Author Archives: CB

If you can read/understand Spanish, and if my translation is correct you will note that the title of this post translates to “Old Lady”.

Viejo Mujer is the name we gave to a new drink we “invented” today.

Grab a soda, get comfy and prepare yourself for the story of how this drink came to be.

To be honest, we may or may not have invented this drink. It may damn well already be a thing, but our Spanish, while it is improving……sucks.

As our Facebook posts have been reporting for the last few days, our friends Jason and Julia got here a couple days ago. One of the places we took them to was a market to pickup some fresh veggies. The lady that owns the veggies stand we went to is awesome! And nice as hell. Not to mention patient. We would point at random veggies or fruits we did not recognize and ask “Que es eso”. And the nice lady would smile at us as if we were her retarded grandchildren and explain to us what we had pointed to and how to use it in some sort of meal that she enjoyed.

Or she may have called me a dumbass gringo, and go on a 5 minute tyraid about how the hell could a grown man not know his vegetables….either way, nice lady.

Yesterday, we go to her stand again and as we are picking out some veggies I ask about a particular round red thing she had on display. She tells me what it is; Opuntia. Which turns out to be the fruit of the Nopoles (Prickly pear) cactus. She ask me to grab one and starts to cut it up and hands it to us to sample.

It was really, really good.

She then goes into a description of how to take this fruit and make a drink out of it. We only understood less than half of what she told us. We didn’t write anything down and by the time we got back to the boat and tried to write down what we thought she told us, we had a serious case of “broken telephone”. Remember that game?

Between the four of us we had an eclectic and very random recollection of how to make the drink and what ingredients to use. The one ingredient we all agreed on was the Opuntia. Beyond that, it was up for grabs.

What we ended up settling on:
Opuntia (muddled)
Shitty white wine (She said aqua, but honestly…fuck that)
Vodka (This was not mentioned by the lady, but we thought it was needed)
Peach Jumex (Niether was this)
A splash of 7-Up. (Or this….)
Fresh mint (we did not have this….next time)
Ice.

Really, we just took the ugly little fruit and added booze and ice. But we give full props to the nice lady at the Bravo Market in La Paz.

Mix all that together and enjoy.

Cribbage is optional.

**This post was written and supposed to have been posted a few days after Thanksgiving. But apparently it did not. So, I’m posting it now.**

Our plan was to hangout in La Paz for thanksgiving but decided we were getting a little tired of town. We hauled up the anchor and left the day before Thanksgiving.

We had not taken on any fuel since we left San Diego, so we fill up on the way out of La Paz at a marina called Costa Baja which has a Pemex fuel dock. Pemex is a Mexican chain of gas stations. For reason’s unknown to us, our credit card from Bank of America does not work at Pemex gas stations. Works everywhere else. This we did not find out until we had already filled up our two diesel tanks with 50 gallons of fuel.

Luckily there was an cajero automatico (ATM) just a short bit away at a resort. I got a ride from a guy in a golf cart there and back. And because I’m a dumbass and forgot my card in the machine, got another ride there and back again. Unfortunately, the machine had (for security reasons) kept my card. GAH!

At least I got the pesos I needed to pay for the fuel.

Instead of going to the anchorage we had planned on going to, we went to a closer anchorage just a few miles away (Bahia Falsa) and spent the night there. The next morning, I jumped in the dinghy and hauled ass back to the resort/marina to see if they had been able to contact the bank in charge of the ATM to get my card back.

They had!

However, the ATM guys showed up an hour before I did and retrieved and cut up my card. GAAAHHH!!

I called the bank and got a new card in the mail. (Jason & Julia make sure you grab that from Ang before you come down in a few weeks)

With all that taken care of, I got back to the boat and we headed north to an anchorage on Isla Espiritu del Santos called Caleta Partida.

The anchorage is beautiful. Red rock hills and cliffs surround the anchorage with white sand beaches covering half of the shore line. Crystal clear water. All kinds of cactus and desert type shit everywhere.

Our friends boat, Loukia, was anchored in the bay when we got there so we invited them over for thanksgiving dinner. Tawn had cooked up an awesome T-day meal on the sail there. We had all the fix’ns, with the exception of turkey. We could not find one small enough, so she stuffed and cooked a chicken. It was a big chicken. Our friends are Canadians, I’m pretty sure they don’t even know the tradition of Turkeys on Thanksgiving anyway. It all worked out.

We spent the next few days dinghy exploring, playing bocce ball on the beach with another boat in the bay. Got some really good advice on how to spot and harvest scallops in the area! That is on tap for tomorrow if we can get unlazy enough to dig out the scuba gear. We might just go snorkeling/spear fishing instead.

Think we are gonna head a little further north in a day or two to a place called Isla San Francisco, or not…who knows.

Bonus Material: We saw a sea turtle skeleton on the beach yesterday. This is something I have never considered before. I, for some reason, never really thought about turtles having a skeleton. So there’s that.

Tawn is writing up an update about our time in San Diego, or as a good friend calls it “Dirty Waffle”. If you think about, it makes perfect sense.

We left San Diego late in the afternoon on the 21st so as to make it to Ensenada, Mexico just after sun rise. We stopped in Ensenada to 1) clear in to the the country, get our visas, and 2) to get our boat hauled out and have a bottom job done.

We were going to get the bottom job done last year in Seattle, but the quote we got from the boatyards up there were ridiculous. Doubly so, due to the fact that me and Tawn do 93% of the work on our boat ourselves. But grinding off bottom paint down the the gel coat is something that boatyards in Seattle will not allow you to do anymore. So they are able to hand you an estimate of $12,000 without batting an eye…..

I batted the shit out of my eyes and pooped my pants a little.

We had a friend or two that had the same work done on there boats here in Ensenada two years ago when they came down. So we followed their lead and waited till we got here.

Tawn emailed the boatyard (Baja Naval Marina) and got an estimate for the work we needed done. The estimate was $2500. That was infinitely more doable, and no need to change my pants afterwards.

We got here a day early and the yard hauled the boat and got it in the stands while we walked down to the Immigration office and got cleared into the country. Clearing customs here in Ensenada is insanely easy by the way. It’s all done in one building (room actually). Took us less than 30 minutes.

By lunch the next day they had the old paint ground off and were cleaning up the mess!

Originally they told us we would be here a week to 10 days, but at the pace they are going, I think it’s going to be shorter than that. Possibly we will splash on Monday.

We’ve been spending time hanging out with our friend Erlin on his boat Ventured. Some other friends of ours (Brad and Joanne, on Loukia) showed up today. So we are showing them around town. Since we’ve been here 48 hours, we are practically locals.

We have found many delicious street tacos and I am now on the hunt for a hammock, and a tortilla press. I’ve also been eyeing the dude selling bacon wrapped hotdogs…..those are really looking tempting.

Picture from the roof of the Marina Naval office roof.

I may or may not have supposed to have gone up there?