Still No Zombies, Take Two

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Here’s an update to our decision making process as we move through this unstable time. The only thing that is stable is that we have no plan and we’re sticking to it. Or rather, we have many plans and aren’t sure which one will stick. Is that the same thing? It kind of feels like it to me. Overall, the plan is to get the boat back to Washington. But even that is looking wobbly. Would we even be able to work given the current situation?  I can plan on going to bed at a reasonable hour tonight, and that’s pretty much it. Small victories.

Caught this Osprey mid meal. We do love the wildlife here.

Looks like we will be stuck in La Paz for longer than expected. Of course, this is the norm with La Paz (which we call La Pause). It seems like no matter how long you think you will be here, something comes up to keep you from leaving. I’m just going to lean into being here for now. After all, there’s really no hurry.  Last time we were in this area we refused to even come into La Paz for fear of getting stuck. We anchored outside of the canal and hitched a ride into town, then Übered back to our boat. It worked. We were only at anchor for a night, then we left. This time we risked entering the bay and now we are at anchor outside Marina de La Paz with no end in sight. We have a lot of little medical things to take care of and this is a place to do it. Things always take longer than we think. As things devolve rapidly here in Mexico, we just try to keep our heads above water.

Like all of the rest of you at home, we’re getting used to life throwing us curve balls on the regular. What stays the same is that everything changes daily. So today we walked several miles down to the CONANP office for the Revilligagados Islands, those offshore islands that seem like they would be the best place to be completely isolated from the world. We’ve looked forward to those for months. We wanted hard copies of our permit. The park ranger (is that what they are called here?) had a worried look on his face as he realized who we were. Yes, we are the boat Galapagos that has that permit and plans to sail to Hawaii, that’s us, sir. He looked at the floor in the way that Mexicans do when they have to tell you some bad news. Mexicans hate to share bad news with you. It makes them feel sad. The bad news is he was just on the phone with the Mexican Navy and they are closing the islands to visitors because of the virus. He was very sorry. Very, very sorry. Things could change for the better, or not, or for the worse, or not. Who knows now in this time of compulsive hand washing?

Well, our disappointment is huge. What else could possibly happen now?

Oh, I’ll tell you what else. While we were in the dermatologist’s office (no findings, and he complimented me on taking care of my skin, thanks be to the Divine one) I saw a post on Facebook referencing the fact that Mexico is no longer checking boats out of the country. WTF? I know this from two sources now that both say that in order for our boat to check out of the country and receive our Zarpe (the paper that tells the world we legally checked out of one country before entering another) we would have to take the boat all the way up to Ensenada, which is just south of Tijuana and many hundreds of miles upwind and current from Cabo San Lucas. Again, WTF? Many times I said this today. Many, many times. I said the full words, ok? I have all the best words.

Of course, we can choose to leave without checking out. After all, we are going home and legally home is where they have to take you in. But the issue is that we might like to come back to Mexico some day and leaving without saying goodbye is bad form. They might hold it against us regardless of the Corona Virus.

Then there is the fact we have crew aboard. It’s kind of unsettling to have crew when you aren’t sure you are going anywhere. Or how long it will take you to get there. But we enjoy his company so we are focusing on that. And when Ryan goes who will play Chess with Michael? Because it won’t be me.

Options swirl in our minds. I put more and more food on the boat, considering yet another trip to Walmart or the local Chedraui. How much more food can we squeeze onto this boat? How long will we need to be self-sufficient? Right now I’m going to say we could live for over two months on the food we currently have stockpiled and I’m probably not done yet because my mother grew up in the depression and I am genetically related to her. Nothing gives me pleasure like a well stocked larder.

Will Mexico soon have supply issues? Will we have grocery stores with nothing on the shelves like I see on social media from back home? Are those images overblown? Because there is a lot of food in Mexican stores. I know that there was a run on hand sanitizer here, though, and now you can’t find it at any price. Good thing we know how to actually wash with soap and water. Remember that? It still works. Do I need to buy toilet paper? I hear that’s quite the commodity lately. Maybe I better get more flour and yeast, and jarred tomato sauce. They import some delicious pesto here and it’s cheap. I will put together yet another list. Provisioning. I know how to do that. I can control that until the stores run out of food.

We have located a water maker and will probably buy it if we can agree on a price. It was a piece of equipment we convinced ourselves we wouldn’t need before we left the dock for this trip, but that was before armegeddon. It’s a Rainman and is new, never used, with all the bits and pieces accounted for. Plug and play. Seems like a good time to be able to make our own water, no?

We could throw ourselves on the mercy of the port captain here in La Paz, say we’re going home, please give us a zarpe and then we could just leave from here, skipping the Pacific side altogether. I wonder if that would work. There’s another boat planning the same trip as we are and they are worried about getting out of the country legally as well.  I would really like to go back to the Pacific side one more time, but the population there is much denser and there are more active cases of the virus there. Still, I do live on a boat…I’m in natural isolation at almost all times.

After all, we would miss the dolphins.

We still consider Hawaii, but if that looks like a poor choice we could just do the clipper route, which means sail way out and do a big tack north, without touching land. The water maker would make that a doable option. It would be many weeks at sea, but talk about quarantine! I don’t know if our crew, Ryan, would be up for that. It’s a lot to ask of someone who has never done any kind of a passage before. And it’s not like he can change his mind in the middle of the sea. If we decide to do that he may need to bail on us and we would understand.

If it’s true that we have to go to Ensenada to check out, we could do a sail out from Cabo San Lucas and then a long tack north to Ensenada but we have not studied that possibility yet. I just know I hate bashing into wind and seas. It’s bad for the boat and it’s bad for crew. It’s just bad. Period. If I have to do it, I want to consider every single other option first.

The morning cruiser’s radio net is fascinating here. Each morning we are privy to the latest fears and myths circulating about this virus. The person whose job it is to keep the conversation focused on the agenda has a hard time lassoing people in and keeping them off the precipice of despair and conspiracy theories. Fake news flies across the radio waves faster than droplets of viral spittle. People get irritated, people tell other people to settle down and not drink the koolaid. We sit, amused and a little alarmed, in the cockpit; our morning entertainment over coffee. Meanwhile, Mexico is closing the national parks.

One of the local news websites for gringos had an article about how people are wearing facemasks in La Paz and how the word on the street is that they are blaming the gringos for bringing this virus to Mexico. Yeah, we are seeing some facemasks, especially from workers in the grocery store. Bottles of hand sanitizer by each door, too. The article stated that the locals were giving the gringos a wider berth than usual. Huh. I call bullshit on that. We’ve been out and about all week and have had no experiences like that at all. Everyone is their usual helpful selves. This website should not be spreading what amounts to nonsense. How are they measuring it anyhow? Pure bull hockey if you ask me and irresponsible as well. I refuse to link to their article.

What will tomorrow bring? Will Mexico close all the island parks as well? Will we have to stay here another year? The one thing we haven’t considered is putting the boat away and flying home. We live on the boat. We don’t have another place to live right now. Our house has other people in it. Our kids do not have room to harbor us for long periods of time.  We like living on our boat. Also we live in Washington State, the hotbed of Corona Virus. i bet we are safer here. Why would we go there now, immediately, on an airplane? We plan to be back there in the summer. Hopefully this will have blown over by then. And if not, maybe we will be in Mexico another year after all. Could be worse. It could be raining.

So it’s a good thing we have nothing but time right now. We can wait and see what happens. Time’s going to pass whatever we do. Hope you are all staying well and washing your hands. Stop touching your faces, too.

Got to say that it could be worse than being stuck where water is this beautiful and there are friendly sea lions to play with.

No Zombies Yet

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So this wasn’t our year for crossing the Pacific to French Polynesia. We made the decision to put off that trip for a number of reasons, but apparently even if we had been ready to go, the Corona Virus would have had other plans for us. Just today French Polynesia’s president announced that movement between islands would be prohibited except for family or professional reasons and that any person entering the country must be quarantined for 14 days. This mandate is good until rescinded; after all, no one can predict how long this particular armegeddon will last. Whoa. Until this virus shebang is over, it’s definitely not business as usual for cruising sailboats. While I imagine some boats might continue on to the South Pacific and just stay in one place for however long it lasts, others will be discussing a ‘Plan B’ right about now. We are truly sorry for the folks who have worked so hard to get their boats ready and now have to regroup and change their plans. It’s a strange time.

www.PacificCatalyst.com What a boat! It screams Pacific Northwest and is stunning.

As we move towards leaving Mexico and sailing to Hawaii, we wonder how to make decisions about our next moves. Mexico has begun taking measures to prevent the virus from gaining a foothold here. All the schools in the country are currently closed. The last report I read had 14 cases in the south Baja, where we are, being tested for the virus. All of them are either Americans or Europeans. Mostly Americans.

We saw a few people wearing facemasks here in La Paz, and when we went to a taco place for lunch they had a big bottle of hand sanitizer on the counter. There have been rumors of the Mexican president closing the border with the United States, although nothing has happened yet and we hope it doesn’t. That would be an incredibly big deal. Based on the number of people out enjoying walking by the water on Sunday evening, social distancing hasn’t taken over here yet but it’s only probably a matter of time before that comes to Mexico as well.

A Blue Whale. Definitely a bucket list moment.

We had an interesting conversation with a store owner in La Paz today. She admires their current president quite a bit. She said he puts a video on Youtube every day at 6:00AM to give the entire country an update on the virus and to keep panic from taking hold. He talks about the measures the government is taking, educates the public, and tries to put this thing in perspective. She feels like he is offering very good leadership. What a concept.

So what’s our plan? For now, we are remaining flexible but we still plan to sail to Hawaii. Our concerns, however, are two fold: 1) We don’t want to bring the virus from Mexico (where is it surely being way under reported) to anywhere else 2) We don’t want to get sick in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Both of those scenarios would be, as we say, no bueno.

You can see the implications of these concerns. Do we cancel the trip? Do we hunker down in Mexico for another year? Do we go about our business as usual? We do take this disease seriously, but we want to remain balanced in our approach to dealing with this unusual situation. Every day the situation changes, with more and more measures being taken to try to flatten the curve of the outbreak and keep it from becoming completely devastating across the world. While we realize that there is only a very slim chance we would get this virus, we want to mitigate that chance and do everything we can to play it safe on all levels.

Punta Salinas. Galapagos in the distance in her happy place.

So our plan as it stands now is to finish up our time here in La Paz taking care of some stuff we want to do like getting full bloodwork panels because we can get them easily and cheaply here, unlike at home. We’d like to see a dermatologist for skin checks before we leave as well. Then we will leave the Baja Pensinsula and head to the Pacific Coast, ending up in La Cruz down by Puerto Vallarta. We may get a medical letter saying we are well and have no symptoms. We’ll hang out there and after fully provisioning for the long term, we may decide to isolate ourselves on our boat at anchor for up to a week while on the mainland side to give the virus some time to show itself before we leave. In a recent article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, most people begin to show symptoms in about 5 days, with outliers developing symptoms as late as 14 days post exposure.

If we are still symptom free at that point, we are sailing to the Revilligigados Islands, a group of islands in Mexico about 250 miles, give or take, offshore. We won’t be allowed to go ashore there and we can’t think of a better place to isolate ourselves and make sure that we are not carryng the virus into the Pacific Ocean or to other people. If we were to get symptoms during our stay in the islands, we could get back to La Cruz if necessary in a couple of days. If no symptoms emerge, then we go on to Hawaii.

Between the self isolating at anchor on the mainland and the two weeks of isolation in the islands,  we will be well past 14 days of incubation.  That’s long enough to be sure we are not carrying the virus out to sea. If the data on the incubation period changes, we will make adjustments.

Of course, it’s likely other sailboats will be visiting the islands, especially those who are disappointed by not being able to go to French Polynesia this year. If other cruisers are there, we’ll just have to maintain our social distance from them. No cockpit visiting for us. Social distancing is generally much easier for cruisers than for land dwellers. A lot of us are socially distant by nature anyway.  But by the time we get to Hawaii, we are going to be very ready to talk to some other people!

It’s possible that we will monitor our temperature during the passage to Hawaii, recording that on time-stamped video, but we’ll be in touch with the Coast Guard before we leave to see what they recommend, knowing that could change. We will also have the ability to contact the Coast Guard enroute by email or text to keep abreast of how things might change for cruising boats.

This car could be 50 years old. Or 5 years old. The marine environment is harsh at best. Punta Salinas.

The big question for us, and for everyone else, too, is how long this thing will last. If Washington State is still basically shut down in June, will we want to go home at that point? Will we hunker down in Hawaii? That’s not a very cruiser friendly state because there are few anchorages and even fewer marinas with space. If I need to isolate myself on my boat, do I want to go home to do that? So even as we prepare to make this jump to Hawaii, we maintain an eye on what’s happening in the rest of the world.

At the end of the day, even though we feel sure that the virus is alive and well in Mexico, our chances of contracting it are slim. We do our due diligence with hand washing, hand sanitizer, etc. and that’s all we can really do to mitigate getting any kind of illness that is passed from one person to the next. I’ve always been pretty aware of being around people who are couging, sneezing, or otherwise obviously ill, so now I’m on a bit higher alert. Not a lot, but I notice a wee bit more vigilance on my part. It’s a stressful time, to be sure, but we are not going to live in fear of this thing. We’ll just be prudent and aware, and we hope you will, too.

More Sea of Cortez wonder. Punta Salinas.

Here are some soothing and lovely photos taken at Punta Salinas on Isla San José. The psychotherapist in me knows that we all need to be soothed lately. Be sure you are taking time to enjoy sunshine and beauty, flowers, puppies and kittens, humor, and delicious food and drink. If you are in the United States and you have to hunker down at home, be grateful to have time with your self and your families, and allow that gratitude to exist alongside the stress of uncertainties that we are collectively experiencing. It’s ok to feel both kinds of things simulaneously.

Check in with your neighbors to see how they are doing. Allow this time to be one of bringing people together, not tearing them apart, even as we keep our ’social distance’ by keeping our hands to ourselves. In spite of the suffering, and that yet to come, can we allow some grace to come from this? How can you help make that happen? Share your hand sanitizer and toilet paper. Make cookies and good bread to share. Skype with your friends as they go about their day and you go about yours; just keeping each other company. Be kind to the people working long hours in the stores. It’s not their fault the shelves are empty. And have patience with yourselves when you are frightened and worried. This,too, shall pass. And I’d like to think we will be better people for it in the end.

Those colors. Punta Salinas.

Mexico Thigh Master

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Suzanne Sommers really missed the boat with her design of the thigh master. You remember that contraption: it was basically a big figure 8 folded in middle at a 90 degree angle. You placed the wings between your knees and squeezed and it was supposed to give you thighs of steel. She probably sold a million of them because who didn’t want to look like Suzanne Sommers did back in the day? Well,  today I discovered something even more effective than the Thigh Master at creating pain and loathing everywhere below the waist: mule riding.

I am currently filled with gratitude that I am sitting on my worn out settee in the saloon of Galapagos. As much as I have complained that these cushions need replacing and make my butt hurt, they are multitudes of softness compared to the saddle on the nameless mule I met today; the saddle I spent 4 hours, 23 minutes, 16 seconds sitting in  as we engaged in one of my bucket list adventures: traveling by mule.

My mule. I call him Nameless because I cannot pronounce (or even remember) his name.

We are in San Juanico, one of our favorite spots. We picked up crew in Guererro Negro, that’s another story, and we wanted our new friend, Ryan,  to see this special place. Our first day here we were walking the road for some exercise and met another crusing couple out walking their dog. They told us that the guys at the organic farm up the road were offering a trail ride up to see the petroglyphs. It was on Saturday morning and cost 500 Pesos, about 25$/person. I felt like this opportunity was simply too good to pass up. We said yes and decided right then that it was worth hanging around for.

Yesterday we ambled up to the farm to let them know we would be coming along. We love this farm because they have goats, chickens, turkeys, peacocks and dogs; including this precious little pup they found on the streets of Loreto. It was only 2 weeks old when they got it, its eyes not even fully open yet. They are raising it with the goats and it suckles from one of the mamma goats who allows a person to hold the pup up to her teet and take milk. It will be a goat dog and is the sweetest thing I’ve seen in a long time. When it is big they will let it hang out with the goats, as their other dog does, and it will help keep the goats safe from coyotes by barking if something is upsetting the goats.

Because who doesn’t love holding a wee pup?

Being held to the mamma goat’s teet. She is patient while he latches on.

There is something that brings out the child in us all at this farm. It is so well kept, the animals so well treated and all so healthy. We are greated by the current goat dog, a love of a dog who comes to be petted, smiling a toothy grin. This morning when we arrived at the farm for our trail ride, we were shown a brand new baby goat born just in the wee hours of this morning, placenta still on the ground next to it. We were allowed to go into the goat pen and be surrounded by goats, many of whom thought the straps on our backpacks were a special treat. Maybe some day we’ll have some goats. I could see that happening.

Just being a goat.

 

And taking a dust bath.

Mules at the ready. And that sunlight of early morning!

As we mounted our mules and started down the road I began to feel relaxed in the saddle, casually holding the reins in one hand and doing my best to keep my heels down like I might know something, anything, about what I was doing. I tried to remember all the things I’ve ever heard about riding mules and came up only with images of John Wayne and the Lone Ranger. No, those are big horses, not mules,  and I’m completely missing the six shooters they carried. Should I use my knees to try to post? I vaguely remembered someone trying to teach me that during a riding lesson 50 years ago or more. At that stage of the ride, everything was still possible; as in it was possible that I could do this and still be able to walk afterwards.

As the trail wound on, up and over, down and through terrain, the old body began to protest and it was clear I needed to pay attention. Am I supposed to keep my core muscles firm to protect my spine from wobbling? Looking ahead on the trail, I see others in our group looking like bobble-head dolls in the saddle. Surely that is poor form and they will pay for that tomorrow with pain?  Is it bad manners to hold onto to that horn in front of me on the saddle, because I could use the extra support.  I think someone once told me you were not supposed to hold onto the horn. Supposedly it showed the world that you didn’t actually know how to ride, but, actually, I do NOT know how to ride so could I get a pass on that? By now I couldn’t really feel my feet because my blood flow was cut off at the knees, so I just went with it and tried to channel my inner horsewoman, whoever she is. Or mule woman, as it were. Because I know the difference between horses and mules. Yes, I do.

Down a very steep, dusty,  and narrow trail.

About the time I figured out that I could actually tell my mule not to drag me through the cactus, he got a wild hair and made an executive decision to trot. Downhill. On a very rocky, narrow path. Whoa, Nelly! Now, I’m not averse to animals having minds of their own when I’m not on their backs, but I do recall our daughter-in-law, Jillian, who knows horses, speaking about having to take charge of them and let them know you are the boss. Right. Let’s do that then. A quick pull up on the reins and I found some kind of a “heyah!” noise exploding out of my mouth like I knew what that meant. Whatever, because clearly I gave the correct impression that no, we absolutely were not going charging down the steep rocky path regardless what the other mules were doing. It just wasn’t on. Nameless obeyed my command. Heady stuff, that.

Eventually we came to a meeting of the minds and Nameless and I got along. I think he was an older mule, based on his grey hair, and he was certainly recalcitrant; but also careful. It was absolutely necessary to trust him as we picked our way over rocky tide pools, along sandy beaches, climbed steep and narrow trails of gypsum, and forded wetlands. I let the reins hang loose in my hands. We got the full meal deal with this trailride and it was fantastic. In spite of the considerable pain in my derrière and knees, and the fact that I could not actually use my feet, I found myself thinking how much I would enjoy doing this kind of thing more regularly, and that got me thinking that maybe I’ll get our Jillian to teach me how to ride when we get back up to Washington.

How much better would it be to have a saddle that actually fit me and, ok maybe also an animal that had less girth. It’s not that Nameless was rotund, it was that he was…wide. Anyhow, I think maybe it’s in my blood. After all, my family is from Texas. At some point some of them probably at least had horses, if not mules. By the time we get to Washington my knees, inner thighs and tail end will surely be better. Surely.

Reins in one hand, camera always ready. If I learn to ride, I probably will have to put down the camera, eh?

As we approached the petroglyphs I could tell Nameless was excited. He began to hurry. I figured they had food at the end of the trail and he was of a mind to be eating, since he was pulling stuff from the side of the trail every now and then and had to be redirected. But as it turns out he just knew the end was near. And after viewing the petroglyphs and giving the mules a break, his excitement crested as he knew we were on our way back. Surely THEN there will be food.

He expressed himself by picking up the pace outright and trying to maintain a lead for awhile. All the mules were filled with the excitement of a trailride close to being over. It seemed like Nameless wanted to be first back to the farm. Soon we were trotting, an interesting experience from the point of view of my bum. Because by this time the pain in the knees was such that trying to clasp them to the belly of this beast only increased their protest, I tried kind of standing in the saddle to relieve the agony. That worked marginally.

By this time I was absolutely sometimes holding onto the horn when no one was looking.

Then Nameless decided to canter. I decided enough was enough. I mean, had I been able to use him as the thigh master he was at that point, it would have been fine. Cantering is a smoother ride that trotting, or even, at that point, walking. But by this time Nameless wasn’t the only thing not obeying my command. My thighs, knees, and feet also had minds of their own as there seemed to be a disconnect between those body parts and my brain,  so clasping his girth between my knees just wasn’t happening. He had begun full blown cantering across the beach in pursuit of the other mules, who were also cantering.

I had a fleeting moment where I registered something close to delight that we were taking off, figuring we’d get back all the sooner and realizing that cantering offered me a smoother ride. But that moment was fleeting. I did, after all, want to live to see another day. It took several seconds for my brain to register that yelling ‘no nononononononooo!’ to a mule is both meaningless and fruitless and to pull back on the reins sharply and with expression. He stopped, but he didn’t like it as the other mules outpaced him. Still, I thought it was worthwhile for him to know I meant to survive this ride, even if my bum did not. I shifted once more in the saddle, butt bones hard against the unyielding leather.

Hey, let’s just canter across this beach, ok?

After that it was as though he had called my bluff and refused to go faster than a slow walk. As we neared the road to the farm I thought I’d let him go a bit and catch up with most of the others. I clicked his reins, jabbed him in the belly with my heels, made kissy noises, did all the things he had previously responded to. But he had put me firmly in my place. He would canter no more. He would trot not an instant. In fact, it felt to me like as we approached the farm he plodded slower and slower and the cowboy riding with us was laughing good naturedly and shaking his head. I believe had I been able to spend some time with Nameless I could have won him over, at least to learn how to lord my will over him if not come to an understanding of mutual respect. He was a mule with attitude and I can understand and even appreciate that. But for today, checkmate. Game over. What a grand day!

Next we head south and we’ll be keeping a fairly rapid pace without hurrying. We like to thread the needle like that. And our crew? Well, his name is Ryan and we met him in the Pelican Cafe in Guererro Negro. We sat down at his table and began to visit with him over our coffee as we waited for our bus back to Santa Rosalia. Turned out he was going to be on our same bus going south. His agenda was to explore the Baja and see what it had to offer. He hails from San Diego and has never crewed on a sailboat before. He’s a vegetarian (and I’ve been enjoying exploring vegetarian cooking), meditates twice a day, and we have had a great time sharing all things boats, cruising, sailing, and just introducing him to the possibilities of this lifestyle, plus having deep philosophical conversations. An electrical engineer in a previous life, he learns fast, is curious without getting in the way, and has been extremely helpful on board. Plus he plays chess so Mike has a chess partner and he speaks very good Spanish, which is more of a help than he will ever know. It was a stroke of good fortune that we met like we did and that everyone felt comfortable enough to be on the boat together. We don’t know how long he will be with us, so we’re just enjoying the moment.

Here’s a little ditty Ryan wrote to describe his our mule ride day:

We got on mules
Rode beach and cliff-side
Bouncing like fools
Each a rough ride
Sitting like that
Three hours or more
Now I lie flat
Man, am I sore

True words, Ryan. True words.

Mike and Ryan

A very fond farewell to the anchorage at San Juanico. When we remember our time in the Sea of Cortez, our memories will certainly come here first.

Stunning sunset.

Next stop Loreto.

As always, S/V Galapagos, standing by on channel 22.