Cabo San Lucas to La Paz

We arrived in La Paz, Mexico (about 100 miles up from the southern tip of Baja California on the Sea of Cortez side) on November 17th after a leisurely week-long trip up from Cabo San Lucas. It is so nice to be on a more relaxed schedule where we can spend time in spots we like as long as we like - quite a change from the hurried pace of the Ha-Ha and the hustle and bustle (not to mention rolly anchorage) of Cabo San Lucas.

On the way up from Cabo, we stopped at Bahia Frailes (the Bay of Friars, so called because the rock formation on the point looked to mariners of old like Friars climbing the hill) where the snorkeling and scuba diving on nearby Cabo Pulmo Reef (the only living hard coral reef on the west side of North America) was wonderful. We saw sea turtles, blue puffer fish, purple dragon eels and of course the many varied and assorted tropical fish a healthy coral reef supports.

We also spent 3 days at Bahia de Los Muertos ("Bay of Dead Men", so named for the giant “dead-men”anchors used here to moor barges in the early 1900 while offloading ore from the silver mines at El Triunfo) . This wonderful bay with a wonderful beach has nothing else there, absolutely nothing else except there, in the middle of nowhere at one end of beach all by itself, a Giggling Marlin restaurant. Seriously, this dirt road comes in from the desert and ends at the beach, long used by the occasional RVer or camper, but now with nothing but one lone building. We are talking miles and miles of desert which although surprisingly green with growth and beautiful in it’s own way, has nothing but millions of cactus and rattle snakes and the occasional head of cattle or two. No houses, no town, just desert. Eric went for a run one day on the road and it literally goes on and on towards LA Paz, 45 miles away, out into the desert with nothing around for miles and miles. But there at the end of the road at this beautiful bay all by itself is this good sized restaurant, part of a chain out of Cabo, where the kids can get pancakes or French toast any time of the day, the fish tacos are super fresh (caught by local Panga fishermen in the bay itself) the cervas are cold and no one cares if you wear shoes or even a shirt because you are more likely than not, the only customers there with the possible exception of one or two other cruisers off the few other boats in the anchorage and maybe the occasional fishermen or Gringo in an RV. Seems that at the other end of the beach a developer is attempting to get a 400-home up-scale vacation home and golf course community going and the restaurant jumped the gun a little early. There are admittedly, 8 homes there, but you can’t play golf yet and there were certainly no signs of a housing boom while we were at anchor. If the developer does succeed, it will be a shame of sorts because the beauty and serenity of this wonderful little bay will likely suffer. But we have to say it was very nice to watch the sun set from the open-air restaurant, sipping a margarita with real ice cubes while the kids played on the beach.

La Paz is the opposite of Los Muertos, thick with cruisers and ex-pats and all the things a boater could want. It’s the capitol of Baja, a town large enough to have real supermarkets, boat chandleries, good restaurants and night life and the like but without the sterile, cruise-ship induced tourism veneer of Cabo. Things are less expensive also. There’s a real community here, a lot of art and culture and history but with a pace one or two notches slower than Cabo or the states. We’ve only been here a week, but it has that fly-paper feel to it - the kind of place where people end up staying for months or even years. We’ve already met all the other boats with kids. Some came down last year, cruised the Sea and down the mainland coast to Z-Ha and back and ended up here.

Click here for a video of the cruising kids having fun on the La Paz playground.

As always, click on the photos for larger sizes.