Later in the day, Feb 22
We have had our walk, in the heat of the day of course – seems to take forever to get ourselves organized ( do we eat before we go? what to do, what to do)..and then dropping off the garbage (an easy feat, with no apparent cost to us.. but more on this later)
After a quick look into the tienda for those who haven’t seen it yet ( wondering where the dogs are today? it is very quiet).. we start to make our way up the hill, past the cemetery and the church, to the salt flats. (the store is remarkably well stocked, friendly staff….great greeters, those dogs…)
We have heard from other boaters the reason the restaurant was closed yesterday – and today – apparently it has been very busy, what with the continuing winds pushing people into safe anchorages such as this one. The owner has gone to La Paz to restock. And last night a herd of motorcycles drove in looking for dinner after a long hard ride, and lo and behold, the locals gave them a memorable meal of halibut and cervecas…. wait, we’ve had a long hard ride too, albeit in our beautiful boats… ah well, motorcyclists, vs yachtistas… they got a great meal and we had wonderful food on our boats. I won’t complain.
But I digress.
(however, I am pretty sure yesterday I saw the remains of the fish they were served on the beach shortly after it was divested of its tasty bits – it was a pretty substantial halibut!!!)
Anyway – we walked over the crest of the hill and came down to the other bay – which was absolutely beautiful blue, totally different colour – lovely. There were even palm trees along the edge, with houses and horses and people, although not very many. Nothing I’d call a resort, don’t jump to that conclusion – but it was an interesting little place. We walked out through the flats to the pebble beach which was spectacular. Our necks got sore looking down, because everywhere we looked there were shells and lovely agate-like? stones. Soft, worn smooth, yellow – just gorgeous. The whole place was a marvel – except for the fairly frequent bits of garbage here and there…nothing terrible, just not a pristine beach, and too much for us to collect ( something I normally do if we were somewhere remote and we see flotsam and jetsam floated up )… we met another couple from a sailboat anchored in our bay, and chatted for a while with them. A few of us decided to take the long way home, and walk the entire length of the beach. Interesting … as we moved along, there was more and more obviously burnt bits of things. Lots of shells, too… amazing large pieces of conch, and what looked like rock scallops, and even lobster. Looked like someone had had a great feast a few times out here!
But when we left the water’s edge to follow the trail back to the road, it got very interesting. We had seen some carcasses on the beach, and thought perhaps either seal or burro… but now we saw many many bleached skulls and skeletons that were obviously equine in nature, some bigger than a burro. There was even a rather macabre display with six skulls all lined up in order of size.
What to make of this? who knows. We saw horses in a paddock and lots of signs of burro or horses in the droppings left behind everywhere, so much so that we thought we should be seeing a lot more animals running around.
Very interesting. Kind of disquieting! And the other thing was… a large area of burned garbage, which led me to believe that perhaps when we drop our garbage innocently ( or not so) in a little town on the water like this the only thing they can do with it is burn it. Which makes me want to go back and pick up my little garbage bag and do what we usually do, which is leave it on the boat somewhere cool and dispose of it at the marina in La Paz.
When we returned to the boat, the first thing we did was jump in the water. I felt somewhat dirty from the last bit of our walk, and there had been a lot of salt on the road as we went along it. The snorkelling was pretty amazing close to shore, and I was treated to a lot of larger beautiful fish than I had seen before, as well as ( hooray!) a single, solitary, huge, red sea urchin. I was going to take it back to the boat to show Lawrence but then thought better of it, and released him back to his solitary home. The water was a bit cooler today, though, although it may have just been the fact that it is still BLOWING LIKE STINK, so things just don’t get a chance to warm up.
Back at the boat, finally warmed up, we have been to-ing and fro-ing all afternoon. There are gusts well over 20, maybe 30, and we are hunting all over the place. Fingers crossed… please hold, beautiful anchor! The chain must be stretched out its entire length … and we are swinging back and forth like mad.. but so far… you know….
Much later.. well, maybe not that much later.. we had promised margaritas and we delivered… we had a communal gazpacho, ( Kim and I made our own and I combined them and served them in plastic glasses…)…and I had made a casserole from last night’s chicken burritos… a very jolly evening, fabulous margaritas, the wind had died for a while… now it is 747 and the Sea level crew has gone home and we are sitting on the back deck with a glass of wine thinking why oh why does the wind have to come back up??????
Now we are talking about the whole mentality of keeping a boat down here, and having a few years worth of boating and cruising and having a lot of fun…sitting enjoying the moon rise, a glass of wine, and just relaxing. This is heaven. Perfect, Peter says. Summer time here, not so much, says Lawrence. Life is good here and now.
Next day.. just note ( February 23rd…. where does the time go??)
We are sitting here patiently waiting for the sail to go up at the palapa restaurant in the hopes that this morning we will have a chance to experience a mexican breakfast on the beach. They have nine minutes…. please oh please put up the sail, I am running out of breakfast food for the crew and they don’t realize it!!!
I would have thought three days was long enough for the owners to get into La Paz for provisioning and come back! There are at least four boats in this bay all hanging out looking for a sign that the sail will be raised today. Fingers crossed!!! otherwise… it’s granola!!!!