La Paz: Season Two

Sitting here in La Paz, Baja Sur, with the Gulf of California stretching out in front of me, all turquoise and sparkling, boats at anchor in the marina, their masts tilting in the breeze. There are numerous frigate birds flying overhead, and an osprey whistling on a nearby tower. It’s beautiful.

That was then.

Another beautiful sunset

View from room and viewing deck.

Last night a storm came in, raining and rattling the windows. Today the wind is blowing like hell, and it’s cold. Had we known, we would have brought warmer clothing, but that’s always a good excuse to buy a new hoody, which of course I did. 

It’s all okay, though, because we really wanted to see what it’s like down here at this time of year. 

We were here last April and May for six weeks, and we almost bought a condo, we were so crazy for the place. We managed, however, to slow down, do some research, and not buy. The main reason was water, or lack thereof, but now we’ve found new reasons!

The condo is not even near finished, though progress is being made. What would we have done all this time? Where would we have lived? And it doesn’t look like it will be habitable for at least another nine months to a year.

As mentioned, the weather, while sometimes sunny and so much warmer than Ashland and the Northwest, is not exactly as warm as we anticipated. The water, though clear, is cold, and we haven’t spent much time in it. Turns out that April and May are the best months of the year for water sports and swimming. At least for wimps like us.

The water and fishing remain excellent for osprey.

From what we understand now, it’s cooler in November and December, windy January through March, our kind of 80-degree weather from April-June, superhot from July and August, rainy September and October, which then brings us back to November. 

There’s a Mexican saying I just learned this morning: “Febrero loco y marzo otro poco,” or February’s crazy and March is little too.

Definitely good to know these things. We love La Paz and its laid-back ways, the fact that it’s a place where lots of Mexicans vacation, and it’s not filled with people from the United States and Canada, as in Cabo San Lucas. 

The city is growing and undergoing major rehabilitation, and it seems that in the future there may be more of us from north of the Mexican border down here.

I read in a local newspaper (Spanish, so I did miss some details) that seven new hotels are in the planning stage. Given what Cabo and San Jose del Cabo look like, a number of residents here are concerned that La Paz will lose its character and end up like those tourist cities. The mayor of La Paz assures folks that there is a sustainable development plan. 

One of the questions posed to the mayor was “how can you provide water to all these guests when the residents that are working in the hotels don’t have water at their own houses?” The mayor assured them the hotels would adhere to regulations, but there was nothing about those regs and how it would help conserve water.

As a point of clarification, there are frequently times when the residences here don’t have water. That includes hotels, B&Bs, rentals, etc. It hasn’t happened to us, but it did to some friends here.

Given all this, we’re looking at La Paz as a wonderful destination for a couple weeks. Probably in April!

And for any of you reading this, you should visit here. The people are friendly, it truly is laid back, the fish tacos are the best, the beaches are lovely, and the Malecón is exceptional for walking and people watching.

Last year I wrote about the great time we had going out to the islands and swimming with the whale sharks. This year we’re passing on the whale sharks…surprise!...too cold and windy.

We did get out to the islands again, and lucky us, it was calm! We spotted dolphins, leaping manta rays and a pod of about 20 pilot whales. We even swam with a few sea lions, though most of them wanted to sun and snooze on the rocks.

Of course, this photo doesn't capture how many snoozing seal lions there were....I'd say a couple hundred.

Whales show themselves and the boats gather. 

We went out on this boat trip with some folks from Ashland and the Applegate Valley. In November, we met Rita and Jim Grauer, other Ashlanders heading down to La Paz. They arrived late November, and once we arrived, they introduced us to Dennis and Harriet, and Vaughn and Rona. 

We all watched the Super Bowl together, and Jim and Dennis have been our gym buddies as well. 

We also talked about how they’re managing retirement and travel—a topic of interest since we’re pretty new at this.

They tend to travel for anywhere from two to four months in the winter. They rent a space, set up their home away from home, and live in a milder climate for the winter. 

It sounds good, but we’re not sure. We’d need to rent our house, and we’re still on the fence about that. We thought with a newer house we’d be more willing to rent it…you know, fewer attachments and all. Not true. Oh well. We’ll see.

In the meantime, we’re heading home soon. We’ll work on our retirement plan, and then there’s the matter of an upcoming election. We have time to help, so we’ll see what we can do.