After 10 days cruising the wonderful bays of Los Frailes, Ensenada de los Muertos and Puerto Balandra, we were ready for a quick break at La Paz.
And if the sheltered waters of Marina Cortez provided much-sought-after tranquil nights of sleep, we found ourselves quite busy from sunrise to sunset.
Upon arrival to La Paz, a sobering reminder to keep an eye out for the weather (Hurricane Odile wreaked havoc in La Paz last year):
We stayed at Marina Cortez, and were quite satisfied with it. It does look more expensive than the neighboring Marina La Paz, but upon closer scrutiny, we found prices were roughly the same. Besides, it has excellent facilities, and good eateries just a few yards outside the gates. Moreover, we were in fine company with m/v Adagio and s/v Coastal Drifter:
Our week mornings were dedicated to homeschooling, and I commend Paulo and Raquel for they made excellent progress these days !
But at the start of every afternoon, the kids would come out of their yachts. Adding to the kids’ headcount, we had the visit of Tracy (www.planetosea.com) for a couple days. And so, in the afternoons lots of kids could be found playing in Pesto, Coastal Drifter, Adagio and/or the docks – some times at all of these places at the same time:
Even Zappa (m/v Adagio) came to visit Pesto a number of times:
At night we would slow down …
… and gaze at the Marina’s privileged view of the city’s waterfront main street – El Malecon:
The Malecon is in fact a special feature of this town:
Some people go to enjoy the magnificent sunsets:
Some to view the bronze statues scattered every few hundred yards along the walkway:
Others to savor the excellent ice creams and raspados:
And of course there are those who just take their Vietnamese piglets for a walk:
The Malecon houses many of the city’s restaurants, temples of the extraordinary Mexican Cuisine. It’s just so hard to decide what to order in between so many delicacies:
It was also at the Malecon that we found El Museo de la Ballena (Whale Museum). This attraction is still being built, scheduled to open on October 2015. But its curator kindly received us for a private tour. He runs the museum with passion and deep personal admiration for these mammals, and it is coming out pretty nicely. It will be an attraction not to be missed once it is open:
And since we were checking on sea creatures of the large kind, we decided to up the ante and went for a swim with a Whale Shark – this time a live one. In its habitat:
These guys are the largest known fish (remember, whales are not fish), and non-mammal animals currently alive on earth. Capitan Lalo – the skipper of our panga – found a juvenile specimen for us right out of the La Paz bay, and expertly dropped us right next to it. It was a great experience to see such large and majestic animal gliding by us !
And while La Paz continued to offer us one beautiful sunset after the other …
… the time came to cast lines again. As I write this, we are crossing the nearly 30 miles that will take us to overnight at Ensenada Grande, Isla Partida tonight.
From there we continue Northwest. And that’s about what we know for now. We are just cruising, after all !