FINALLY - CALM AND WARM IN LA PAZ

The wind finally dropped below 10 knots on Tuesday afternoon, December 19. That means the north wind blew at 15 knots or more for six of the last seven days. I hope this is not what winter in La Paz, or the South Sea of Cortez is going to be like. We woke up Wednesday morning to a beautiful calm sunrise. We had moved into the Marina Santa Cruz "virtual marina" on Monday morning. It is a virtual marina because the shore side facilites are all there as are the concrete pilings. The floats and docks are scattered about Bahia La Paz. All floats and docks were torn loose during Hurricane Juliet in October and have not been replaced.

We pay Marina Santa Cruz $77 per month to anchor in their water and use their facilities. The cost makes sense to us because API, a Mexican governmental agency, will charge us 51 pesos (US $5.60) per day to anchor anywhere in the inner Bahia La Paz anchorage. If we pay Santa Cruz we only have to pay API for one day of anchorage. Strange but it seems to make sense to the Mexicans.

Or, as someone else explained, they were told that the API fee of US $5.60 is only for the first and last day and every other day is only $1 US.

Marina SantaCruz has great showers and rest rooms, a good dinghy dock, nice swimming pool, and great attendents who bring water and propane to the boat, and haul away garbage. What a deal!

Here is the view looking from Mirador toward the marina dinghy dock, hotel and swimming pool.

We have been exploring La Paz on foot and by bus. We are told that there are about 100,000 people living in the La Paz area. Many of them are American expatriates who moved here for the climate and relatively low home prices. La Paz is the capitol of Baja California Sur and therefore has a large middle class, civil servant population.

La Paz has a great old downtown shopping area with narrow cobblestone streets, lots of small street front restaruants, and several big open air markets where all kinds of interesting food is available, if only we could figure out what it is. There is a dinghy dock on the La Paz commercial dock, right at the foot of the street that leads to the open air markets.

Here is Jerry in the evening sun at the shoreside entrance to the city pier. The arch behind me leads up into the market area.

Jerry did the check-in ChaCha on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning. This will be the only time we whine about this aspect of Mexican cruising. Here in Mexico, it is necessary to check into and out of each major port, or even minor ports that have Capitania del Puertos. This is the ultimate in futile paper shuffling.

First we had to visit API to pay our anchorage fee. That means we pay for one day, then when we check out they bill us for all the remaining days. API issues a receipt which the Port Captain must accept. We can take our dinghy over to API.

Then we have to visit Immigrations to show them our passports, visas, and crewlists. They found it hard to believe that we left San Diego on November 16 and didn't stop at a single Mexican port with a port captain until we arrived here in La Paz. That was sorta' true except for Cabo San Lucas. While I was trying to convince the immigrations officer that we hadn't stopped anywhere, Arlene who was about 10 feet away found a copy of the Cabo News and shouted at me, "Here is a more recent copy of the Cabo News that we picked up in Cabo last week." Either the immagrations guy didn't understand English or he didn't care enough. He smiled at me and stamped all four copies of our crew list. He was also curious about our visas. I guess not many yachtes appear at his office with a 180 day multiple entry Visa issued in Tijuana. He puzzled over it and then shrugged his shoulders.

Then it was off to the Port Captain. Except it was 1:40 PM and immigrations said that the Port Captain closed at 2 PM. So we didn't go. As it turned out the the Port Captain closes at 3 PM, but hey, who's counting? Well - the Port Captain was. He scolded me for not coming to his office directly from Immigrations.

Tuesday morning I took the dinghy about 2 miles north along the Malecon to the street that leads up to the Port Captains office.

The Malecon is the main street that runs between the beach and the shops and resturants that face onto the beach. This is the Malecon looking from Mirador Southeast toward Old Laz.

Why, you might ask, is there a street that leads away from the waterfront to the Port Captains office? Well - who knows? The office is six blocks up the hill in a residential area.

Port Captain in the Port of La Paz? - No way!

When I got out of the dinghy a local asked me what I was looking for. I told them Port Captain and they sent me back down the Malecon to the commercial dock. They said the Port Captain had moved. Once I reached the commercial dock I learned that the Port Captain had not moved and I had been at the right place to begin with.

At the Port Captains office is a small foyer with two windows, one marked general services. I stood in line at general services and finally talked to the clerk. She took all my papers and marked them up. Everything was in order the first try!!!

Except, I had to go to the adjacent window to get the Entrada Application which is their data entry form. I have to hand write in my name and address and the boat particulars. The clerk already had all that information on the boat documentation and our crew list which she had just inspected. But, no I needed one more form.

Once I got to the front of the other line the clerk said "Ah - Entrada Applicaton" and reached over to the first clerks desk and grabbed a form for me to complete. That took 30 seconds and then I had to stand in line back at the first window.

Actually line is not the right term, you stand close to the window, wait for the clerk to look up, and then shove papers at here. I tried standing in line but found that everyone else would just push past me and throw their papers on the counter, wait for the clerks eyes to meet theirs, and then point at their papers. Americans and Mexicans.

This was full contact paper shuffling! One guy had 20 boat license applications as he pushed his way ahead of me.

After the 2nd visit to the general services window I received a four part, with carbons, form to take to a bank to pay the $15.93 checkin fee. It is not possible to give money directly to a Mexican official. You always pay at a bank and get a receipt.

The bank? Oh, that is on the other side of town. Actually it was only 16 blocks away and one of the other Americans who was checking out gave me a ride there. Then, more lines. When you enter the bank a doorman gives you a number. There were 12 counters and a big display saying "Serving 560 at counter 8." The number would increment as each person was served. My number was 582. After ten minutes I noticed short lines at counters 1 thru 3 and the display did not change when those people left. I stood in line at counter number 3 and was served within one minute. I guess the first three counters don't use the number system??

The bank takes my money, stamps all four copies with two different stamps, and initials three of the four copies. They keep one copy and send me back to the Port Captain with three copies. Whoa - that was easy, only 45 minutes to pay a $16 fee.

A short truck ride back to the Port Captain, ten minutes in line, five minutes watching the clerk stamp all my forms and then type them into the computer, and I was done. It had taken only three and a half hours to check in with the Port Captain. Not Bad!

Now I'll have to do the entire API and Port Captain thing no more than 48 hours before we leave. That includes paying $15.96 to leave.

The Port Captain at the next place we stop will first ask for the checkout papers issued by the prior port of call. No way around it.

Here is another picture looking along the La Paz Malecon: .