Two Days in Todos Santos

February 26-28

Yard art over lettuce in one of the many art galleries

This month seems to be made for exploring the state of Baja California Sur, most recently to the west coast town of Todos Santos. After years of ranching, fruit and sugarcane growing, the Todos Santos aquifer dried up in the last century and by 1965 the town was basically a ghost town. However we had heard great things about its revival, with surfing and a fine arts community driving the economy plus a return to agricultural endeavors. Bonney and Jeff were up for the trip.

Cane crushing machinery rusting away. Behind photographer
is a big brick chimney for boiling down syrup to make candy.

By good fortune we really hit the mark going this week. As it happened, the local Palapa Society had a tour of historic buildings. Also the Todos Santos Film Festival was running. After a great lunch as Modo Todo Hotel, actually on the tour, as it was once the general store (bottles of fine booze grace the shelves formerly occupied by brassieres), we visited the cultural center where local kids now go for enrichment classes in computer, art, science and so on. It actually had a museum like collection of art and historic photos plus, in the courtyard, a one room wattle farmhouse typical of early dwellings in the region.

Houses on the tour typically were occupied by gringos who had restored old buildings. We visited the Brookses, a couple of teachers whose back yard is now a mini citrus orchard.  Neil gave us a sample from his grapefruit tree. I haven’t tasted a better one in years! (Their sailboat is kept in Deer Harbor!)

Wattle farmhouse at Cultural Center

The town square and church were next to the theater where we bought tickets for two delightful movies. One, El Ambulante, about a man who travels through rural Argentina stopping in a town, getting locals to work on making a film with him, and moving on. His income is the proceeds from the showing. It was a wonderful, heartwarming story! The next night we watched Los 100 Sones Cubanas about the trademark sounds of Cuban music, reminiscent of the Buena Vista Social Club. 

On our second day in town we headed for the beach, planning to take a walk to the turtle nesting area and do a little birding at La Poza (aka lagoon). As we crested the dunes we found ourselves faced with a parade of gray whales heading north. Some were very close to the beach. The sandy bottom comes up steeply here and the waves make interesting scallops of the shore. In fact they seem to come from south and north at once, smashing in the middle and sending up spray geysers. Very unusual. I can’t imagine surfing there. We walked south and found lots of birds at the lagoon including many ruddy ducks!

A local fisherman was surf fishing by throwing his baited hooks up into the wind, then running up the beach to jig and pull the line in. He caught a couple of fish in this fashion.

Next to Bonney a turtle trail?

We walked back, checked out the only turtle nest we could see, and loaded into the car. A little way out the sand road we passed a couple of elderly women, one wearing stunning toy glasses. Stopping to joke around we learned she and her companion were lost! They’d been on a walk with younger relatives and found they couldn’t keep up. When we learned that they were staying at a classy posada on the Pozo’s inner shore, we decided to rescue them. Not really, but it was fun to tour the beautiful hotel and grounds all planted by the current innkeepers, a Swiss couple. And those nice ladies bought us a round of drinks which we sipped from the rooftop lounge overlooking the lagoon. 

Real Mexican Cooking

Chiara and Jeff with Chiara's baby nephew

Friday, February 24

This morning we biked to Casa Tuscany where Bonney and Jeff, our Seattle friends are staying. Our destination, by car! (theirs, rented) was Sabores de Mexico, a newly opened tienda featuring many mysterious culinary enticements. Chiara Bende, the owner, and a chef of New World heritage, had offered to talk with me about using her creations when Karen and I stopped by her shop in early February. The little bottles of mole and salsa, packages of sea salt and dried peppers beckoned. But how to use these treasures?

It came to me that the Lemkins' visit would provide the perfect opportunity to return. Jeff has a food blog and I knew he’d go nuts learning from Chiara. Plus more Seattle gringos would benefit, recall and practice with the new ingredients.

When we arrived, me with computer in hand, Jeff with camera, Chiara welcomed us into her outdoor seating area where she’d set out chopped ingredients and several bags of chiles next to her electric wok and a molcajete, the local term for a stone metate.

Although she’d only promised us a talk, she couldn’t hold herself back from turning our visit into a full on cooking lesson! She started with a lecture on chiles which was full of eye openers for us. She tore into a package of dry criollo chiles and the fun began.

The first recipe was for any salsa, starting with the dry criollo, rehydrating it in hot water and pounding it into a red sauce to add to the salsa. The rest of the recipe is (or will be shortly) on Jeff’s food blog (www.caloriefactory.com). Next, her friend Lupita who had been quietly drinking coffee in the background with Chiara’s husband appeared to give us a demonstration of making a tortilla. Lupita, dressed like a model in fashionable jeans and 5” heels, made us feel like beach bums. (Wait that’s pretty much who the Stillmans are!) Chiara noted that if you just open a bottle of her intensely chocolate sauce you can work some of that into the masa dough to make a better flavored tortilla. Pretty soon she was getting Jeff to mash avocado into guacomole while she stirred tortilla strips in hot oil for chilaquiles, a recent and favorite discovery of ours. Finally, making my day, she pulled out a package of machaca de res, dried shredded beef, from Aramburo, a local grocery, and stirred it into fried bell peppers, tomato and onion, showing us  how to make machaca burritos, the very elevenses we’d slavered over on our way to Mag Bay.

Oh what a joy! Still reeling from the smells and bright colors of her delicious dishes, and laden with new ingredients for boat cooking, we swung by the Mercado Municipal for yellowfin tuna and  licuados before siesta time! Thank you, thank you Chiara and buen provecho!

Carnaval in La Paz

Ash Wednesday, February 22

Mexican version of Hot Cross Buns?

Returning from the quiet unpopulated world of beach life to mad local revelry has been a bit of a shock.




From our slip we can see the Malecon swarming with crowds and vendors. Impacting us more is the constant beat of music and crackly amplification of voices from the many stages. The din starts in early afternoon and continues past midnight. The normally slow pace of La Paz life continues on our little side streets as police have them blocked off. It is nice that the daily parade is the only traffic allowed down Obragon, the beachfront drive, but the numbers of gun toting Army men as well as police all over town make me uneasy.

Home made eggs, masks and princess hats for sale

For several afternoons we’ve endured semi truck horns and the attendant music of the parade. Of course we had to go out and watch some of it as well. This town’s celebration is very home grown. Lots of kids on floats and working booths.

Child mango sculptor

Local customs entertained us. We were at first puzzled by passing parade goers, confetti sparkling on their hair and shoulders. Many industrious families must spend all year emptying eggshells and filling them with confetti and decorating them to sell for Carnaval. You can buy half a dozen for 10 pesos. 
The kids throw them at each other, smash them on people’s heads and the parade floats. Special foods, for example decorated buns, “pan de Texcoco,” and corn with thick cream on it are popular. Masks and other adornments are for sale everywhere. And vendors from other parts of Mexico set up booths all down the Malecon.

We can't wait for Lent to begin!

Cotton candy maker or Marge Simpson's new do?

Peso pitch game

Oakies?

Magdalena Bay Field Trip

February 15-18

My forefathers hunted whales for their blubber and later made good money selling baleen for those corsets and stays that kept our foremothers’ wasp waists slender. In fact, the original Gratitude was a whaler owned by my great great grandfather. As far as I know, the gray whales were not their quarry, though. The grays have schooled to mate in Magdalena Bay for all known time. After the long coastal swim down from the Bering Sea they famously play, mate and give birth to calves in lagoons along the outer Baja coast. Ever since my parents visited San Ignacio lagoon and took movies of mating (gulp) whales, I’ve had an itch to do my own whale watching tour.

Last week in a sudden burst of energy we surveyed local tour companies and jumped on the opportunity to join a 4 day whale watching trip led by Mar y Aventuras. Generally we’ve been pretty much coast locked, that is to say traveling close to the shorelines, but this trip started with a long drive across the peninsula to the fishing town of Puerto San Carlos where we refueled on the way down Baja. The adventure started with a walk to LunaSol inn, three blocks from our La Paz marina and home to M y A offices. Over breakfast our guide Miguel introduced everyone told us what to expect. We found that 4 out of 6 of us were from Washington, the other two being Coupeville residents, Jan and Anne. Judy and her daughter Sue from the SF Bay area rounded out the select group.

Traveling in the van we watched the desert roll by, mostly cactus lands with cattle ranching. Miguel told us matter of factly that during drought ranchers burn the spines off the cactus to give the cattle forage with some water content. At a potty stop about half way we pulled up to a small stone building, a restaurant featuring machaca burritos.  In spite of the early hour, beef cooking smelled great, a delicious elevenses. We had never heard of this salty dried meat concoction, but soon located some future machaca hanging laundry style on a line outside. 

 

At Pt San Carlos we were dropped off on a beach (remember there’s a fee for docking?) and waded out to the waiting panga, a large, stable skiff that would be our whale watching vessel as it turned out. 

Charlie helps moor the panga.

Camp

Approaching the shore I wished my camera was ready. The sandy beach of Man of War Cove stretched on forever with the only human habitation our temporary little white tents in neat rows and two brown army tents, one for cooking, one for dining. I never did get a good photo, but the camp looked almost the same from the back. (3photos) We anchored off here back in 2005 with Iain and Ruth in Bizim. Never thought I’d be back, especially living in a tent on sand for three nights!  Savory hot meals three times a day, happy hour every evening and lots of reading/siesta time in a lovely quiet place made up for having to pee on the open shore.  We slept on cots with Thermarest mattresses which Charlie found more comfortable than his boat berth!

Whale Watching 

Susie ready for action

We went out every day powered by a 4 stroke 225 horse Honda motor, whizzing across the water at 25 knots or so. (At night this valuable boat was padlocked to a buried chain against possible theft.) The boat was painted blue on the bottom. We found that whales would approach our boat more than others. Maybe it was because of the quiet motor and blue color.

"Right Handed" whale, barnacles on left

Our first afternoon out we encountered groups of three whales playing together. Like raptors, the female grays are larger than the males and generally accompanied by two consorts as they swim through the shallow waters of the bay. Being 40-45 feet long they can’t dive deep here in 20-50 feet. Amazingly the grays don’t feed in these waters. They fatten up during summers in the Bering Sea and then swim about 100 miles a day using energy stored in blubber, til they get to the lagoons where the females either mate or calf. A benefit for observers is that their spout water, with which we were frequently showered, isn’t fishy smelling. These whales are bottom feeders with narrow heads, barnacled on one side, the other scraped clean by digging into the mud as, swimming on their sides, they plow up amphipods and crustaceans.

This side scrapes the bottom while feeding

Double blowhole characteristic of baleen whales

Most of the whales just swim away or play with their threesome, but a few came up to the panga to look at us, swim back and forth under it and even bump and rub up against it. The barnacles and sea lice clustered all over their backs must be somewhat itchy. The last morning on a calm sea a dozen whale watching pangas were out. One friendly whale went from boat to boat, poking its head up and inviting touches.

Surprise!

On the second day we went to the mouth of Mag Bay looking for mating whales. We quickly found the action, whales thrashing around unmindful of gawking observers, and exposing what our guide dubbed “the Pink Floyd.” Charlie’s best photo shows a joyful male exposing his stomach, flippers outstretched and PF in view. Sideways profile shots eluded us.

Pink Floyd... Let it all hang out!

We also went to the Bajo area of the bay where in 4 fathoms or so the calves are born and begin to develop. The shallows are safer for the babies. There were two we saw but most calving occurs in the northern lagoons. 

Side Trips

Our other activities included a morning paddle up the closest estuary. The lowish tide opened up mudflats for many wading birds to forage. The red mangroves here were much smaller and less robust than in San Blas or Maz.

Charlie, Susie, Sue, Judy, Anne and Jan

We also panga-ed over to the fishing village of Magdalena, a few miles west, where we observed fish skins drying, took a botanical hike and looked down at the Pacific shore. This area was once explored as a phosphate source, but the mines were never developed, fortunately, as little of the mineral was found.

Sunsets and dune walks on the skinny barrier island entertained us and exercised our cameras. Desicated sand rooted shrubs were home to huge numbers of white snails. How they survive in the arid conditions is a mystery, but I bet the hungry coyotes crunch up quite a number. Strange to say this place was hard to leave.

Southern Crossing

Wednesday, February 1 to Tuesday, Feb 7

Not much to say about this period except that we saw our weather window and took off for La Paz, stopping over night at Isla Isabella. Unlike the last time, we were alone in the eastern anchorage. Swimming was nice, probably the last swim for quite some time as water temps in the Sea of Cortez are still in the 60’s. I did ramble around a bit more at the broken down old research station and found a visitor book to sign. I doubt most visitors get here. My only company was a number of brown iguanas sunning themselves along the broken concrete walkways.

During the leg to La Paz we logged 357 sea miles to go about 300 as the crow flies, a very long passage for us. The weather was mild but the wind was on our nose until we rounded the peninsula north of La Paz. We reefed and beat our way up a good deal of the way toward Bahia de Los Muertos, sometimes motorsailing, managing to keep a good boat speed of over 6 knots most of the time. Even with a big gibbous moon we had great planet viewing including Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and a sight of Mercury above the rising sun.

At 4 p.m. Saturday we were 20 miles out of La Paz and Karen was really hoping to make it to a marina for the night. By happy chance a favoring current convinced us that we could make it in time for sunset at 6:10. Aided by a tailwind we raced along, averaging 8.6 knots for the last couple of hours to glide into a slip as the light died. The boat is covered with salt crystals but otherwise in great shape as are we.

Paul and Karen had a couple of days to explore La Paz with us, revisiting some culinary splendors of the town, including Bismarkcito, and walking miles along the shore. We sent them back to Whidbey with great thanks for seeing us safely back to "the Baja."

Puerto Vallarta: New Crew, New View.

January 28

Our second stay at the Paradise Village Marina brought more perspective to the PV experience. Like any cruising couple, we each harbor different expectations for travel by boat. Give Charlie a berth in nice calm marina water and he’s a happy clam, fiddling around aboard for days. I like to get more of a sense of the places we tie up. In other words I want to visit and explore. It’s also much more important to me to run around and get tired every day. In spite of the embarrassing name and touristy package, Paradise Village makes a cushy place for new arrivals to Mexico, and so we returned there to meet our next crew, Karen and Paul. Yes, the very same Paul who valiantly joined us for the leg from Seattle to San Francisco.

The first time we stayed at this marina I enjoyed the pools and beach, but felt sort of isolated from town. We had little opportunity, actually none, for going out, except to reprovision. With friends, Ian and Diane and then Paul and Karen, to explore, I got out on the local busses to see a bit of the city. Its big attraction is the remodeled malecon. For almost its entire length cars are routed off the beachfront. This makes strolling, shopping, eating, and playing on the beach quieter, cleaner and much more pleasant.  In fact, the surprising lack of car traffic on many of the streets increases the city’s attraction. Like Seattle, PV comes steeply downhill to the sea. Most of the busses run N-S a block or two up the hill and the rest is residential and nice for walking.

Taking the water taxi from Paradise Village to PV would have been fun but my first foray by bus began in Nuevo Vallarta marina. We set off with the ambition of walking the malecon, traipsing up the Rio Cuale in the middle of town, and climbing up to Liz Taylor’s old house. From the malecon we had fun watching kids boogie boarding in the surf. Even early  in the morning, the beachfront restaurants were going strong. Luckily the island in the river is shady and cool. 

When we finished dodging all the schmag sellers we headed up hill to find the famed pink bridge between Richard’s and Liz’s houses. It is a shame that the place is now mostly torn up, and its future as a B & B is in arrested development, due to a lawsuit. The charming little bridge, faded as it was reminded us of romantic dreams in a simpler time.

Speaking of charming, it’s a feature of the restaurants along the malecon to have shaded balcony dining on the second floor, a great place to do people watching and catch breezes on the hot days. On Sundays, especially, there are also performers of various sorts, from mimes and posers to Indian pole spinners. On the beach sand sculptures have reached the level of fine art.

PV is a very recent city and much of its population is involved with the tourist trade. The shores of Bandaras Bay have attracted furious building. There’s little zoning to corral the giant hotels designed to the whim of architects inspired by cultures famed for massive monuments. These hotels jut up wherever land can be bought. It makes an odd semi urban seaside landscape stretching on for most of 45 beachfront miles. 

Sayulita

January 25

Several friends had recommended a visit to this town north of Bandaras Bay set in lush jungly hilly terrain. We knew it as a place where many young Americans have taken up an inexpensive lifestyle, the place to learn to surf or start some ecologically sound agricultural endeavor. I didn't expect it to win my heart, but it proved a delightful spot, with a lovely town plaza in shady park style, little shops, clean beaches and good food. A friendly young shopkeeper sent us to Muertos Beach away from the surfers. It turned out that the road there passed by the most colorful cemetery we've yet encountered. The body surfing was great and the whole trip made for a wonderful day.

We came back, dropped into the Octupus's Garden restaurant in La Cruz for a beer and planned out our next couple of days with Ian and Diane.