LA PAZ TO PUERTO ESCONDIDO

We enjoyed a couple of nights in La Paz with new friends, Gordon and Jera on SV Manifestation and Jason and Candice on their sporty catamaran SV Deguello. It’d been a month since we first arrived in La Paz though, and with the season ticking along we needed to make some progress north towards San Carlos where we’d booked a slip to leave Tino Pai for the sweltering summer months ahead. On April 30th together with Manifestation we made the short hop back up to Falsa, ready for an early start the next day back up to Isla San Francisco at the northern end of Bahia La Paz. The sail up to San Francisco through now familiar waters didn’t disappoint; as we passed Espiritu Santo the crew had an amazing time with a huge pod of dolphins taking turns riding our bow, several whales around, and Mobula rays leaping from the water in their happy flapping way. Warm and sunny, it was one of those days when Baja can’t be topped. With the wind filling in the day was complete with a nice sail on a close reach into Isla San Francisco.

Isla San Francisco had become a favorite, and once again we did some spear fishing and swimming, however we’d never been there for a weekend. The experience is very different! Over Friday night and Saturday morning a swarm of various types of pleasure craft arrived from La Paz. We happened to be there for Cinco de Mayo, and the large bay became packed with fancy yachts blasting music, jet skiing and towing tubes around behind their tenders. We were anchored close to two large yachts blaring music all night, with Mexican ranchero music from one trying to drown out heavy electronic music from the other. We bailed early on Sunday morning, as did Manifestation, and motored the short 5 nautical miles to Bahia Amortajada to explore the mangroves.

A nice time was had dinghying through the mangroves with Gordon and Jera, with plenty of birds and sea life to look at. While pleasant, Amortajada is shallow and exposed to weather so not a great anchorage for overnighting – and it is famous for tiny biting Jenenes swarming boats at dusk. Not liking the idea of that we motored across to the peninsula and the charming fishing village of San Evaristo, with its sheltered harbor set against mountains to the west. The village has a nice family run restaurant, a small tienda, and several hikes, so we spent several days exploring, one day across to the nearby salt ponds escorted by a charming young local lad, and spear fishing around the northern bay where we’d anchored. It was here that Shan speared her first fish, a nice sized Graybar Grunt that made a delicious ceviche. Andy shot another grouper; our diet is becoming well supplemented with fresh fish!

One day at Evaristo was particularly special. A pod of dolphins arrived mid-morning in our anchorage, and spend the rest of the day circling around, fishing against the rock walls surrounding the bay. We watched from the boat and were able to dinghy around them, watching as they hunted. There were a number of juveniles and we wondered if they were being taught to fish. It was magical! We met Ben and Megan from SV Kelea who were paddling their kayaks and watching the dolphins, and later joined them for sundowners on Kelea where we met their sweet dogs Bev and Leena who patiently obliged our need for some quality pooch time.

May 11th saw a small flotilla depart San Evaristo; Kalea headed to Los Gatos, while Tino Pai and Manifestation sailed the shorter hop to Caleta Napolo. This proved to be a spectacular but very windy anchorage with magnificent, looming canyon walls funneling evening westerly winds into the anchorage. Before the wind got up we made a short dinghy ride across to a tiny fishing village tucked in behind Punta Alta, but the locals were unusually standoffish, a strange experience for us in typically welcoming Baja. We returned to a gusty night back on the boat and left for Los Gatos where we rejoined Kalea the next morning. This 22 nm trip took just over 5 hours with an even mix of sailing on a beam reach and motor sailing as the wind waxed and waned.

Los Gatos is another one of the better-known YouTube anchorages, with unusual – for Baja – rock formations that remind one of Moab. With two lobes separated by a small reef, El Gato to the north and El Toro south, there’s good spearfishing and nice hikes around this picturesque bay. We climbed the rocks on the north side overlooking the bay and hunted around the middle reef, as Ben had speared a grouper there the previous day, though without success.

Our small fleet set out northward on May 14th and although we’re not racers, it’s true what they say if there’s more than one sailboat headed in the same direction! In light winds we’ll admit that Kalea gave us spinnaker envy, and we resolved to learn how to set ours as soon as possible. Tino Pai made up ground as the wind moved forward, and as Humpback whales spouted to port we threaded our way through the inside channel off Punta Marcial towards Agua Verde. We dropped the hook next to Pyramid Rock in the southern anchorage and went ashore for dinner at Brisa Del Mar, one of the two restaurants the village offers.

We spent four days in Los Gatos, spearfishing out at Roca Solitaria (a large rock that looks like a breaching whale), exploring the village, and hiking out to the petroglyph caves west of the anchorage. On the spear fishing excursion Andy bagged a nice grouper at Solitaria that went into our usual mix of fillets and ceviche. The next day the two- and four-legged crew of all three boats gathered at the north anchorage for the hike to the petroglyphs, over a ridge and past a small cemetery. The cemetery was sobering, with mostly unmarked graves, the few with headstones speaking to difficult lives and high infant mortality. Past the cemetery we entered an oasis like area of saltwater pools surrounded by palm trees, then a narrow trail through head high scrub which led to a long beach where Bev and Leena enjoyed running through the surf. A scramble up a rocky hillside at the end of the beach led to the petroglyph caves where we viewed (honestly? Underwhelming) rust-red handprints and admired the view back along the beach.

The village has a goat dairy - unfortunately closed on this visit - and a couple of small tiendas where we bought a few fresh vegetables. Both were out of cervezas, luckily with Tino Pai nearly out we were able to buy a six pack or two at Restaurante San Marcel when we stopped for lunch! It’s a very friendly village with locals invariably waving as they pass by. Later Ben and Megan were kind enough to come over and work us through how they set up their spinnaker on Kalea, we promised to have a crack at it at our next opportunity.

Tino Pai, Kalea and Manifestation had planned to depart together on the 18th for Bahia Candeleros, however in preparing for departure we discovered that our wind and depth gauges weren’t working. Waving the others on we stayed to work through it, various tests and a call to our electrician Ed Baker narrowed it down to a loose plug in the NMEA bus. Reconnected everything worked, and we set out belatedly into a nice afternoon sail with winds out of the east. We were anchor down in Candeleros at 4pm, rather unimpressed by a windswept and largely unremarkable anchorage. The next morning we set off for Puerto Escondido, farewelling the rest of our small flotilla who headed out to Isla Danzante. Both Kalea and Manifestation plan to summer at Puerto Peńasco, much further north at the top of the sea and needing more urgent progress north than we do on Tino Pai. Having more time, we planned to leave Tino Pai at Puerto Escondido to explore Loreto, and we picked up a mooring ball in this spectacular natural harbor early in the afternoon of 19th May, settling Tino Pai into her home for the next week.