Quiet week

Sorry to be so silent, but it's been a very boring week. The electricity in the entire city was shut down from 7 AM to 2 PM every day last week, and even longer over the weekend (to 5 or 6 PM). Today it's on again but may be shut down at 2 PM until 9 PM. This affects us primarily in the areas of showers (no water pump and no hot water) and internet, so we have to schedule those activities accordingly. I could still do email on the boat, I know, but has been hard to get motivated to do much of anything.

The days are cloudy and gray, often with light rain or drizzle mostly at night. The afternoon wind usually comes up out of the W/SW which gives me goose bumps even though the temp in the cabin is still around 78 degrees. Every once in awhile we get a hot sunny day. I miss wearing nothing but a bathing suit all day, and find myself constantly having to change clothes here depending on whether I'm going to town to shop, going to town to walk, going in to PA for a shower, going to town to eat out, or changing back into my old comfort clothes for life on the boat.

I force myself to continue going to yoga three times a week and have started taking Spanish with a small group. The teacher for the latter is not an actual teacher, but a young woman going to school to learn English. We have a two hour session at $2/hour/pp which is dirt cheap, but I'm not sure how effective it's going to be partly because of her lack of experience and partly because we're all at different levels (including two raw beginners). But it gets me thinking about it again and should at least be good practice.

We miss MX every day. I especially miss the excitement of raising anchor and slowly sailing off to a different place every few days. Staying here is like spending the entire summer anchored off of the dinghy landing at Bahia de los Angeles with every day revolving around going into town. Our summers used to be a chance to catch up on our budget because BLA is remote and we weren't spending any money. But life here revolves around spending money, especially if you do any inland travel. Yes, that travel is relatively cheap but if it isn't in your budget to begin with, it's going to be a big drain on your cruising time. So I can really only recommend coming here if you're already in the habit of leaving the boat to return to the States, or if you have the money to travel for weeks at a time in places like Ecuador and Peru. And of course this all works best if you don't have an animal on board.

We're grateful not to be swatting bees every morning, but we miss summer in the Sea of Cortez!

Linda