Mark and I arrived in Todos Santos, BCS on Friday, October 20, just before Hurricane Norma started dropping rain on the city. We had signed up for a week long Spanish course and decided to get to town before the hurricane to insure we didn’t miss our clases.
The school at which we are taking courses let us camp in their yard for a small price, and let us sleep inside and use their kitchen during the hurricane! We were happy to have a dry spot to wait out the weather. Todos Santos was relatively sheltered from the storm: some heavy rain, a few big wind gusts and about a day without water and power was the worst of it, but we were definitely glad to not be sitting in our tent for any duration of it.
After many full days on the bike, a weekend inside without anywhere to go felt slow, but our bodies enjoyed the rest and we enjoyed having full use of a kitchen. Our first night in town, we were overzealous in our cooking and accidentally turned our vegetable soup into a pot of slop when we added three times as much seasoning as is required. Thankfully, our cooking took a turn for the better and we enjoyed eating our fill of fruits and vegetables for the rest of the week.
On Saturday, in a break in the weather, we walked down to the beach to see what the ocean was up to during the storm, and where impressed by the breaking waves at high tide. As we started our walk back to town, the rain started again and we were drenched after mere minutes. We took a ride offered to us back into town and did our best to dry out our clothes, but we spent most the weekend just shy of dry as the humidity hovered near 100 percent.
When Monday and the start of our classes rolled around, we were excited to be learning and to get over the little bit of cabin fever we had developed after just a few days off.
We spent three hours a day in class, then studied a bit on our own in the evening and filled the rest of the time exploring Todos Santos, planning our next couple weeks of riding and our researching the ferry to the mainland. We enjoyed our courses, and definitely developed some more confidence to speak, but realized just how far we are from anything resembling fluency.
With that in mind, we decided to take another week of classes in Mazatlán before continuing south. To get to Mazatlán, we booked a spot on the ferry from La Paz across the gulf to mainland. We left Todos Santos on Saturday and rode across the peninsula to spend a fun evening/morning in El Sargento with an old friend of mine. Sunday we rode through La Paz to the port to get on the ferry for Mazatlán. Despite reading numerous blogs, booking our tickets ahead of time, and talking directly with the ferry company, we were still worried that we wouldn’t be able to get on the boat. When we got to the port we ran around asking probably five different people where to go, only understanding a quarter of any one persons directions. It was stressful hour getting on the boat, and then we started playing the waiting game, as we were boarded two hours before the boat was scheduled to depart.
The boat took off around 7pm and we arrived—sleep deprived—in Mazatlán at 9am. The ferry is set up with spacious airplane like seating along with sleep cabins, a small restaurant and bar and an outdoor deck. We spent most the night chatting with some Canadians on the deck, and by midnight, we were all tired enough to try to find a place to sleep: switching between the overly air conditioned seating area and the benches on the deck, catching a few minutes of sleep here and there.
We’ll catch up on a little sleep before starting clases on Tuesday and be in Mazatlán through next Tuesday. We are excited to meet our home stay host and explore Mazatlán!
I’m hoping to get the photo upload situation figured out this week, but for now, you can see photos here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/8sK1ryrupSjneZ9BA
-Nic