La Paz! Internet, laundry, showers, sheets, and margaritas! We celebrated New Years in La Paz, wend swimming with the whale sharks, and added the Gulf of California to our lifelong list of bodies of water that we have gone skinny dipping in.
Sweet sweet margaritas.
This is the Hotel Yeneca where most people stayed. Funky, strange and fun. They didn't seem to mind when firecrackers were lit in the courtyard.
The "Malecon" is the main drag through La Paz and it had statues and sculptures every block. We liked this guy.
More of the Malecon
We went swimming with the whale sharks on one of the days. This is what the advertisements show:
This is the reality:
Still, pretty cool experience despite the really cold and murky waters.
We left the beach camp in the evening, transferred all of our stuff back onto the big bus, and drove overnight, waking up in the lovely little town of Todos Santos. Most of us went to the Hotel California for breakfast and then did a little shopping before shoving off for Cabo San Lucas. We dropped anchor at Cabo for about 3 hours - enough time for lunch, sightseeing, checking email and doing those things that people do in overly commercialized tourist towns.
After that, we got back on the bus and drove to Cabo Pulmo where we would spend the next two days. We arrived in Cabo Pulmo at night and had to set up camp in the wind and the dark. Sherry and I retreated deep into the sand dunes overlooking the beach and tried not to strangle one another as we set up a flapping tent using our headlamps.
After waking up on day three, we were getting close to our beach camp. The camp is down a road that is too rough for the bus, so we transferred ourselves and our gear to an old short school bus and were transported to the camp. Most of us hiked the last 6 miles or so to the camp, arriving mid-afternoon.
Our chariot for transferring from the big bus to the beach camp.
All of us packed into the school bus for the bumpy ride
Here is a quick overview of the beach camp. You can view it directly in YouTube at this link if you want to.
The beach camp is about 2/3 of the way to the right of the photo, behind the "alligator head" point that is sticking out into the bay.
Hiking down to the beach camp - about a 6-mile walk.
Brushing up on the local dialects.
About an hour's walk from camp, there is a natural hot spring that is only uncovered at low tide. You need to wait for a while for the seawater to heat up, and you risk burning your butt on the hot water flowing into the pool, but it was warm and cozy.
A lot of us took the mule ride around the area. Here are Hunter and Mike from the back.
More mule shots.
Hunter getting ready to ride
Look ma, no hands!
Sherry of the Pampas.
We also had the option of a pickup truck ride over to Agua Verde, the little town about 7 miles from the camp.
After breakfast on day two, we drove to San Ignacio, a very small town with a swimming hole, a small church and a convenient place to park the bus to make dinner and have a campfire. We pulled up stakes and headed south again after eating.
We got picked up in San Diego on Sunday and we crossed the border into Mexico. Our first stop was Ensenada where we wandered around the fish market, got a hematite anklet for Sherry and had some outstanding octopus. The art museum was open late, so we were able to go there,too. The bus left from Ensenada around 8 pm, headed south. I don't really know what beach we awoke on for breakfast, but it was on the Pacific and probably 8 hours drive south of Ensenada.
Playing football on the beach
The "Too Much Tequila" painting at the Ensenada art museum.
We are getting excited about our upcoming Baja trip and, unsurprisingly, Mike has put together a map for the trip. The live map with the daily itinerary is here at this link and a quick static summary is below. The fourth dot from the bottom is the place where we will be camping for 5 nights on a beach, and the bottom right dot is another 2 nights in a tent on a beach. With any luck, there will be a little beach shack with cold corona and no WiFi.
