Our cruising season began with our arrival in La Paz on 2nd of November, staying first at Marina Palmira, and then moving over to Marina de La Paz. Marina de La Paz is walking distance to the center of town and there’s always more socializing happening here as well, so I prefer it. We had a date to meet up with Rich and Sherry, of Tabu, at Isla Partida. It’s a beautiful cove, with clear aqua colored water that is sea foam green near the shore; it’s still one of my favorite spots. This is where we first launched my new beautiful lime green kayak. It’s the best toy and I really love tooling around in it all under my own power. We spent a few days including a day outing to the “Rookery”, there were many frigates on the guano covered rocks and sea lions swimming around. Some people were swimming with the sea lions but I was happy to be amongst them in my kayak. We have been revisiting some of last season’s places. The water has been warmer so we’ve been able to be in the water more. There are fewer cruisers this year, (another economic indicator) but we’ve come across old friends from last year and made some new ones as well.
We had plans to be in Zihuatanejo by Christmas but ended up sticking around the Puerto Vallarta area from Thanksgiving all the way through Christmas but by New Years’ we were anchored in Chamela, having lobster tails and doing tequila research with our good buds, Lou and Lydia. A nice beginning to the New Year.
Somehow we got a flat tire on the dinghy; Al took it apart to find that the entire valve stem was missing. So we managed to drag the dinghy onto to the beach with only one wheel and set out to see about getting the tire fixed. The one llantero (tire guy) couldn’t help and sent us to the one ferreteria (hardware store) in town. We weren’t having much luck there either until this Canadian man came in and asked Al if that a was a dinghy tire… anyway turns out he thought he had one just like it at home. In a few minutes he was back and Al was grinning from ear to ear. He’d just found an exact replacement…how unlikely is that. A lucky encounter in Chamela for sure.
We also came across a big house for sale, one block up from the beach. The four of use were invited in by the owner Elizabeth, a nice woman from Sarasota Florida. Nice place but we’re definitely not ready to be land based yet so we pull up the anchor and continue to head south.
