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| Tom's Office |
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| Jan's Studio |
3/6/11 La Ventana: We made our way north to windy La Ventana (on the Sea of Cortez) where the gringo population seems to be from the Columbia Gorge. The town is mostly a string of houses, small hotels and not much else along a stretch of beach. We stayed in a campground for a night which was inundated by wind surfers. They all had their area’s staked out along the beach with their small RV or van and an awning and then a shed built from metal poles and plastic. As we walked the beach we could see inside the storage areas, and many of the surfers had what looked like a small store full of a multitude of sails, boards and wet suits. We had fun talking to people (mostly from Hood River, the Dalles, Mosier and White Salmon) and checking out the scene, but we decided that if you weren’t a wind surfer/kiter you were pretty out of place in La Ventana. Oh well.
3/7/11 Carnival in La Paz. After arriving in La Paz and and finding a place to camp in a park about 5 miles out of town. We hopped on a bus into the city to check out the “Carnival”, their rendition of Mardi Gras before Lent. The streets were closed off on the Melacon along the bay and food vendors, beer and alcohol vendors, trinket salesmen, gambling booths and carnival rides lined the open streets. People were wandering around enjoying the early evening mood as the sun was going down. About 6:00 we started to hear sirens, and saw police cars coming down the middle, clearing people to the sides, and we could start to see the beginnings of the parade. This was the second or three nights of parade, and we had heard that the night before the streets had been packed with 200,000 people. You couldn’t walk anywhere. You were just carried by the crowd. Not liking the ideas of being squished in a crowd we, fortunately, arrived on this second night which was less crowded. The Parade arrived with costumed and sequined women and men riding on floats being hauled by big 16 wheeler trucks, each blaring their own music. Groups of people in costume danced by, and trucks carried various mexican bands . People were throwing empty eggs full of confetti at the trucks and a few of the people on floats threw candy for the kids. As an added bonus we were watching right under a big screen and a TV camera on the street, so the people would stop and dance and put on their show in front of us.After the parade, we wandered the Malacon and as it got dark more and more people showed up until it started to get pretty crowded again. We drank several Mexican beers to go with our Mexican hot dogs and “gorditos” (like english muffins cooked on hot griddle and covered with a little sweetened condensed milk) and we just watched the scene. A couple amusing items for kids were 1. A bunch of lighted easels for kids to paint a picture printed on cardboard. Unfortunately they were trying to paint them with a box of watercolor paints and very tiny brushes. It would have taken them all night to finish one, but maybe that was the point. They were all giving it a valiant try.
2. Was a large swimming pool filled with giant clear plastic balls, filled with kids crawling around inside of them. Every once in a while a “wrangler” would move a ball to the side and unzip it and let the child out. The next child would enter, the collapsable ball would get partially zipped closed and the attendant would stick a leaf blower into the zipper to fill the ball with air, as the child held their hands over their ears. They would then finish zipping the ball closed and push them off into the pool. We watched this in awe, and wondered if the parents could just leave them in there all night while they went to the Carnival. We never did figure out how they knew when which kid should come out. It looked like a nightmare to me.The nighttime brought out music bands on stages and more carnival goers, but we didn’t last too long and headed home to the peace and quiet of Tortuga.
3/11/11 The Tsunami,
We’d made our way over 30 miles of gravel and car-eating potholed roads and then 30 miles of brand new pavement out in the middle of nowhere to find the little fishing village of San Juanico and Scorpion Bay on the Pacific coast. Our friends Mike and Linda from Stevenson were camped for the month and we went for a visit on our way north. We’d been there two days, exploring the area, watching the surfers on some world class surfing waves, eating fresh caught halibut (thanks, Mike) and Linda and I plein air painted together. On our third morning Tom woke up to news on his short wave radio that Japan had had the terrible 9 point earthquake/tsunami and that it was headed our way across the Pacific. Then Linda came over to our campsite to tell us that the police had been by to warn them of the possible danger. Since we were camped up on a bluff 40 feet above the water, we weren’t to concerned, but we put our stuff into Tortuga in case we had to make a hasty get away. In town, all of the fishermen had moved their pangas up high off the beach and we watched as two large tuna boats came into the bay to anchor. The waves were supposed to hit about 9:00 or so and we sat around watching and waiting for something to happen. Nothing happened.
Then about 11:00 the tide started going far out below the low tide line and then returning to the high tide level at about 20 minute intervals... the tsunami was finally here. It was kind of like a slow motion tsunami, as the waves coming in were less of a giant wave than a surge of several consecutive waves that just kept coming into shore, coming higher and higher with each wave. At the apex of the tide there would be no surf at all, and then the water would start sucking out again causing confused, sideways waves close into shore. This high/low tide repeated itself all afternoon about every 15-30 minutes. The highest waves came in around about 3:00 and actually took some people by surprise who had driven out on the beach thinking that the tsunami was over. They had to drive to high ground, and then still got their cars wet. A few surfers went out to surf the Tsunami, but came back in fairly quickly as the surge going out of the bay was taking them out to sea. The interesting part is that the surges went on all night. Just when we thought they were over, the tide would come in and crash against the cliff again. The waves were fairly small but powerful. We can’t imagine what it must have been like for people in Japan with 3-6 meter waves. Incredible and terrifying. |
| Before the tsunami |
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| Tsunami Wave |
3/13/11 Whale spit in my face: We’d planned on doing some whale watching sometime during our trip, and there are about three places on the Pacific coast side where you can see the Gray Whales from a boat. We chose the port of Lopez Mateo because it was the closest to get to off the highway and we’d read that it was easy to spot them here in this constricted part of the bay of Magdalena. We were not disappointed. We got to the embarcadero the night before and camped at the dock. Up early in the morning, we had to wait for a few hours before enough tourists showed up to share a panga (small boat). We ended up with a Mexican family of 4, mom, dad and two teen age girls (almost all the tourists were Mexicans here) and our boat captain, Erin. We were only about 15 minutes out of the port when we spotted the first whales, a mother and a calf. We motored right up to them and watched them for a while with two other boats, and then finally by ourselves, we followed them for almost an hour. It seems as though there are no rules here about how close you can get to the whales. It bothered us some, as the boats would drive up close enough for people to actually touch them, which is what most of the tourists wanted to do, and it seemed a bit like harassment.
On the other hand, it was also one of the most exhilarating wildlife encounters we’d ever had. With the other boats gone, the whales moved slowly around, surfacing and coming very close to the boat. Several times they swam right under us and we could see their giant forms, twice the length of our boat. At several points they surfaced and blew spray and whale breath all over us. I was fascinated just to lay at the bow of the boat and watch them at nearly eye level. What an experience. Truly awesome! There were several whale mom’s and baby’s in the bay around us and we could see about a dozen whales at one time. On our way home, Erin took us by a beach which was covered with thousands of sea birds, and near a mangrove stand where a huge flock of Magnificent Frigate birds were roosting. What a day!3/20/11 Bay of Conception
We traveled back across the mainland and through the Sierra La Giganta to the Sea of Cortez at Puerto Escondido.
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| Juncalito Beach. Notice our Tortuga at the lower right of the bay. |
There we camped on a free beach with a backdrop that looked like the Nepali Coast in Hawaii, with mountains descending right to down to the ocean. We were captured here for two days and then drove on to Loreto where we found it to be a quaint little town with low buildings along tree lined streets. It had a plaza and the first of the Baja missions still in tact. We met nice people there and camped next to two Alaskans, so we had fun trading stories and drinking margaritas at the local hangout, Augies Bar and Baitshop. |
| Town Center Loreto |
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| Plya La Perla on the Bay of Conception |
One neighbor loaned us his kayaks yesterday to check out the close by island and the other neighbor took us in his zodiac over to “Cheeseburger in Paradise” restaurant for... you guessed it: cheeseburgers and beer”. Tonight we are off to some other restaurant with the third neighbor to go to some 15th annual celebration at another restaurant along the bay. As they say, “No bad days” in Baja.
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