Mark and I seem to do things slightly off schedule. So, why wouldn’t we stay in Baja Norte with its cold temps, northerly winds, and lack of snorkeling for winter?
The prior post was about our time in Don Juan. We left there just before New Years for an overnight sail to Santa Rosalia, which is fav spot for us and cruisers! Santa Rosalia (SR) is an old mining town that has a heavy French influence. What? French? Don’t you mean Spanish? Nope. French! This is the town that was built by a French mining company in the late 1800s and includes a church designed by Monsieur Eiffel himself!
I grabbed this screenshot about SR back on 3 Jan but I don’t know where I found it. Wikipedia? Anyways, I can’t cite it. Oops!
In SR, a marina slip is pretty much a requirement. Cruisers do anchor inside the breakwater (not advised outside). But if you saw the town. how its built into a canyon that empties into the harbor, you might think twice about dropping anchor where all the stuff washes into the harbor during heavy rains. By stuff, I mean cars, bikes, large things that will foul your ground tackle! We know people who have successfully anchored. Both of our stays, we got a slip.
NYE 2023 was spent dining at one of the only places open on NYE at 6pm with other cruisers. Then hosting most of them on MACH 5 for after taco drinks and chats. We toasted at cruiser’s midnight (9pm) and honestly, now, I can’t remember if Mark and I stayed up until 2024. We probably did. We usually do.
We were still in SR on 9 Jan when Mark turned 54! We had a super neat experience. A local dog joined our dining companions for the almost 1 mile walk from the marina to Tonka Grill. Once at Tonka, she rested under our table and we each teased each other about which boat now had a boat dog! Is it MACH 5? Solstice Tide? Salpare? She was rewarded with half a hamburger for her loyalty. At which point, she departed us. That dog was good! And no one had to take her home.
For the next few weeks, we had a few buddy boats and it was wonderful! Fran and Jeff on Salpare were fabulous hosts of sundowners, a day sail, and a wealth of knowledge and friendship. We were hanging around with them from Santa Rosalia in January to Puerto Escondido in February. We spent more time with Tim and Kerri on Meriwether, whom we have hung out with just this past weekend in La Cruz—hundreds of miles from Peñasco. Meriwether, we’ve said adios to as they are bound for French Polynesia! What a journey ahead of them!
Once we got south enough–which was the Loreto area–we had a thrill two years in the making! We got to meet up with our pals from the Napa Valley Marina. Fate had us haul out in Napa at the same time as Dave and Kelly from Owl Harbor in the CA Delta and be on the stands next to their boat Circe. We met up in Bahia Ballendra to sail around Isla Carmen together for a few weeks. Circe entered Mexico in November 2023 in the Baja-Ha-Ha and had been working their way into the Sea of Cortez. Our paths aligned on 18 Jan! We stayed together until 8 Feb, when we needed to continue south to make our slip reservation at Paradise Village in Nuevo Nayarit (near Puerto Vallarta) in March; a mere 507 miles away which takes time going 4.5 miles and hour!
During this time, we finally got to snorkel (see photos from under and above water), see some fabulous sunsets, and rent a car to head into the mountains above Loreto to visit a mission and a 300yo olive tree (featured photo).
Here’s some of our favorite photos from Jan/Feb, including that loyal pup in Santa Rosalia.
