Canadians stuck in La Paz, Mexico

La Paz, Mexico – OK, OK…the plan was for our friends Matt and Madalin to arrive from Toronto and for us to jump on the boat and spend two glorious weeks at Isla Espiritu Santos and Isla Partida, which are islands just north of La Paz. However, Mother Nature (you remember her from our earlier post) had a different plan. She decided that since we have Canadian visitors, she would make them feel at home and send us a week of unyielding winds from the “Great White North” so we were stuck in La Paz.

Don’t get us wrong; all of us absolutely like La Paz – especially since we are staying here through New Year’s Eve – but we would have preferred to spend more time in remote anchorages, snorkeling, kayaking, and enjoying the Sea of Cortez. You’ll hear more about that in our next post, but it goes without saying that week 1 of the M&M’s vacation was a blur of happy hours, dinners onboard Celebration, restaurants, tacos, cervezas, and even a nightclub, along with lots of walking around this beautiful waterfront town.

Highlights included excellent tostadas at Rancho Viejo, including a great Mexican lunch at El Toro Guera (the Blonde Bull). A five-mile walk got us to a fantastic seafood lunch at La Concha restaurant. In the evening, we had a delightful Italian dinner at Il Rustico with our friends Peter and Mary from Neko and Eric and Birgitta from Ariel IV followed by some serious late-night partying at “The Jungle.”

Food in Mexico

Of course, the best meals were provided by Chef/Co-Captain Audrey, who spoiled us with Caribbean curry, Thai curry, Indian curry, and curried turkey burgers (yes, we all like curry) along with treats like homemade (or should I say boat-made?) banana bread and boat-made cookies.

The best part is we also got to enjoy some of the early Christmas festivities in La Paz starting with a concert performed by members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the setting up of the town Christmas tree and street lights along the entire Malecon, which stretches for a couple of miles along the waterfront.

The group did manage to squeeze in a few water adventures in week 1. First, we had an unsuccessful hunt for whale sharks in our little inflatable dinghy (aka Fiesta). Then, later in the week when the wind abated for a couple of days, we to took the mother ship to Puerto Balandra, which is famous for its Mushroom Rock, but the waves in the bay were so bad that we couldn’t spend the night.

The Mother Ship

We did manage to get off the mother ship for a dinghy ride to the beach and a walk. After that, we headed for Bahia Pichilingue, which was not as scenic but very well protected, for a night at anchor.

It goes without saying that we all had a great time during week one, but stay tuned for our next blog (very, very soon) as Mother Nature cooperated for week 2 and we spent most of the week at Isla Espiritu Santos and Isla Partida.