Subasta

Mermaid and Porpoise on the La Paz Malecón

Sunday, December 4

La Paz is proving to be a delightful place. Among its draws is the helpful Club Cruceros sited at Marina de La Paz, a.k.a. the “other” marina, located at the southern end of the Malecon. We find ourselves riding down this waterfront, actually in large part beachfront, promenade almost every day. Club Cruceros supports cruisers in a wide variety of ways as well as promoting good relations with the community. In the morning we listen to their announcements on the VHF radio on subjects of interest to us such as weather, how to get supplies into the country without bureaucratic snags, where to procure all sorts of useful items from fishing licenses to boat parts, and so on. The club has a shack, er, clubhouse, in which is located a good selection of videos and books that go out on loan to boaters.

Over time, the club has supported programs in the local schools to fund meals and scholarships for needy kids. Commonly many families find the financial burden of keeping kids in school, especially paying for uniforms, to be too great to continue after about the 6^th grade. Eventually forming an independent non-profit, Fanatur (www.lapazninos.org), members of the local ex-pat community, both boaters and dirt dwellers, developed the annual event known as Subasta to raise money for the kids. As we happened to be here when this local fundraiser was happening, it seemed like a good idea to pitch in.

On Saturday afternoon while I played bridge at the marina’s restaurant, Charlie helped unload bags of donations being delivered to the marina parking lot. The whole place was taken over with tents and tables, kind of like a street fair, in preparation for Subasta. Sunday morning busy volunteers set up the tables with bake sale items, crafts, rummage and clothing, four pickup truck loads of black garbage sacks stuffed full! When we arrived we went to the clothing booth and started emptying the sacks and stacking clothes on tables. A bunch of high school kids who participate in Fanatur programs joined us and helped us with this, the most active area of the event. At nine the crowds rushed in. The kids helped us with adding and counting scrip, no real money in use. We got coaching in Spanish as they didn’t speak much English. Now we really know those numbers!

The volume of clothing was truly staggering. As customers bought and the levels dropped, we opened more bags and kept the tables full. I met the mother of Paola, the girl who was assigned to children’s clothing with me and we dug through the piles to find clothes for her three other daughters. Cruisers outfitted their growing children at 5 or 10 pesos for a shirt or pants, and grandmothers carted off armloads for grandkids. At noon Mary Shroyer, the marina owner and boss of the clothing tent and pretty much everything else, determined that prices should drop to 50% off, and business doubled. Charlie bought us sauerkraut dogs, but we hardly got out to see the rest of the event. Subasta means auction, by the way, however, the stage was too far from our tent for us to participate.

By 4 o’clock the remaining clothes, maybe an eighth of what we started with, were stuffed back into sacks and given to the cooks and the teachers. The kids swept up trash, folded up tables, said good-bye, and bang the whirlwind was over. Carrying a few “new” clothes, in low gear we pedaled the flat Malecon into a 20 knot Norther past white caps in the harbor, boats dancing at their moorings and sand blowing into our eyes. We were totally exhausted but delighted with the day.