We arrived back in La Paz safely with our 12 checked bags and 8 carry-on bags in tow on Monday, October 22nd. In retrospect, the process at the airport went smoothly. Painfully slow, but smooth. Patience doesn't always come easy in this family, but it is a necessary virtue when living in Mexico with the layed back way of doing everything. It's one of the things I love most about being here. It's time to gear down and go with the flow. So with our mountain of bags collected and accounted for, all we could do was wait...and wait.... literally until every soul from the two arriving flights departed the tiny terminal before we could obtain help from the only two porters with the only two carts in the airport to help us through customs. Lucky for us, the customs agents were pretty much done and waived us on through without too many questions.

When our taxi arrived at the Marina Palmira & Marina hotel, I felt like we were almost home. But we still had several days of work ahead of us before we could move back on to Endeavor. We checked into the hotel with half of our bags; the other half went down to the boat. It was a blessing to have the air conditioned hotel room as a comfortable class room & staging area, while providing much needed showers and a general reprieve from the heat by late afternoon. Endeavor, by the way, looks great! Our amigos, Luis and Fabian, took excellent care of her while we were away. No damage, no leaking to speak of, and most importantly, no cockroaches!!! According to Luis, the rainy season was a success! Receiving 7 days of much needed rainfall is a lot for La Paz and with it brought beautiful green hillsides, pot holes in the streets the size of smart cars, and an abundance of butterflies, no-see-ums, & mosquitos. Unfortunately, I can attest to the mosquitos. They love me.

I won't share the boring details of putting Endeavor back together again. Instead I'll just cut to the chase by saying after 4 nights in the hotel, we moved back on. I'm not even close to having the galley fully provisioned and everywhere you look, it's obviously work in progress, but it feels good to be here. The convenience of being in the marina is clear but we were all itching (literally) to be out in the islands. To be able to jump off the boat whenever the mood strikes you, go kayaking, hiking, snorkeling, or just hang out and watch the wild life. The islands were calling our names quite loudly & with an amazing weather forecast in our favor, we headed out of the marina on Monday. Here we sit in Caleta Parteda after 4days of perfect conditions, getting back into the routine of life afloat, feeling very reluctant to head back in. Did I mention the water is crystal clear and about 80 degrees? But like I said, my galley isn't fully provisioned yet, which might force us in, but not until tomorrow.

Coming up: A few possible road trips before Thanksgiving. One south to East Cape to visit our friends Melody and Craig, another to Loreto to meet up with Terry and Diane from Harmony. Then back to the marina to properly provision and finish projects. Weather permitting we'd like to find ourselves back in the islands lingering as long as possible before planning our journey south towards Banderas Bay.

Adios!