La Paz Days

We are still in La Paz for Valentine’s Day. We plan to move on to either Los Barriles or Cabo Pulmo tomorrow. Yesterday morning we went for a run on the Malecon. It was our favorite Baja run yet as we were able to do 5 miles round-trip without any curb cuts, hills, need to watch for traffic or dodge 18-wheelers charging down upon us, all in a warm beautiful sea-side location. It reminds us of running on Alki Beach in Seattle on a day when the crowds are low and the temperature is 75 degrees. What more could you ask for? The rest of the morning we spent doing chores, groceries and dropping off our laundry. We didn’t find a self-service laundromat, although we’re sure we could have found one if we had bothered to look a bit more. It ended up costing us about $10 for 3 loads of wash to be done for us, all nicely folded and completely clean when we picked it up 6 hours later. We spent more than that in Mulege doing the laundry ourselves. We spent the afternoon napping and sitting by the pool (Cathryn and Bob respectively). In the evening we went into town for dinner. On our earlier trip to the Malecon we found a place called El Patron that had paella on the menu and we couldn’t resist. We started with a hearts of palm salad, a copy of which I suspect many of you will experience at our house at some point in the future – it was terrific! The paella did not disappoint and was also excellent. It turned out to be an expensive dinner, probably about as much as we’ve spent at restaurants the entire rest of the trip combined, but it was worth it. And we knew La Paz would be more expensive than other cities until we pass through the Cabos later next week. After dinner we took a stroll on the Malecon in the warm winter air (sorry to rub it in, you folks in the north) to settle our dinner. There was an event going on that we interpreted as some starting ceremony for the Baja 1000 road race. There was a long line of tricked-up trucks/cars that passed through a ceremonial gate where each one paused for a photo opportunity with two scantily clad young women (Bob took a large number of pictures too, but Cathryn wouldn’t let him post them because she said it would make him look like a dirty old man – is anyone fooled?) Some of the cars were also displayed so you could see them; Cathryn said Bob could post these, including the one with a good looking woman in it, although she is fully clad. Today we ran again, and plan to explore the old downtown area, a bit back from the waterfront. We’re also going to finalize arrangements for a boat trip we plan to take on February 23rd , but we’ll wait to tell you about that when it happens!