Dang! It’s almost Christmas and I don’t know how it got that way. Have I really been in La Paz since November 19th? Cruiser time probably gets a whole new meaning around the holidays. I mean, we cruisers hardly know where we are, much less when we are, then some big event rolls around like Thanksgiving or Christmas and someone remembers to throw a party.

Our Turkey Day had been celebrated pot-lucking with a few friends plus another two hundred strangers and acquaintances under big red tent thingies in sweltering heat. It was good, but a make-do celebration if ever there was one. Not that I don’t appreciate all the people and effort, but it was not family.

That’s one of the big things we give up in this vagabond life. I miss my daughters. I miss my friends back home. Then again, I’ve got lots of new friends here on the road, many with the strong bonds wrought by days at sea crossing the same rough waters, rolling violently through the same waves, enjoying the same sunshine. It’s an adequate trade-off, if not actually a good one. It’s what we’ve set out to do, though, isn’t it, …leaving what’s familiar behind and going off to confront the unforeseen, even though we’ve done our best to foresee it.

Through all I’ve recounted here in these blog posts, I don’t really know how all this time has passed in La Paz. There were many days anchored out on the long, narrow bay being swished back and forth by the tides, first southwest, then northeast, then southwest again. The tides really rip through near the full and the new moons, making Mabrouka look like she’s motoring along, pushing her anchor chain upstream against the current, her dinghy tethered to the rail trying to keep up.

La Paz is characterized as a Siren town, singing a strange melody that captures sailors that are well-intentioned toward the South Seas, drawing them to the Mexican shore never to leave again. I’ve met more than one whose dropped their anchor in the bay, stuck around long enough to meet the Mexican love of their life, sold their boat, and bought a house in town. I guess I’ve succeeded in lashing myself to my mast because, frankly, I don’t understand it.

It’s a nice enough town, not too touristy once you get away from the harbor-front boulevard with its meandering board walk they call the malecon. There seems to be just about everything you need here, unless you’re a TRUE American and the things you want have become the things you need. The pace is slow but not lazy. The days are warm and sunny and the streets are clean. Even so, I don’t see what people get so stuck on.

In a way, cruisers have built their own trap here by building a community with such an extensive support system that it would be easy to get comfortable here. There’s a daily radio net where calls for help are made and answered, newcomers are welcomed and missed when they leave, information is freely exchanged, community events are promoted, and goods are swapped or traded for “coconuts”. Club Cruceros is here with coffee every morning, chatting to be had, books to be swapped, and games to be played.

It can’t be forgotten that all this is on the doorstep of one of the most fantastic cruising grounds of the world, the Sea of Cortez. Jacques Cousteau is cited as having described it the “world’s aquarium” and the “Galapagos of North America”. I have only just dipped my toes in it.