We arrived in Mazatlan on the 9th of Oct after a 19 hour ride on the ferry. The ferry is primarily a vehicle transport and secondarily a passenger accommodation. So it's well, we'll say rustic. We did not feel we wanted to spend the extra money on a cabin but after 5 hours sitting and finding out that it was less then we thought, we asked about a cabin at 10pm, but alas it was to late to get one. We did not sleep much, I (Dave) went up on deck a few times in the middle of the night to watch the thunder storms around us. When we got off we were ready for a shower and a nap. We ended up spending two weeks in La Paz when we had only planned one. Leiann fell on one of the sidewalks (they are treacherous). We thought she had broken her wrist as it looked dislocated. We didn't immediately go to the doctor as we knew that they could not cast it that day as it was very swollen. I made her a splint out of cardboard and ace bandage that along with good Mexican drugs made her comfortable. The next day we called an old cruiser friend who gave us a doctor's number. He met us in the lobby of the clinic and talked to us for an hour while we waited for the X-ray tech. He took 5 X-rays and showed them to us and told us he did not think it was broken but dislocated with a badly bruised bone. He called a hand surgeon who came in and gave a second opinion. He also felt it was not broken (we were relieved), he put on a huge soft cast. Our total cost for the two hours, $250!!! With her a little fragile we thought we would stay and let her heal up a bit. But with good drugs she was still able to get out and see some of La Paz. The hostel that was recommended by our old cruising friends (Tom and Jeanne of S/V Eagle) was very nice and it was not long before we felt it to be our home and a base for exploration. We would hide out in our room (loving the AC) until afternoon because it was 98 degrees outside. In the afternoon we would go out exploring. La Paz has a great Malecon (large side walk along the water front), so we walked it a lot in the evenings eating ice cream. We found that La Paz does not have much for the walking visitor. We did visit a couple of churches, the cultural museum, pottery display, swam with the whale sharks and went to a beautiful white sand beach. We had a great dinner with Tom and Jeanne and reminisced about our travels down the BAJA fours years ago. It's seems like a dream now. They were with us coming down from San Diego. They are also from WA State and had sailed down the coast the same time I did and hit some of the same bad weather. It's always fun to meet up with old cruising friends, there is common bond that's hard to explain, we understand what each other have gone through to get here. The highlight of our visit to La Paz was meeting up with a local name Alfonso. He was our waiter and he spoke English and Spanish (bi-lingual). He shared with us that he had been in medical school but had to drop out of med school because his father was no longer able to help him pay for it. He said he was still in school just not med school. We asked him to drive us around to get our tickets for the ferry and ended up taking him with us to swim with the whale sharks. It was great to share the experience with him. Afterwards he insisted that he should take us over to see the most beautiful beach (Balandara). It was our last day in town and it was a great day and we made a new friend to keep up with on Facebook and the blog. We are now exploring Mazatlan and will travel to Puerto Vallarta in a couple days. Stay tuned and check out our pictures in the gallery on the right. Ciao!