La Paz, Feb 17th -21st
Another beautiful day to start our adventure from Cabo San Lucas to La Paz, with a wonderful view of a cruse ship in the harbor. We had a 106 mile ride through a Cardon cactus forest with the pacific on our left. Our campground is just off Route 1, north of La Paz. It’s is brand spanking new addition and it resembles a huge sand box.
Our first activity was dinner at La Bohe’me, a stylish French Restaurant in downtown La Paz. It was a pleasant change of menu, I had mashed potatoes and they tasted great. The deserts were special too but very rich and some of us have been suffering for our indulgence.
Today we were treated to American style doughnuts and a bus tour of the city of Peace, La Paz, the capitol of Baja California Sur. The city has a population of 300,000 and we learned about the history of the area from our tour guide Betty, whose pride in her country was evident as she showed us her picturesque city. Our first stop was the Cathedral of Our Lady of La Paz, a beautiful stone and brick twin towered church located on the south side of Plaza Constitucion. Inside it has beautiful stained glass, and the Stations of the Cross were a gift from Queen Elizabeth of England because of a very large pearl given to her from a La Paz resident. Next we visited the family owned Ibarra Pottery Shop where very fine clay was formed into bowls and plates and hand painted with beautiful colors. Our last stop was another family business where the men handed down the knowledge of weaving from generation to generation. They started by spinning and dying the wool with vegetable dye, then weaving it on hand made looms in a crude building with walls laid up without cement. The end result of their labor was beautiful rugs and blankets selling for very reasonable prices. We were busy shoppers at both places.
Some of us spent the afternoon visiting the white sand beaches north east of La Paz along the Peninsula de Pichilingue. The aquamarine clear water was inviting, it was even quite warm, and very shallow until you got about ¼ mile out, but we just soaked in the glorious beauty of the area. We could have had a beach surrounded by steep hills all to ourselves,( after we got away from the jewelry peddlers), this took a while as all of us helped out the economy a little. We walked the beach for a view of the mushroom rock, then on to the next beach for a view of the Island. The sunsets from the Malecon are magnificent; I hope everyone experienced at least one.
The next two days we were free to explore the area. They were spent shopping at the La Paz open air market, walking the 5 mile long Malecon, enjoying the museums, and for most of us a trip to Todos Santos where we spent a day shopping for stunning silver jewelry and soaking in the atmosphere at the Hotel California.( The Banos signs there were unique ). We toured the Mission of Todos de Santos with it’s stations of the cross in the windows, some of us went to the museum, and I even heard about whale watching just 30 feet from shore at Todos Santos.
Saturday 21st, our last full day in La Paz we were free to explore until we met at Ciao Molino Ristorante for an evening of entertainment and fine food. We were entertained by fantastic dancers from the Technological Institute of La Paz. They preformed dances from several states in Mexico, changing into colorful outfits to reflect the customs for each area. They even engaged some of our better dancers help with the Rabbit dance. I’m sure they didn’t know most of them had done that dance before at Manfred’s and were almost professionals! It was dusk as we were leaving and I’m sure some of our caravan checked out the Carnaval along the Malecon.
Quite a few of us have been stopped by the Mexican traffic police, for what we are not sure, so we were just happy to have made it back to the campground unscathed.