With apologies to E.G. Brady, it’s not just Mazatlan; all of Mexico is loud. Brady wrote that since the invention of the amplifier, every local farmacy, taxi, wedding and 15th-birthday party blasts music into the street at a volume high enough to make your eardrums bleed. The public events in Santa Rosalia in late April…
There are lots of small sport fishing power boats zipping around the Sea of Cortez, taking what few fish remain in these waters. Mind you, some of our best boating friends are power boaters, but we prefer staying out of the way of the smaller, high speed sport craft. So we sort of cringed when…
Isla San Marcos is a short day trip from Punta Chivato and its northwestern side is a mere 11 miles SE of Santa Rosalia. Handy. Its eastern side is steep and deep, reputedly good for fishing for pelagic species like tuna but we will speak no more of such things. There are anchorages on San…
An extremely quick 22 miles due north out of Bahia de Concepcion is an anchorage providing moderate shelter from north winds at Punta Chivato – 27deg.03.920N, 111deg.57.678W. (OK; technically the anchorage is at Punta Santa Inez.) There is a nice-looking hotel overlooking the anchorage that cruisers can visit for a good meal, and the beaches…
There are few secret spots in the Sea of Cortez. No matter – some popular bays are large enough to accomodate lots of boats comfortably. Two such places are Caleta San Juanico at 26deg.22’N, 111deg.25’W; and Coyote Bay in Bahia de Concepcion, at 27deg.03.920N, 111deg.57.678W. Both are on the Baja peninsula side of things. San…
The anchorages in the Sea of Cortez vary greatly from one another. Some have excellent reefs for fishing and snorkeling, others have terrific seashell beaches, and you never seem to see the same rock formations twice. We’ve seen precious few onshore crittes – turkey vultures, osprey, insects and small lizards, mostly – but we never…
I’ve recently mentioned snorkeling in Baja. This is not as easy for me as it might be for other folks. See, when I was very young and first learning to swim in a tiny neighborhood pool, older kids would play this game where 3 of them would pile on top of a younger kid and…
Loreto is a good place for cruisers to do provisioning and get what repairs they may. There are any number of hardware stores and small groceries there, as well as a good pet food store, a couple of car rental outfits, gas stations and a propane supplier a bit out of town toward the airport.…
So. There we were in 57 feet of water in Bahia Agua Verde, with a busted anchor windlass. GB believed after some serious testing* that the problem lay in the electric windlass motor. Which, fortunately, was heavy but portable when next we were at a port with some repair opportunities. GB manfully raised the 66-lb.…
Puerto Escondido sits on the eastern lower third of the Baja peninsula, about 22 kilometers south of Loreto and about 175 miles north of La Paz, at 25 deg.48.4’N and 111 deg.18.1’ W. The port is a beautiful oval indentation in the coast, surrounded by high mountain peaks and lots of natural beauty, completely protected…