La Paz
23 November 2012
Colin
It was a dark and stormy night… well, it was dark and pretty rough but the whole reason for leaving Muertos at 0000 was to avoid the worst of the wind in the narrow Cerralvo channel. Probably just as well it was dark because when the sun came up, the worst was over, but the seas still looked pretty big. Anyway, by the time we turned the corner through Lorenzo channel and headed south for La Paz, the sun was warm and the water like glass.
We’ve been here a week already and feel like we’re just getting started exploring this city. There’s a fantastic waterfront malecon (boardwalk) that is at least 2 miles long and faces the anchorage across the estuary. Lotsa great restaurants and historic buildings which we’re beginning to discover. There is a large cruising community here that is very friendly. In fact they threw a party for us newbies a few nights ago which was a lotta fun, we even won a bottle of tequila! Although we were invited to a large Thanksgiving party with the cruisers, Wendy had long before laid plans for our own traditional Thanksgiving day feast on the boat, which we enjoyed from the cockpit with wine: Fantastico! In that spirit Wendy identified another local children’s charity to donate some portion from her horde of school supplies and sports equipment. Where has she been keeping all this stuff? I’m starting to understand why the boat lists towards her storage area…
Today we rented a car to expand our range into some of the local neighborhoods and even managed a little geocaching. The people here are super friendly and very tolerant of our butchering their language. At least it’s something we can all laugh about. Fortunately for us, a large portion of the local population has a very good working knowledge of English. While we’ve seen the vestiges of a US-type lifestyle down here (Home Depot, Walmart and McDonalds) people seem to be generally pretty happy with much less than we’re accustomed to back home.