10-10-2010 Santa Rosalia

We got back to Santa Rosalia about a week ago, ah, that first “real” shower felt so good! The general consensus from the weather gurus is that the sea water has cooled enough that any more hurricanes this far north are unlikely :-) This has been one of the mildest hurricane seasons in the eastern pacific in history (we’re very happy with that). We have a slip reserved in La Paz for November 1st so after a few days of clean-up and a few projects, we’ll proceed south down the Sea.

Here are a few of the things that occupied us for the last month up in Bahia de los Angeles (BLA):
We went on a big hike at the popular anchorage of La Gringa. This is also a popular RV and camping beach in the winter. This time of the year there were only a few hardy campers.

We went to a party and pot luck at the home/trailer of a cruiser couple that have settled in BLA. There were tons of great food and a very competitive game of darts. I tried my hand but went out the first round, Tom just sat and watched. A great time was had by all.

Another day, a Cruiser Living on Dirt (CLOD) brought his pick-up truck and trailer and gave all of us a ride around town to fetch diesel, water, provisions, whatever we needed. We called it the “cruiser hayride” and it was great fun. There were probably 25 cruisers and over 50 jugs for diesel and water all crammed into the bed of the truck and trailer (no seatbelt laws in Mexico). As we drove down the road, the locals would stop and stare in amazement at all of the gringos crammed into the trailer, we were laughing so hard trying to imagine what they were thinking. Here is the stop to fill the diesel jugs:

There is an excellent small museum in town that we spent over an hour in, It has many displays and artifacts from the early Indians, the days that BLA was a large mining area, as well as many displays of local and marine animals including a gigantic whale skeleton.


Here we are sailing our dingy around the anchorage. I think this is the most sailing we’ve done in months :-)

I was chased by a seal for a while but he lost interest when I didn’t give him a fish.

One last full moon party, floating into, then out of the La Mona estuary:

Some of the “floties” were pretty fancy:

Tom’s was simple:
Buster the dog was in the middle of the excitement:
One of the boats brought a very old, expired life raft that the kids deployed on the beach then had a ball playing in it:


A few days after the last party we decided to bid adieu to BLA. It was a nice area with many cozy little anchorages but we’ll be glad to get south where the land isn’t so harsh and rocky.
On the way south there were many pods of leaping dolphins:

The nights are getting cooler and it’s good to be moving south again.
Cheers,
Carolynn & Tom

9-22-2010 Bahia de los Angeles

We're still "roughing it" down in Bahia de los Angeles (BLA). We were planning on heading back to Santa Rosalia a week or so ago but didn't quite get around to it for a variety of reasons; mainly a corollary to Newton's law about an object "at rest staying at rest" but also because statistically we're still in the middle of hurricane season. We got reminded about that with tropical storm Georgette currently barreling up the Sea, but it looks like she'll miss us (fingers crossed). Several of our friends a bit to the south of us got smacked pretty hard but came out drenched but fine. The eye went right over the top of them but luckily the winds weren't too bad.

We haven't really been doing much, lots of reading and just lazing around the boat. We'll be very happy though when we finally feel it's safe enough to move out of here back to "civilization". It's been almost two months since we've had a real shower or have been able to wash clothes in a real machine. Even though we have a watermaker, we're in water conservation mode since we have to run the motor to make water and refilling our diesel fuel is a lot of hard work, the nearest gas station is a two mile walk hauling jerry jugs (after a mile dingy ride).

Enough complaining :-) All is well here and depending on the weather, we should be in Santa Rosalia in a couple of weeks. In the mean time we have another full moon party tomorrow so all of the cruisers in the area are gathering around. I'll take pictures which I'll be able to post sometime in the future.

Cheers,
Carolynn & Tom

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8/28/2010: Bahia de los Angeles

8/28/2010: Bahia de los Angeles

Note: I am initially updating this blog entry via the radio so I can't put the pictures in I want. There is an internet cafe in town but the connection is very slow and the building is very hot inside, I'll put the pictures in later (I have marked their location with parenthesis).

Update: Pictures added

We've been up in Bahia de los Angeles (BLA) for the last few weeks, and will probably be here for awhile. BLA is a large bay with many scattered islands and anchorages and is a popular area in the winter for camping. There is only one smallish village though and few provisions. From what we have been told it's pretty busy in the late fall to spring, but only the crazy yachtistas are here in the summer. It's very hot and muggy, I can't wait 'till fall when it starts to cool down and it's safe to go south.

The trip up from Santa Rosalia was pretty uneventful, though when we first left we couldn't get the boat speed up to normal; Tom was worried that we were losing our transmission! We debated going back but Santa Rosalia doesn't really have any repair facilities. It was a long overnight passage to San Fransisquito! It was good to see the sun come up, even though it would bring the heat with it. Sunsets and sunrises seem more spectacular out in the water:

Once we got safely anchored and had a good rest in San Fransisquito, we dove over the side. The problem with our speed was obvious, the bottom of the boat looked like a big shag carpet from the 70's and the prop was just a fuzzy round ball. It's a wonder that we could move through the water at all. A few hours of scrapping made our bottom look more like a boat's than a psychedelic flashback :-) We had just had our bottom cleaned three weeks ago in Santa Rosalia so in this warm water, the growth is incredible (like weeds growing in a spring garden). San Fransisquito was a nice anchorage but typical Baja dry:

We moved on to Las Animas bay, where unfortunately we got inundated with bees! There were dozens buzzing around the boat trying to get in. I was very glad I had sewn bug screens for the hatches and dodger so that kept most bees outside but we couldn't go out without feeling like we were under assault, we didn't stay too long in Las Animas.

On the way there we came across a huge pod of dolphins feeding, there were hundreds! They weren't interested in playing though so we sadly said good bye:

Our next stop was Ensenada el Quemado (burned bay). This was a very nice, secure and shallow bay, no bees and we ended up spending a week there just hanging out, continuing cleaning the bottom and exploring the bay. We had a few days of clouds which wasn't good for the solar power generation, but kept the temperature a little lower.

The clouds made for beautiful sunsets:


We started to run a little low on a few provisions so we motored around the corner to the village at Bahia de los Angeles. The few small stores are well stocked with staples, but nothing fancy. The exciting thing about the village anchorage was that there were whale sharks feeding in it! At one point I counted five in the anchorage and occasionally they would swim right by the boat: This one was only about 14 feet long :-)


It was then time for the full moon party! 27 boats descended on a small lagoon called La Gringa, in the north part of BLA where everyone floats into the lagoon on the rising tide then floats out when the tide reverses, do we know how to party or what?! While it sounds corny, it was a lot of fun and some of the floats were pretty impressive:

That's about it for now, just hanging out in BLA, listening to the weather and hoping no hurricane makes it up here.
Cheers,
Carolynn & Tom

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Santa Rosalia - Blog update via SSB

This entry is a test to see if I have figured out how to update my blog using our ham radio. Up to now I have only been able to post a new entry when we have internet but I think I have figured out a way to post while we are out of internet access. I can only post short messages and no pictures but it's better than nothing. We're still in Santa Rosalia and plan to be here at least another week.

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7/19/2010 La Paz to Santa Rosalia

We’re in the little town of Santa Rosalia, about ½ of the way up the Sea of Cortez on the Baja side. This is the first marina and the first wifi signal we’ve had since we left La Paz about a month ago. Here’s what we have been doing since then:

After leaving La Paz we island hopped up the same path we had taken last December, though before it was cold and rainy but now it’s hot and muggy! We didn’t spend too much time in any one place since we had heard that there was a big 4th of July party up in Conception bay. There are lots of small fish camps in most of the anchorages, though for the most part we stayed on the boat.

Tom is working on learning how to fish and coming up the coast we caught something:

We finally got it on board (not easy to do since our deck is about 5’ off the water). We had no idea what it was but it looks good:


Following directions in a book, we filleted it and had fish for dinner, but it wasn’t very good and we thought that we had not bled/filleted it correctly :-( Later though we described the fish to another cruiser who told us we had caught a “Skip Jack”, he confirmed that they’re not very good for eating and the only thing he uses them for if he catches them is bait or for his dogs. If we catch another Skip Jack we’ll let it go.

We saw lots of marine life; huge pods of dolphins and many jumping rays. One afternoon in Isla Coronado the jumping rays were so thick that it looked like the ray olympics! There would be the 500 meter dash with 20-30 rays jumping and racing ½ way around the anchorage. Then a few minutes later there would be an aerial display with rays leaping and flipping only a few boat lengths away from us. I saw numerous 360’s and a few double flips. When a ray jumps and flops back into the water it sounds a little like popcorn popping. At times in the anchorage it sounded like a whole bag of popcorn being popped. They’re not easy to capture on film though, they’ll be popping up all over the place but as soon as I get the camera focused, none would jump until I set the camera down then they would start popping out again. I got mainly splashes and a few blurry pics but couldn’t quite capture how many there were or how much they would jump and flip:

We spent a few days at Isla Coronado, snorkeling and dingying around. This is a dramatic and forbidding volcanic island, though the anchorage is well protected.

Also at Isla Coronado we took a hike up the hill. Initially the trail was pretty level and led through the sandy brush. Eventually though the trail led up the side of the hill and consisted of medium volcanic rocks perfect for tripping over or turning an ankle.

The only way to know you were on the trail were periodic “cairns” of 3-4 rocks piled on top of each other.

It was a hard hike but the views from ½ way up the hill were good (I didn’t make it all the way up):

On our way into Conception we saw a whale shark! It was early in the morning so it was hard to get a decent picture since the sun was reflecting off the water. He was about 12 feet long (a little one) and we didn’t want to bother him too much. The whale shark is the largest fish and can grow up to 46 feet long. The name “shark” is a bit of a misnomer as they eat only plankton.

We showed up in Bahia El Burro a week early for the party so got our choice of spots. When we got in there were only 5 other boats in the anchorage but at the height of the party there were 35!

One morning we decided to hike to the top of the hill overlooking the anchorage. From our boat the trail looked obvious and while steep and rugged, not too bad:


Once on the hill though the trail wasn’t so obvious and much of it was a scramble up rocks more suited to goats! The cruisers guide calls this hike “strenuous”, they weren’t joking. There was little shade on the trail for rests but we made do with any little bush we could find:

We finally made it to the top of the hill (felt more like a mountain) and the views were spectacular!

The day before the party a group of us went on a desert tour with Salvador, a wonderful local guide. We would periodically stop and Salvador would talk about the local history and medicinal uses for the desert plants.

We also visited a river bed where there were lots of petroglyphs (symbols and animals carved into rocks). Archeologists estimate these were done around 1100 B.C.

Coyote:

Rays:

We also visited some cave paintings (Pictographs). Our guide claimed that the oldest paintings have been carbon dated to 14,000 B.C., but I’m not sure I really believe they’re that old. The hike was nice though especially since we had to swim through a cool refreshing pool to get to the cave :-)

The party on the 4th was great; it’s interesting to meet many of the cruisers we had been talking to over the radio for the last few months. Sorry but no pictures, I was having too much fun to bother with the camera.

After the party we slowly made our way north to Santa Rosalia. Santa Rosalia is a played out Copper mining town established by the French in the 1860’s. Most of the town is built of wood instead of stucco and has a much different “feel” to it. It is well laid out with sidewalks and street signs and many corners even have painted handicap ramps (very rare for Baja). On at least one of the ramps though they didn’t quite get the concept of a wheel chair ramp :-)

There are many reminders of the town’s mining past:

Santa Rosalia is also known for the Iglesia Santa Barbara church, designed by the architect Gustave Eiffel, creator of the Paris Eiffel Tower. Eiffel originally constructed this church in France in 1887; it was intended as a prototype for missionary churches built to withstand the climate in France’s equatorial colonies. Two years later it was exhibited in Paris, together with the Eiffel Tower, at the 1889 Paris World Exposition. Eiffel took first prize for the church’s modular, tropics-proof design.

When a French official later heard the church had been warehoused in Brussels, he purchased it and had it shipped in sections to Santa Rosalia, where it was reassembled in 1897.

Opposite the church is a “world famous” hot dog stand; Chuyitas, featuring bacon wrapped hot dogs on a soft bun with the works. Almost all the cruisers show up there every few nights for their dog fix
It’s been hot and muggy so we try to spend the hottest part of the day lounging in the pool and meeting new folks.

We’re not sure how long we’ll be here, we have three months of hurricane season to kill up here and we like the town so we’re not in a big hurry to leave, though we wouldn’t want to ride out a hurricane on these docks.

When we do leave though we’ll probably be out of internet access for quite a while.
Cheers,

Carolynn & Tom