Sorry for the delay between postings of our last outing....many projects, day to day living and a few computer glitches got in the way. We are close to leaving La Paz this weekend, if all goes well, so it is time to finish getting caught up. Internet connections are likely to be scarce, possibly not until we reach Loreto.
San Evaristo (24.54.626 N; 110.42.291 W) is a welcome anchorage when northers or corumuels blow and we looked forward to getting a good night's rest after the previous two nights' experience at anchor. This a a small fishing village in a quiet bay opening out to the Canel de San Jose. It includes a school, tienda (store) in the owner's home, a desalination plant, open air cantina and many fishing huts, a small curved white sand beach, and most of all, good holding ground when the winds blow. The most impressive part of the scenery is the backdrop of the high mountains, the Sierra de la Giganta.
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| Fishing village of San Evaristo |
INTREPID II anchored in 30 feet with lots of chain out and stayed put from Monday afternoon through Sunday morning, February 14th - Valentine's Day. The water temperature was 72.6 degrees F. when we arrived, but we never did snorkel. No cold feet when we landed the dinghy ashore, however. We did indeed have a restful sleep that night, although the fishing pangas headed out early around 5:30 am, a small price to pay for a calm night.
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| INTREPID II at anchor in San Evaristo |
On Tuesday we explored the village and took the dirt road up to the elementary school. We were pleased that we could leave a small amount of school supplies for the five children currently attending. The teacher, who introduced himself as Ranier, welcomed us and the children greeted us with "hello, how are you?" in English as we practiced our Spanish with them.
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| Escuela at San Evaristo |
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| Road towards the school |
Further north the road ends at the salt evaporation ponds, where there are several homes surrounded by date palms, and cows and burros were resting in the shade.
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| Oasis near salt evaporation ponds |
On the way back to our dinghy, we spotted a roadside shrine, and admired the various cactus plants.
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| Roadside shrine |
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| Examples of native cactus plants |
Our last stop was at the local tienda, which was well stocked with canned goods, eggs, some produce and various household items. Fresh produce and sometimes chicken or meat arrives periodically, driven over mountain roads from La Paz.
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| Tienda - San Evaristo |
In the next few days we met many new cruising friends and have since seen some of them again in La Paz. By Wednesday the northers were starting to blow, and although it made for some choppy water, we did go ashore for exercise and to visit the tienda and the cantina.
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| Kelly seems to find the wind refreshing! |
The remaining nights were not quite as restful, as the winds were shifting around at times from the southwest and west, as well as the north, but everyone stayed secure. There was a humpback whale playing out in the channel, we were adopted by a very hard working sea lion who fished around our boat on a regular basis and the pelicans, scoters, turkey vultures and other wildlife kept us entertained. Finally the welcome sight of a pod of dolphins came into the anchorage - we had missed seeing any on our way north.
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| Sea Lion at play |
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| Turkey vulture in flight |
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| Pelicans in formation |
These northers blew Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and into Saturday. We made plans to head out on Sunday (14th). Although the channel still had whitecaps and "bufaloes" heading downwind, we headed out at 08:30 that morning, intending to make the 50 nm run back to La Paz. It was a sunny, "sparkly water" day, with the wind on our stern at 18 knots and the seas ran with us initially, so all was well. We had a few hours of rolly seas as the winds turned NE and the swells went from 2 - 3 feet to 4 - 5 feet with the occasional 6 footer just to keep us on our toes. We motor sailed with the jib out with lots of wind but not enough time to settle down to sail only. It took us 8 hours, until 17:00 and we were pleased to see slip 428 waiting for us at Marina Palmira "home away from home".
Our plans are to head out again soon to hopefully spend time in those anchorages we missed on the way up, but as of today (February 24th) the northers have been blowing for 2 days and westerlies are forecast once those die down. Stay tuned.
