12/8/2010 - Walking in La Paz

Got up in time to listen in on the La Paz cruisers' net on VHF22 this morning. The net happens every morning at 0800. It includes announcements, who's arrived and who's leaving, swap meet, weather, tides, etc, etc. Pretty interesting. VHF22 is the hailing channel all the rest of the day. Boats call each other and then switch to another channel to talk. Very sociable. At about 0930, Club Cruceros serves coffee and cookies and lots of cruisers congregate there to visit before getting on with the day. We happened by just at the end and were a bit shy about just walking up to someone and starting a conversation. Maybe tomorrow we'll get there a little earlier. We have some things to find out from these folks like: which cell phone/service is best; which yards allow owners to do their own work AND stay on the boat while hauled, etc.

We headed into town to take a nice long walking tour. We found the CCC supermercado without too much trouble. This is probably where we'll reprovison since they have just about everything (although nobody seems to have celery seed). The store was a huge mess since they're remodeling but we still managed to scope out what they carried. We then continued walking east on Jalisco until we reached Augustín Olachea where we turned north-ish. Then west on 5 de Febrero. All the time we're just scoping out what's where. Found a couple of marine supply places and several very nicely equipped hardware stores.

We finally got tired of walking and headed to La Fuenta ice cream store. It's easy to locate along the malecón by the polka-dotted tree trunk out front.

While we were sitting there eating our ice cream (Lulu: mango, me: pineapple-coconut) Lulu wondered whether reading a novel in Spanish might help us learn the verb tenses better. I had bought a copy of "El Viejo y El Mar" (The Old Man and The Sea) by Hemingway when we were here in 2002 but somewhere along the line it's gotten misplaced. Never did get around to reading it. But I remembered I bought it at a bookstore about 1/2 block from where we stayed in 2002. We decided to walk over and see what they had.

What they had was, among other things, a bunch of familiar titles but in Spanish. We figured that it would be good to get something that we were already familiar with so Lulu got a copy of "Mujercitas" (Little Women) by Louisa May Alcott, and I got "Alicia en el Pais de las Maravillas" (Alice in Wonderland) by Lewis Carroll. I'll let you know how the experiment works out. For those following behind us, the bookstore is at the corner of Madero and Constitución.

After the bookstore, I needed a little something to nosh on. Lulu wasn't feeling that great and wasn't hungry so I only had to please myself. Found a cart serving hot dogs and had to have one.
For 12 pesos (about a buck) you get a grilled dog on a warm bun covered with onions, tomatoes, mustard, mayo, relish, some kind of cream and hot sauce.

VERY messy but VERY delicious. Afterward, in a fit of extreme decadence, we stopped by La Fuenta again. This time for dessert. Lulu had strawberry frozen yogurt and I had lemon sherbet. Both very excellent.

Finally we returned to the boat but not before taking a little dinghy tour of Marina de La Paz. When we returned to the boat we checked our pedometers and found we had walked 10 miles. ¡Caramba!