Out of La Paz

We finally broke the grip that La Paz had on us and escaped to the islands. It's easy to settle into life in La Paz, the great restaurants, interesting shops, nice people, and new friends but after a month we were eager to get back on the water.

The search for the ultimate fish taco continues. We found an excellent contender at Lucy's right next to Lopez Marine, highly recommended.

After provisioning (a fancy word for buying everything in the grocery store) we had a good weather window and headed out.

First stop was only 18 miles away, San Gabriel bay on isla Espiritu Santos. This is a large bay opened to weather from the west or south but the forecast was for calm winds so we took a chance and set the anchor and except for an afternoon breeze we were rewarded with a pleasant stay. One surprise was Frigatebirds mating on the south end of the bay on an outcrop of rocks left by a long abandoned pearl farm. The male Frigatebirds has an orange throat patch that becomes bright red when inflated in courtship display. There were hundreds of Frigatebirds with dozens of males displaying their red throat at any one time. We took our dinghy near the birds but not too close as to disturb them. Click on picture below to see detail.



While in La Paz we applied for international health insurance that was recommended by other cruisers. The first hurdle to over come is that we needed to both get physical exams so we called an excellent doctor in La Paz that we had both seen before for minor issues, Dr. Touchman or Dr T as he is know in the cruiser community. We both passed our exams with no problems so we sent them off and waited. After we left La Paz we received via SailMail a form that we needed to sign and return but we didn't have internet connection where we were and we couldn't download the attached form with SailMail so we needed to go back toward La Paz until we were close enough to get a cell signal and connect to the internet. We spent a day cruising south for 2 hours, watching the bars on the cell phone until we could connect to the internet and then downloaded email, printed and signed the form, scanned the signed copy and emailed it back and then found a location to anchor for the night. All in a days work for people cruising on a boat. Cruising has many challenges that city bound people just can't appreciate and we wouldn't change lives with anyone.