Hiking Around Mazatlan

The seemingly small hill with the lighthouse on top.

 

We chose a nice clear day to hike to the top of the hill that housed the second highest manned lighthouse in the world.  It is 477 feet above sea level and had a steep trail that turned into steeper stairs.  Imagine walking up the stairwell of a 47 story building in 88 degree temps, and you can get an idea of our "little hike".  From the top the view was great.  We could see all of Mazatlan and the distant mountains.

 

 

The trail up.

 

 

View to the north.  The marina is at the top left.

 

 

We decided to walk back to town along the coast. Our destination is just over Cathy's shoulder.  It looked closer from up here!

 

When we got back to the bottom of the hill, we decided to take the scenic route back to the beach in the old part of town and have lunch at a place we saw called the Shrimp Bucket. Of course the first order of business after our 5 mile hike was to have a beer.  We then ordered up some great fried calamari and a big molcajete, which is a stone bowl filled with boiling red sauce, cactus, shrimp, grilled onions, and other good stuff.  It was really good and tasted even better sitting beachside with the crashing surf and sea breeze. 

 

 

Molcajete madness.

 

 

Lunch on the Plaza

 

 

Nice old buildings in the historic district.

 

The next day we took the bus back to town to see the archeology museum and the art museum.  Both were very nice and contained some great displays and history of Mexico and the area that we are in.  Afterwards, we stoped at the english library to ask if anyone knew where we could get a music stand for Cathy to practice here ukulele.  I already had earplugs, so the music stand was all we needed (just kidding honey).  Since it was another 2 mile walk, we decided to have lunch and a beer to sustain us.  We had a great shrimp crepe at a restaurant in Plaza Machado near the theatre.  After a bit of a hike, we actually found the music store and picked up a nice collapsable music stand for a good price.  Cathy had to pry Rich away from the guitars because we really do not have room for anything else on the boat.

 

A word on the bus system.  We have been traveling all over town on the public busses.  There are hundreds of them around town.  They write the destinations on them in shoe polish.  The air conditioned busses with padded seats are 10 pesos, and the older beat up busses are usually 7.50 pesos.  So it is pretty cheap to get anywhere in town.  You just to to one of the major streets that the busses run along, wait for one to come with your destination on it, wave your arms like crazy, and hop on.  Also, you need to hang on tight, always.  They start fast and stop fast.  If you fall down, your problem.

 

 

Your limo has arrived!

 

Today, Saturday, was organic market day.  We again took the bus to Plaza Zargosa, another plaza that we had not yet been to.  There was a small, but very nice market set up.  We had some gourmet coffee and tarts for breakfast.  Cathy finally found dried basil, for which we have searched all over Mexico for the past year.  Needless to say, we bought a lot of it.  We also picked up some chicken, and some fresh eggs that were many different colors.  It was a nice way to spend the morning listening to jazz, sipping coffee and mingling with the local gringos.

 

 

The plaza and the pie lady.

 

 

Some vendors at the small but nice market.

 

Well, that is all for now.  We have plans tonight to go into town for a big party on the plaza in the art district.  And tomorrow, we are going on a breakfast bike ride to a nearby beach with some other folks here at the marina.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mazatlan

Old town Mazatlan is really a beautiful city.  There are many restored buildings and art galleries. As well as a thriving downtown area.  We decided to take one of the local busses from the marina area to town which is about 10 miles away.  There are probably 100 different busses as well as these open air golf cart style cabs that zip all over the city.  To catch a bus you need to be in the general area of a bus stop, which are not marked, look down the street and try to read the shoe polish writing of the destination on the front window, and then jump to the curb and wave your hands to get it to stop.  The fare is 10 pesos to go all over the city.  We had it drop us at the public market that is truly amazing, and we will post more pictures of it later in the week when we do some shopping.

The market takes up an entire city block.

 

Restarants and night clubs in the art district.

 

We had a nice chiliquiles brunch at a small cafe in one of the plazas.

 

Marina Mazatlan, home for a couple of weeks.

 

 

 

 

La Paz to Mazatlan

 

Calm day after a rough night.

 

We arrived back at the boat on October 22nd to find her in good shape.  It would take us a couple of weeks to put her back together from the hurricane preperations so that we could sail away again.  The weather has still been in the 90's so we are a little slow moving.  Of course, spending a few hours a day at the beach club hasn't really helped us get things going either!  We got the bottom cleaned and finally fixed the large refrigerator.  The big fridge has not ever worked since we got the boat.  It would turn off and on, but the thermostat would not stop it from dropping below freezing.  Rich looked over the manual and talked to various people over the years, and the general concensus was that the thermostat was broken.  We decided to have the local refer guru Hector come look at it.  He said he would be there at 10 am, so we waited until 12 before calling him again (this is Mexico).  He said he was on his way.  About an hour later, a young man showed up at the boat and said that Hector sent him to look at the fridge.  He spoke very little english, but we managed to describe the problem.  He looked into the fridge and in about 10 seconds touched the temp wire from the thermostat and said that it needed to be hooked up to that screw.  I said "that's it"?  He said no problemo and left the boat without charging us anything.  So Rich hooked the wire to the screw, and the darn thing started working perfectly immediately!  This was not in the manual!

 

 

Although we were a little aprehensive about the 244 mile trip to Mazatlan across the Sea of Cortez, we were anxious to explore new territory.  We left La Paz at 7:30 am on Nov. 6th.  The first night at sea proved very uncomfortable.  We had a south swell off the Pacific and a north swell from the Sea of Cortez.  There was also a north wind of about 15 -20 knots almost all night.  There was no moon until after midnight, so we surfed waves in the dark until the winds finally died at about 2 am.  We rolled rail to rail and even took our first wave into the cockpit, not fun.  The next morning was glassy calm and we would motor for the next 24 hours straight.  We were joined by a pod of dolphins that swam in our bow wake for about 20 minutes in crystal clear water.  They would constantly roll on their sides at the surface to look at us looking at them.  We motored through the night and had to slow the boat down after midnight because we were going to arrive before dawn, and the breakwater into teh marina area is reported to be very dangerous with breaking waves, strong currents, and a dredge that parks right in the middle of the narrow channel.  We wanted to go through while it was light.

 

Sunset at sea.  Red sky at night sailors delight.

 

Our timing was perfect.  Total time for the trip was 47 hours.  We arrived just after the sun came up, and just after high tide, and just before the dredge operator started work.  We radioed the marina security at about 6:30 am and they said they were expecting us, and that they would meet us at the dock to help us tie up.  It's nice when a plan comes together.  At 7:15 am we cracked open a beer to celebrate, and took a nap until the office opened so we could check in.  A local recomended a cafe across the street for breakfast, so hiked over and had a really fantastic breakfast before returning to the boat to pass out again.  We only had slept about 8 hours each in the last 48 hours, so we were spent.  We will probably stay here for about two weeks to really get to see the entire area.

 

 

Entrance channel. Barge is 5 feet to the left of the boat here.

 

 

View behind us to the entrance with the dredge to the side.  It's narrow even when the dredge is not working!

 



 



Cup Racing in SF

We had a chance to see some A Cup racing in San Francisco while we were home.  These were the smaller catamarans for the initial events, and they were amazing.  They were hitting speeds of 25 knots in 17 knots of wind.  We watched the races from in front of the grand stand on Marina Green, and it was very exciting.  They set up an entire race village on the green with a dozen or so restaurants, displays, stages with live music, etc.  The races were all very close to shore and the finish line was always in front of the grand stands.  We definetly want to try and be back for the finals in the bigger 72 foot catamarans.  This was some of the best boat racing we have ever seen, as it was spectator friendly.  You could watch all the action from the shore or in front of the giant screen they had set up.  If you go, dress warm.  They wind chill when we were there in August was in the 40's and 50's.

 

 

Putting Bella Brisa to Bed

Our main job once we got back to La Paz was getting the boat ready to be left in the water for hurricane season.  We feel that the marina is one of the best hurricane holes on all of Mexico.  It took us about a week to take the sails off, get the staysail repaired, remove all the halyards, pickle the water maker, clean and take apart the dinghy, and clean out the entire boat.  It actually took a little longer than we expected because the temps during the day ranged from 100 to 106 degrees in the shade.  We could only work until about 2 pm, and then we had to head to the pool at the beach club for the rest of the day.  Oh darn, another day at the beach club.

 

Bella Brisa ready for anything.

 

Due to the fact that the boat was becoming uninhabitable for a number of reasons, we decided that our last two nights should be spent in the local resort hotel.  Very nice!  Our room looked out over the golf course, and the hotel pool with swim up bar was a big favorite.  Most of all, it had great air conditioning! 

 

 

View out our window.  Also shows the narrow entrance canal to the marina.

 

 

We hate it here.

 

 

We also had lunch here in the water. 

 

So ends our first season in Baja.  We will be back in October to head to Mazatlan and points south on the mainland.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Caleta Partida

 

We were the only boat here for awhile.  That's us to the right.

 

We had a pleasant motor from Isla San Jose to Caleta Partida on the Islands of Espiritu Santo and Partida.  This is a good all wind direction anchorage, so we decided to spend a couple of days here before heading back to La Paz.  We were surprised to be the only boat in the anchorage, which is large enough to hold 100 boats easily.  Of course, by the afternoon a single power boat came and anchored 100 feet away from us and cranked up their mexican music!  Still curious why power boaters are a hated breed?

 

A little cave exploring was in order.

 

 

Some areas had more crabs than this, you couldn't hardly see sand.

 

We discovered the shoreline to be covered with thousands of fiddler crabs.  More than we have ever seen.  It must have been breeding season because it was amazing.  Most of them were 1-2 inches long, but a half mile of the shoreline was literely thick with them.  It was a little scary walking through them in bare feet, but they always kept their distance!

 

 

Things were getting warm!  Upper is cockpit, lower is inside the boat.

 

After a few days, we decided to make the final run back to La Paz.  It was a beautiful morning with no wind, but also no waves.  We motored all the way back to the fuel dock in Costa Baja to check into our slip.  It was a little sad that this part of our cruising season was over, but we were looking forward to getting home to a cooler climate for awhile.

 

Isla San Jose

After a week waiting for a weather window in Agua Verde, we decided to make a run for our southern destinations.  This would be our last longer passage on the route back to La Paz, so we left at dawn hoping to avoid the winds for at least part of the trip.  We did manage to make the first 5 hours without the winds, but then they came up to 20 knots plus right on the nose, accompanied of course by 4 foot chop.  We decided to stop short of our destination and take some shelter at San Evaristo.  Due to the wind direction, we opted to anchor on the North side of the town off the beach with the large salt pond.  We were behind the large rock point, so we had some good wind protection as well.  We did not go ashore here as we were planning to leave early in the morning and make another attempt to get to Isla San Jose.

 

Big rock point we anchored behind.

 

 

Beach at San Evaristo with salt pile.

 

We again left at dawn to avoid the winds in the channel between the island and the Baja peninsula.  Well, it didn't work.  We not only had strong winds, but an opposing current that made for close, steep 5 foot waves that we had to bash the final 5 miles into.  Not a fun morning.  It did however wash the entire deck clean of the dust that had accumulated over the past couple of weeks.

 

We finally anchored in Bahia Amortajada at around noon.  This is a beautiful anchorage with good south wind protection.  It's really a 2 mile long sand spit surrounding a mangrove lagoon.  We were excited to take our dinghy on the reported mangrove river that runs through the island into the lagoon, and then on to the other side of the peninsula.

 

 

We had the place to ourselves for awhile.

 

We spent the afternoon relaxing and swimming.  Our plan was to do the 1.5 mile mangrove dinghy trip in the morning at high tide so we would have a lesser chance of getting stuck. 

 

 

Fishing at the start of the mangrove trip.

 

The trip through the mangroves is a lot of fun.  Most of the river is at least 10 feet wide or more so there is plenty of room to steer around the sand bars.  On the other end is a fabulous lagoon that is so perfect, it looks man made.  The mangroves are full of wildlife.  Many nesting birds can be seen fairly close up.

 

 

Frigate birds hanging out.

 

 

Lagoon entrance on the other side.  Ocean to the right, lagoon to left.

 

When we got back from our exploration, we found the anchorage to be full of giant motor yachts.  The smallest ones were 80 feet long and the largest was 150 feet or so.  These were not megayachts as we know them, because no one had their own helicopter.  However, they did all have complete crews, several ski boats, jetskis, kayaks, and every other water toy.  Their crews were in the process of carefully setting up their private beach cabanas and lining their toys up on the beach.  After everything is prepared and the towels properly laid out, the crew would go back and bring their owners to the beach.

 

 

One yachts beach setup.

 

 

A couple of the big boats. 

No close pictures, as these people do not like their picture taken.

 

We ended up with 9 of these large yachts in the anchorage for the night.  When you consider that they each cost between 20 and 100 million, a large portion of the GDP of Baja Mexico was in this anchorage at once! 

 

That night, when the sun went down, we were invaded by no-see-ums.  In Mexico they are called hay-hay-nays (jejenes).  By the time we realized we were being attacked, it was too late.  They don't call them no see ums for nothing!  We got all the hatches closed, because they are so small they fly right through screens.  The temp in the boat rose to 90 degrees with 80% humidity, and we were miserable.  The bugs live for about 48 hours and they were in our bed, our clothes, everywhere.  You really need strong reading glasses or a magnifying glasses to see them.  By morning, Rich was covered with about 300 itchy red bumps, and Cathy about half that amount.  We decided that although the anchorage was beautiful, we needed to get the heck out of here!  We pulled anchor at first light and headed for Caleta Partida.