June 18th – Puerto Escondido – Jim’s Blog #52

We’re still in Puerto Escondido, and making every effort to stay cool and relaxed. We put up our boat canopies on the forward and aft ends of the boat; so we look like a Conestoga wagon sitting up to our wheels in the water. These shades keep the sun off the deck of the boat and funnel the breezes directly into our hatches. The only difficulty with these shades is the need to bend over a bit as we walk along the decks. We’ve mounted Sheilagh’s hammock under the forward canopy and she has spent a considerable amount of time reading up there, with a cold beverage beside her on the deck.

The closest town is Loreto (about 17 miles up the road), and the principal way to get there from here is to rent a taxi to get in and have the cabbie come back later in the day to give a ride back ($80 round trip). We went to Loreto in a taxi with Jim and Susan of ‘Windward Bound’ on Monday where we walked the downtown area, saw the Mission of Nuestra Señora de Loreto, and enjoyed the main street with its espaliered trees from each side of the street forming arches overhead.

We signed the guest book in the tourist office and noted that the previous couple who signed in was from Walla Walla, Washington – you just can’t get away from the home town. We didn’t notice any gringos nearby in order to introduce ourselves, but it’s unlikely we would have known each other, since I stopped living in Walla Walla some 48 years ago, and only went back for short visits for about 10 years after that. I understand it has transformed itself into a wine growing region, but I remember it as the place I learned to pick strawberries on my knees in June every year, sack Walla Walla onions in 50 lb. sacks (running them into railroad cars in hand trucks of 6 bags each – 300 lbs.), and flash-freeze peas in the local Birds Eye plant. My work experiences there motivated me to keep my grades up in school and visualize a desk job as a preferred method for earning a living. Thank you, Walla Walla, for that impetus to my career aspirations.

We decided to get more involved with local social events, so we joined a group of locals and cruisers for an afternoon of Minnesota Canasta, where we learned how the Minnesotans spend their long winter days when it’s too cold to go out. Sheilagh and I both had some early luck, but the “old hands” at the game kicked our butts overall. We later joined the group for the Mexican Train dominoes game on another afternoon, and also got our butts kicked there. I have been told by others that I am way too competitive generally, so my goal in these games is not to win, but to enjoy meeting and talking to a variety of people whom I would not meet otherwise. So far it is working well – I am not winning and I really don’t care. The older women, who are the main participants, remind me of my mother and her dedication to card games, although they are far less competitive than I remember her to be.

I manage to get out on the kayak every couple of days, and have taken the time to circle the entire bay to assess where it would be best to moor our boat in the event of a hurricane. I found a little pocket in the bay that has mangroves along the edges; so in the unlikely event that we broke loose from our mooring in the middle of a hurricane, the boat would be blown into the trees rather than the rocks. The bay was formed by a volcano with an entryway and a couple of windows to the sea where the sides have collapsed. The terrain is pure desert with rocks, cactus, caves, and brush everywhere. The more distant sides of the Sea of Cortez stand taller behind the volcano we are in and look quite majestic in the way the Grand Canyon does.

We had put 100 hours on the engine since our last oil change; so it was time to do another one. We got everything out and hooked up to pump the oil out of the engine. As we pushed the plunger on the pump, we got no suction but did manage to get some oil all over us as we tried a number of ways to get the thing to work. The pump is a plastic one and we think the disc on the inside that slides back and forth may have shrunk in the hot, dry climate we have had lately. We put everything away that day and borrowed a metal pump from another cruiser, which worked flawlessly the next day. It took us only 20 minutes to do the whole job and we stayed remarkably clean. Sheilagh also changed the two fuel filters while I was taking a nap, along with the zinc in the engine (that prevents the metal in the engine from breaking down. Sheilagh considers the engine a much better way to travel than the use of the sails (which causes the boat to tip too much in her estimate); so she makes sure it is in excellent condition at all times.

The days are getting hot and humid and we are combating it by doing as little work as possible these days. We try to get our exercise in the mornings and do other tasks at that time as well. We bought a couple of small fans that plug into DC outlets in the cabin and can be clipped with a big alligator clip to any surface edge. These keep the air circulating in the cabin, and, combined with the canopies over the boat, they keep us relatively cool. We can also step off the side of the boat into 72° water and later rinse off in fresh water with a cockpit hose and shower nozzle on the side of the boat. Naturally the cold drinks we have in the cockpit in the evenings with the ice we made that day are also very refreshing.

Today we walked to the local hotel with internet service to finish up some communications with the outside world before being out of touch for the next few days. On our way up the dusty road, Sheilagh jerked back from a squashed rattlesnake lying to one side of the road. It was a rather small one, but we couldn’t help but gaze up into the hills and wonder how many others might be up there. At least this one had rattles; so it could give a warning if it were alive and we were getting too close. We learned that a new species of rattlesnake, without rattles, was discovered years ago on the local Isla de Catalina. Apparently that species sheds its entire skin without retaining the tail – that ultimately becomes a rattle when enough skins have been shed. So what could be worse than a rattlesnake that doesn’t announce itself? Needless to say, Sheilagh and I will not be visiting the Isla de Catalina.

Lately we started the mini-series, ‘The Winds of War,’ with Robert Mitchum, Ali MacGraw, Jan-Michael Vincent, and Polly Bergen. This series covers the two years leading up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor that started the U.S. involvement in the Second World War. Neither of us can figure out how Ali MacGraw ever became an actress, since we have yet to see any acting ability on her part. What is intriguing for me is the reluctance of the congress at that time to see, or want to meet, the threat of Hitler and the Nazi threat despite the fact that Hitler had invaded and conquered nearly every country in Europe and was on the point of defeating the Soviet Union. Apparently we thought we were protected by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and didn’t think we should have any involvement in the rest of the world. Sheilagh has forbidden me to get political in this blog, but I leave it to the reader to determine whether there isn’t a strong parallel between Nazism and Islamic Fundamentalism. All I can say is “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Tomorrow we will be leaving Puerto Escondido for an anchorage on a neighboring island. We will update the blog in a few days when we get back to civilization. More later . . .