the importance to slow down, take a chill pill (they sell them on every street corner in Mexico), smell the roses and stand in awe of the world's largest living breathing creature (no, I'm not talking about the monster in his pants) and not waste your time dwiddle-ing with the mundane. 

Dolphin Fiesta!

This was beyond cool!

Sailing from La Paz to Cabo to hook up with friends from Sioux Falls we encountered a crazy dolphin crossing. They don't really show up in the distance in this video plus there was well over a thousand of them swimming around us, jumping and doing their world famous dolphin dives and their daredevil antics of jumping across the bow of our boat.

It was truly exciting! Witnessing something like this makes it easier to say "Ok, we can stay here longer than earlier planned!"

I mean... what if the Mayans were on to something and the end of the year will occur this upcoming December? Think about it. How would you want your last year on earth to be? Stuck in a job you hate sneaking glances out the window as you daydream of a tropical island? Or actually sailing to that tropical island and jumping in the water?

Yeah. Ditto.

See You Soon Baboon!

I'm writing this post from down below in the galley (hee hee, that's geek boatspeak for lounge and crash-out spot) while I should be up above on the (poop) deck admiring the scenery...

We're stepping momentarily away from La Paz. Friends from Sioux Falls are going to Cabo San Tacky for a vacation and we're going to hang out with them! Arriba! And it just so happens that we're expecting! Motor parts, sail rigging, allergy pills (not that you can't find these things in Mexico, we're just not up for an ass-rape in terms of loco prices!)

Last night we went out on the town at our favorita live music spot "La Encantada". Let me tell you... this place! This place is like an island of culture!

1. The art - stuff you'd see in beautiful galleries;
2. The music - any music festival would turn green with envy;
3. The food - foodies beware we're talking cuisine with a snoot accent;
4. The people - locals! Not gringos! Other than yours truly - of course;
5. The music - have I mentioned the music?

All night Leonardo kept repeating "I can't wait to leave so I can come back here!" The more we return to the same digs in La Paz, the more we connect with la gente and the more we fall in love with this town. The people are so warm, and friendly, and welcoming, and non obtrusive, and how can you go wrong in a relationship when you basically cannot fully communicate? No arguments there right?

Yes. This is beginning to look a lot like home!

From now on, I shall be called Maria!

An Interesting Week

As we read other people's blogs on their travels, we notice one major difference between our experience and theirs: they're socializing, connecting and making friends. And us? We're naming seals (which by the way are SEA LIONS and not as we guessed SEALS how do we know it? Our NEW FRIENDS told us!!!)

Yes! We made contact! I now have a sense of what it will be like the first time people on earth come into communication with space-peeps! Giddy! We've been chillin' with our peeps & going out! GOING OUT!  Two nights in a row at that. Late. Very late. Friday night we (finally) went to a really great local concert. And she sang in Spanish!

My ongoing joke has been "I don't want to go and listen to some old white fat dude belting it out to Hotel California." But long story short...

We made friends! Yes! Indeed we did! And they joined us on a trip! Yes they did! And oh they were prepared... They showed up with a canoe (like a funky fold up kind), fishing equipment (and a SPEARGUN), food, booze, spices (SPICES!), musical instruments (A BANJO - Ayyeee!), snorkeling equipment and stories galore to keep us fully animated til we couldn't keep our eyes open!

Scott (the Outward Bound type of dude) and Kay (who grew up in a commune - how cool is that?) joined us for one full week touring Espiritu Santos and Los Islotes. During this trip we met Damon and Desiree from the Gaya (Gaïa?) and their uber cool steel boat with the funky red sails pictured above. These guys have been living aboard their boat for 9 years. NINE YEARS! They've sailed to Hawaii and the Ecuador making us look like stay-at-home scaredycats!

So... today we hugged and waved them goodbye as they left for their long journey back home to San Fran. And we are now faced with so much space on our small boat! And wondering: could we ever again host people on our boat? It's really not an easy thing to do to bring OTHERS aboard!  Even Desiree who's been doing this for 9 years mentioned how they rarely ever do this...

Oh and shall I mention where we're at in repairs?

1. Fuel injector lift pump (or something like that, as if I know what I'm talking about!) in our motor - broken.
2. High pressure hose for water maker - tore.
3. Bird poop on deck - yes. A lot!
4. Headache - now on day 3. Ugh.
5. That's it. For now. Knock on wood (ouch that hurt my head).

Hasta luego mi amigos y amigas!