We arrived in La Paz after a 20 hour bus ride. We left Ensenada at 10 am on Monday and arrived at 7:30 am on Tuesday. The bus ride actually turned out to be fun for the most part. The buses have really comfortable seats and show movies almost all day. The movies were action movies in English with Spanish subtitles, which works really well because sometimes it is hard to hear the dialouge. Most of those movies are pretty easy to follow even without dialouge, and I speak just enough Spanish to read the subtitles to fill in any place that gets missed when the dialouge becomes inaudible. The bus was quiet, and the bathroom did not ever get gtruly disgusting, no worse than a transpacific flight. We stopped for lunch in San Quintin, and then for dinner in Guererro Negro. "Bus Stop" in Spanish.
Mike and I enjoyed the ride because we drove the same route about seven years ago or so. Some things had changed and some things had not. The desert was still amazingly beautiful and the timing was great - it seemed like all the things I really wanted to see were passed during the daylight hours. There are a lot of different cactuses here that are found nowhere else in the world.
I will not say that the ride did not exhaust us, because it did. I can't sleep on a bus, no matter how comfortable the seats are, because I can't lay down. I could only doze for about half an hour at a time,max. But it is a small price to pay for being able to live like this.
Once we got here, we checked into the El Moro hotel. We liked it so much we made arrangements to put everyone who comes to visit us up here at this hotel. It also has a little restaurant that serves breakfast and lunch, and a little outside bar, as well as a good pool. We can also see the ocean - right across the malecon (boardwalk) from our room.
Our really good friends, Margo, Tony and Charro the dog, were here from Ensenada and it was fantastic to see them. We also have another boat of friends that will be here in a day or so, and three other boats that we need to check on and see if they are still here. Margo and Tony are doing some further exploring and will be back here in a couple days, so we will get to spend some more time with them while we wait to get on the ferry and go back to Magda Jean in Mazatlan.
Here is the wrinkle in all of this - we are going to be here in La Paz until May 3. We cannot get a ferry before then, and since we have too much crap to fly,we must simply stay here the two weeks, although we did not budget for this extra expense! I almost burst into tears when the woman at the ferry office broke the news that all ferries in April were booked up and we would have to wait until May 3 to leave. I was so looking forward to getting back to Magda Jean and Mazatlan! Then it occurred to me that La Paz is one of my favorite places of all time. In fact, before we decided to be sailors, the plan was to come to La Paz as soon as I retired and live here for six months. Like I said before, the hotel is great. So I guess there are worse things than having an unplanned two weeks in paradise! The only problem is - I have no clothes with me for this climate! I brought cold weather stuff for Wisconsin and Missouri, and only a couple changes of clothing for the weather down here. I did not even bring a bathing suit! So now - with two weeks to spend in a place that in my humble opinion has the best beach in Baja, I have to go shopping. I don't like to shop. But at the very least I need a bathing suit, anothr pair of shorts or a sundress, and a couple tops. It simply must be done.
Another interesting thing with this new way of life has to do with our social life. We never used to have one. Mike is simply not that interested in socializing, and I found my social needs were met by people I worked with and some correspondents. Not everyone is lucky enough to get to spend 8 hours a day getting paid to spend time with really wonderful people but I did. The people at my job were like family to me, a lot of them. I just didn't need anyone else. I had my work friends during the week, and Mike and I were happy to be on our owns on the weekends. I lived in San Diego for a long time - years and years - and if I went to dinner or the theater or a movie or some other event or even a bar, it was unlikely I would see anyone I knew. I was surprized if I did. But ever since we have been sailing, we have developed a whole network of people. We KNOW that in any of these coastal Mexican towns, we will either run into someone we have met somewhere else or at the very least a friend of a friend. It is wonderful, and I would not have expected this. And because not everyone decides to live like this, we learn something from almost everyone we meet and automatically have a lot of common interests. Days like today make me feel like the luckiest person in the world. I just wish my parents were alive to see how well everything worked out for me. Although neither one of them would have had the slightest interest in living like I do, I think they would have thought it was great for me.
Right now there is a Mexican cooking show on TV. Whatever she is fixing really looks good. She speaks clearly, which is good for me, but also very fast, which is bad for me. I only got about half the ingredients.
I feel like I am on the brink of something significant. We'll see what happens.
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