La Paz

La Paz - We've asked other cruisers about the best location to berth Agave Azul during hurricane season, and La Paz was always highly recommended. So before sailing across the Sea of Cortez to the Mexico mainland, we wanted to check out La Paz, 135 miles up the Baja coast from San Jose del Cabo.  

This was our first long trip by ourselves and we enjoyed a beautiful 2 day sail with a stop at Ensenada de los Muertos (Bay of the Dead), also known by developers as Bahia de los Sueños (Bay of Dreams). We arrived just after sunset and didn't see any development. It was a remote peaceful stop.

Dorado on the line

We left early the next morning, sailing between the Baja coast and the islands of Cerralvo and Espiritu Santo. We wanted to stop, but we knew we would be back to spend more time visiting the islands in the spring.  We saw lots of dolphin on the trip up and even caught a small dorado on the way. But with a freezer full of fresh fish, we let this one go.

Marina Palmira was the most recommended, although our plan for the week here was to check out all the marinas in La Paz.

Marina Palmira

We called the marina for a slip assignment and headed toward our dock. It was a tight fit to get into our slip however, as a dredge was actively working just a few feet away. Dredges are necessary to maintain enough depth for boats such as ours, but they are really noisy! So we requested another slip and moved halfway down the dock the next morning.

Dredge at work next to our slip

Although we were now 150 miles north of Cabo San Lucas, the long arms of the Baja Ha-Ha reached to La Paz for a party, and it was a well attended event. Too well attended in fact, since there were twice as many Ha-Ha'ers as there were meals! We stayed long enough to sample the margaritas, then headed to the best burger joint in La Paz with long time cruisers Bill & Julie Martinelli, who also have a Catalina 470. Their boat and cruising recommendations have been great, and their burger recommendation was too.  

Baja Ha-Ha party in La Paz

Kathryn with Mike & Linda, Wavelength crew

La Paz has sculptures all along the malecon and throughout town. We'll include more sculpture photos when we return here next year, but here are a few we enjoyed.

Sculpture on the malecon ...

… in a small square … 

… this one was appropriate since the Weber's are known for prominent noses!

We did accomplish our objective to explore all the marinas in La Paz and decided we will have Marina Palmira as our home base when we return to explore the Sea of Cortez in the spring. La Paz is the 4th largest municipality in Mexico with a population of over 200,000, so there are plenty of services available, especially for cruisers. But it has a very relaxed, small town feel, and we look forward to spending more time here.