April 6, 2003
We are presently in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, after having spent a most enjoyable 2� weeks in La Paz and various anchorages inside the Sea of Cortez. Cruising along the Baja side of the Sea of Cortez was like being in the middle of a �desert in the sea� with warm temperatures and little to no humidity. The water was very clear with many anchorages being either turquoise or emerald green in color. The brown pelican was the most prominent seabird, and we enjoyed immensely watching it.
Because of weather, we finally left La Paz on Thursday, March 20 � two days later than originally planned. We spent the next nine days enjoying the beautiful scenery as we cruised almost 100 miles north from La Paz before turning our boat southeast and sailing across the Sea of Cortez toward Puerto Vallarta. We never tired of the scenery along this coastline. The striking and colorful rock formations with their horizontal bands of mostly red, green, and yellow hues were dramatic to behold. We easily could have lingered here longer.
To quickly highlight our anchorages, we spent the first three nights at Isla Partida, about 26 miles north of La Paz. The first night we spent anchored in the cove of El Cardonel. Unfortunately, we lost our lee in the middle of the night � had good size waves coming into the cove making for very uncomfortable conditions � and so vacated that anchorage at first light. We went north to the next bay on the island, Ensenada Grande. Here we anchored for two nights waiting for the strong NW winds of 20 to 25 knots to subside in order to continue our travels north.
We spent the next two nights anchored about 18 miles further north at the southern end of Isla San Francisco, a most beautiful crescent shaped cove with a long white sand beach � basically what one thinks a desert island cove should look like. Besides the usual colorful red and green bands of rock, the red rocks at this island were most striking. We took a lovely hike to the top of the highest hill on the island and walked amongst the much diverse and colorful desert vegetation. This anchorage was truly one of the highlights of our nine days along this coastline! We were also treated to our first parrot fish which was most delicious. And, yes, just like at Isla Partida, we had to pull up our anchor after the first night and move across to the other side of the cove as the winds changed from NW to SW. This pulling up of our anchor a couple of times at almost every anchorage was becoming a ritual. |
