October, 2012

We like to think that the hurricane season in the Sea of Cortez is over October 1. Mother Nature doesn’t always agree with us, but we were anxious to get back to La Paz and catch up with Rock N Roll before they headed back to the States. It was unfortunate that both of our laptop computers were dead which left us with the Asus Tablet. The tablet will only get internet via wifi so we headed into Villa del Palmar and downloaded weather before we left Candeleros. Miriam was now a hurricane off of the southwest coast of Baja. It was not projected to give us any trouble, but there was a disturbance developing near Manzanillo that might come up our way. We decided that we could head to Agua Verde and scoot back to Escondido if it looked like it would develop into something. So we were off. Unfortunately for us as well, our weather guru, Geary on the Sonrisa net, had a bad modem and was unable to do the daily weather on the net in the mornings. His evil twin brother in Arizona did the weather and we had difficulty picking him up. So, without any kind of weather information, we were crossing our fingers. Norman did come into the Sea and dumped a bunch of rain on us but fizzled out as a tropical storm. It was dying between Agua Verde and La Paz so we stayed in Agua Verde until it was no longer a threat. Another nice boat wash.

a visit by pilot whales

Once the skies were clear, we headed south, spending one night in Los Gatos, the next in Mangles Solo and then Isla San Francisco. Then it was into comfortable Caleta Lobos where we had a cell tower and were able to call Rock N Roll. They told us that La Paz Yachts was searching frantically for us. We got into La Paz on the fifth and headed in to see what they needed. Turns out that they had a Mexican couple wanting to purchase NEOS. At the same time, we had a couple from San Diego planning to come see NEOS at the beginning of November. Since we had already agreed to show the boat to the couple from San Diego, we turned down the offer from the Mexican couple and spent the next few weeks doing a thorough cleaning of NEOS. Meanwhile, we had a week to spend with Russ and Janet before they headed back to the States. We even bought a pass at the local Cinemax that gets us into the movies for a couple of bucks on Tuesdays. We saw the latest Bourne movie with 2 other cruiser couples….I think we were the only ones in the whole theater.

In mid month, Mother Nature sent one last hurricane our way. Paul was heading directly at us so we headed into Palmira for a few days. Paul actually hit at Magdalena Bay on the west coast of Baja, but we had another boat wash. While at Palmira, we took advantage of the shuttle and I went in for provisions. I also dropped in at the diagnostic imaging center and had a bone scan done for my annual check up for osteoporosis. Since the national health insurance will only pay for this if you have osteoporosis, I did this “out of pocket”. So without an appointment, I was given a bone scan and walked out with a full report in one hour…for a little over $100. After a few days of marina life, we headed back to Caleta Lobos until the end of the month. We had a dermatologist appointment for Oct 30 at the hospital under our insurance. His exam was less than cursory. It took him longer to write up the report recommending skin cream with sun screen than it did for him to look at our skin. The next day, we saw Dr. Tuchmann and he prescribed the meds I needed for osteopenia and then he took off 2 skin lesions on Rog. That visit cost us $100 but how nice to have a choice and see a private doc if we want??? Finally, we headed to the dentist for the first full checkup and cleaning we have had in 4 years. So we are set. Now we can sell the boat!!! We were back in La Paz ready for our San Diego visitors and all of the Day of the Dead festivities.