For the holidays we were really fortunate that my Mom, Doreen Johnstone, and our youngest daughter, Ariel , were able to come to visit. Ariel arrived late on the Dec 20th. She flew into the La Paz airport which is about 1/2 hour away from the marina. I was asking at the marina office about the best way to get to the airport as her flight arrived at 11:20 pm and I was worried a taxi might be difficult at that time. The people here are so friendly.  One of the nice ladies who works in the office immediately offered to take me to the airport. She gets off at 9 pm and lives over that way so she just dropped me off at the airport, very nice. Ariel arrived no problem but we had to kind of break into the marina as the gate was closed when we arrived back well after midnight.
I am very used to decorating like crazy for Christmas and I found that a bit different on the boat as all I had were 4 Christmas placemats and 4 Christmas pillowcases!!
Ariel and I did some shopping and exploring around town before Christmas but she got a 48 hour viral illness that was going around and spent a couple of days in bed.

With everyone being in town we decided to rent a car for a week. That was an experience. Stop signs here are a suggestion, not a rule. Actually it seems to work well. Most intersections have 4 way stop signs but almost all the roads are one way so you really only have to deal with the traffic coming from one direction. As you approach an intersection you slow down and look. If no one is coming you just keep going, none of this “wasting effort” to come to a stop. If someone else is coming you treat it like a stop sign with the closest one continuing and the other stopping. On a couple of the more major streets there are signals but about 80% of those don’t work and so are treated like stop signs.
Pedestrians are treated very well. Don’t stand at a corner as everyone will stop for you. On the Malecon there are many pedestrian crosswalks and a single foot out into traffic brings all the cars to a halt.
Mom’s flight arrived in San Jose del Cabo on Dec 25. It is about a 2 1/2 hour drive from here. (That piece of information took about 5 hours of computer research as there was a strong rumor that there was a new better road to take but finding it other than just a mention that it was ready to open (where, how do you get to it?) was nigh on impossible.
The flight arrived on time and after about 2 hours getting through the long lines in customs she was out the gate and ready to head to La Paz. Of course we had a time constraint. A bunch of cruisers got together and arranged with the local restaurant to cook Christmas dinner. The dinner started at 4pm and Mom and I were San Jose del Cabo at about 2:30 Of course I had found the short cut on the way to the airport but somehow the signs were lacking on the way back so we had to drive through the center of town and eventually , after a few wrong turns made it to road to La Paz. Christmas is a great day to drive really fast:). There was no traffic and no policemen so I drove fast. We made it to the dinner at 4:30, pretty good. A great time was had by all including my first taste of straight tequila. It had never appealed to me before but someone bought one for Mom as they felt she deserved it as she had left Fort Myers at 3:30am and it was now 4:30 pm , plus 3 hours. We split it and decided it was pretty good!
We did the typical OB GYN Christmas which means Christmas is celebrated on whatever day you are not on call. So since we were all there on December 26 it was treated that like Christmas morning and we did the whole thing with stockings and presents and all.
Unfortunately this is where Hartley’s saga starts. He woke with severe dizziness and nausea. As it turned out he has vestibular neuritis, which is a viral inner ear infection that affects your balance control center. He was so bad we had one of the local family medicine doctors come out to the boat and check him out. They gave him a lot of motion sickness medicine but it really didn’t help much. Our lovely primary care doc in Phoenix, Dr Claire Bowey, called me back while she was on vacation and gave me some insight into the problem and helped calm us a little. Thank you.
By the 30th of December he was still feeling pretty bad, so we found a sailor who had seen an ENT here. Appointments here with doctors are fast. We got in that evening and she confirmed the diagnosis and suggested some prednisone to help with the symptoms. Hartley is gradually recovering but we haven’t even thought about taking the boat out yet. He is to the point where he is starting to do some balance and eye exercises to challenge his vestibular system and retrain it.
I got to try out the local medical system as well. I developed thrombocytopenia, which is a low platelet count resulting in lots of bruising. Again the doctors were very responsive and moved me efficiently from the internal medicine doctor to an appointment the next day with the hemotologist. Again I need to thank another doctor in Phoenix, Dr Jeffery Isaacs who also called me back while he was on vacation to review my results and tell me what to expect and how to deal with this disease process. I have been very fortunate as it turns out our boat neighbors are both recently retired hematologists and have helped me follow my test results and given me the latest greatest theories about the disease process. This is usually a self limiting disease and I have great hopes it will soon be gone.
Ok enough of that, just needed to record it as hopefully it will all be a distant memory in a week or two.
Since we couldn’t go anywhere on the boat Hartley and have been exploring the city. We decided to take some Spanish classes. I have got to figure out away to speak more as I find when I push myself I can actually communicate. One of my techniques for practicing is to always ask for something when I am at the store and then I get taken around and shown all the possibilities to fulfill my requests. Hartley is just starting on his vocabulary and is enjoying figuring out new words.
Well Hartley was pretty incapacitated for the time Mom and Ariel were here so I am afraid we went off and did our own thing.
We drove to Todos Santos which is an artsy little town about an hour away. We wondered around town stopping in all the little shops. Of course we had to stop for a lovely lunch at one of the restaurants in town. Nice and relaxing.

We also stopped by the beach and enjoyed the crashing waves.

There are very few signs (none) to get you where you want to go. Asking how to get to the beach results in a general hand wave in that direction. As you can see we made it.

Another day we drove to a different beach near Pichilingue. (pee-chee-LING-way).

Of course we had to try something a little daring while they were here. We decided to go swim with the whale sharks. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t the greatest. The wind was blowing at about 12 knots making the sea pretty lumpy and it was cool. I did have a wet suit for each of us we kept us from freezing. We went out on this little panga ( a panga is a  little fishing boat ) and found the whale sharks.You have to flip yourself off the panga and into the deep water and swim along trying to keep up with the sharks. The big trick is getting back on the panga as the waves are bouncing the boat up and down. You should have seen the lovely bruises we got.  The whale sharks  are huge. The ones we saw were young ones, only about 14  -20 feet long. They can get up to 40 feet long.  ( I assure plenty big when you are swimming along following one and you turn around and there is one close enough to touch , right there with its great big mouth wide open.

U

(from TOMAS posted on Bajainsider.com)

This picture I had to borrow from the Internet but it just how they look.

La Paz and the Islands

Where to start to tell you about all the great things we have seen and done. Right now we are on a 14 plus day trip on the Sea of Cortez out of La Paz. La Paz is small city about 1/3 of the way up the inside of that long Baja peninsula that extends down from San Diego.
La Paz is a pretty town with the main street being a long walk way along the ocean called the Malecon. People walk there all the time. There are also those who jog. They have a small area that has exercise machines setup for anyone who walks by to use. They are all human propelled, no electricity required .When the tide is high and the wind is blowing you can get plenty wet from the waves. The side opposite from the ocean is lined with small shops and lots of restaurants. The bigger stores and the more hustle and bustle of the town happens a few blocks inland from the Malecon. Most of the streets are one way which makes it great for bicycles as the streets are wide and you don’t feel crowded.
There are two major Mercados in town which are covered buildings with lots of little shops inside, mostly places that sell fruits and vegetables and stalls that sell fish or meat. They also have “ the organic market’ every Tuesday and Saturday which has nice vegetables and lots of good baked goods. Nearby is a street vendor who sells pork tacos. Oh they are good. You have to be sure not to go too late as he just works until he sells out usually between noon and 2 . About a week ago Alex , a friend of ours from Full Glass and I met in town. I was looking for items to fulfill a Christmas wish list from a poor child in a very small village about 1.5 hours from here. (The rotary club collects Christmas wish letters from these kids who have to stay at a boarding school during the week as the live too far away, so they only go home on the weekends. They also have very limited resources. ) We had lots of fun going in various stores and trying to explain what I needed. Even getting Christmas paper was a challenge as they just sell it in individual sheets, no big rolls. Of course though, will we were shopping I got hungry ( this was before the pork tacos) and so we stopped at a busy looking street vendor who sold fish tacos with all sorts of condiments to go with them, mmmm good.
So as I started to tell you about our latest trip. We left La Paz in the company of Julie and John on Mya who hail from Long Beach, CA. We went to Lobos, small cove just south of La Paz.

It was beautiful with clear blue water that turned that lovely ocean green color as the water became more shallow. After a night there went to Isla Espiritu Santo. There are lots of anchorages and we chose La Raza.

The snorkeling and kayaking were great. There were several Baja Ha Ha boats there with us, Myla ( Julie and John), Anakena (Bill and Debbie), “C’est Si Bon ( Perry and Patty) and Volare (Jason and Vicki). We all went on a hike together (except C’est Si Bon as they had already done a four hour kayak trip.!)
Next stop was Partida and met with all of the above except Volare who had to leave and added Ahelani ( Steve and Patricia).

After that we all had different plans and went off on our own ways. We stopped again in La Raza and had the whole cove to ourselves ( that made clothing optional!!!). The next day we went back up to Los Canderlaros and then off up the coast to Isla San Francisco.

We were able to hike there too and Hartley took some pictures of the bay. We met up with Bill and Debbie again and enjoyed great cocktails at sunset.
We then headed up the coast. We keep looking for whales but haven’t seen any yet. We did see quite a few dolphins, no tricks though, they seemed very relaxed. I finally saw some flying bat rays, cool. The sunset in San Telmo was incredible .

To top it off the water had bioluminescent dinoflagellates and after sunset , the water sparkled as the fish swam around .
So we haven’t seen any real civilization for over a week now. I was in the mood for some food other than what we cook ourselves, so we went in search of a restaurant. We stopped in Agua Verde and looked ashore. The guide book said it had two little stores but no restaurants and that seemed true. We only could see about 5 small houses from the boat. We decided to keep going. Along the way we saw a boat that we knew, Kiwi III captained by Patty who was sailing with her friend Bob. We both decided to go into Candeleros Bay ( a different one from above). Pretty little bay with a great big new resort just off the beach.

Perfect for the restaurant food I wanted. Patty was having some trouble with her engine so she sailed into the bay and did a beautiful job anchoring under sail. I then swam over to their boat to see if she needed any help with anything and just to say hi. I could of just called on the radio but it was hot and nice swim seemed in order. We exchanged pictures that we had taken of each other as we sailed by and Patty had her engine problem figured out. Hartley and I stayed on board to see the sunset and then kayaked over (dress and all) to the resort where we had a lovely dinner. It was relatively expensive by Mexican standards, 85 pesos for a margarita, 105 for a glass of red wine and 59 pesos for a beer! In La Paz we can get beer for 30 and under and often at happy hour you can get a beer for 15 pesos. (There are about 16 pesos to the dollar).