Hotel Hacienda Bugambilias La Paz

... the gun toting suicide bombers who had now retreated to an unknown location (to watch us), and continued through ever higher cactus (i&#8217;m talking 20 foot) on a fairly even gravel track.<br><br>Just then, a pick up truck with three uniformed occupants, one woman and two men came up behind us. After nearly soiling ourselves with fear we broke out the map and began pointing at it like pituary retards. Luckily they spoke enough English to understand ...

... Or maybe they were just plain ignorant, eh?<br><br>Either way after a bit of toing and froing back to the hotel to get the receptionist to scrawl our requirements in Spanish, we had two one way airline tickets in our mitts and jumped straight in a taxi to the airport. Two breakfast Modelo&#8217;s and a chicken schnitzel butty later we were flying high over the second longest peninsular in the world, heading for the capital: La Paz.<br><br>The Mexican state of Baja ...

... etc. And then I asked him if he&#8217;d please give us an honest response as to how both he, and the community perceive Americans that come to either visit or live in La Paz. That proceeded in a great discussion about respect, his love for La Paz and how it&#8217;s culture can be protected with so many gringos moving here. He said that probably 7/8 of ten families that move here are good people who become involved in the culture ...

I got up a 5am - Yikes! And while enjoying my coffee, I was also enjoying the view from our windows. We like watching the new leaves unfurl on the large palm plant. :) And I like to check for newly fallen limes each morning. <br><br>Took photo of breakfast, nopales and eggs. We first ate nopales (cactus) in Saltillo and liked it and now, we are becoming great fans of this healthy green food - we cook it up with peppers, onions, tomatoes, or with eggs or thanks ...

... realize what an amazing thing it is to be under the sea and mingling with creatures most people only see on the Discovery Channel or in National Geographic. We know so little about the oceans, yet I've seen first-hand how we're destroying that environment every bit as rapidly, if not more so, as on land. Our oceans are a treasure and how I wish everyone could share in the adventure. I've heard it said about going into space, and I believe it's ...

... which will bring many people to town but also to the resort in search of scuba, snorkeling, kayaking and the likes. Diving had been really great, but it will also be good to catch a break after nine dives so far. It may give me a chance to stop feeling like I'm swaying with the waves all the time! You really notice that effect when you have your eyes closed while in the shower. So, we're off to downtown La Paz tomorrow! Until then...

... up and just did a mid-column safety stop. The down side was that we absolutely knew we were going to drift a good distance during that three minutes at 20 feet. Upon surfacing, sure enough, we found ourselves about 200 yards or more from the boat. That brings up the beauty of boat diving, however. They just fired it up and came and got us! Cerveza time. :-) More diving tomorrow, apparently at a site called El Bajo ...

... just a bit further north.<br><br>Getting into Bahia Ensanada Grande before sunset, we anchored easily on the north side of the bay in 15ft (3m) and decided to explore the beach at the head of the bay. Since the tide was receding we actually towed the dingy more than ran the motor as the water was quite shallow, waking slumbering rays as we proceeded to walk through the water. Behind the beach was a box canyon and small ...

... not sure how lively Baja gets as we were discovering, with the people we met, that it was popular with retirees. Jeez... from 20 year olds to over 60s. Lovely. La Paz was our final destination in Baja. We opted not to go further south as it becomes too touristy and the thought of more 60 year old Americans didn't really appeal. We found a beautiful beach just out of town with ...

... the water I thought she was going to have a panic attack, she went completely pale and looked incredibly uncomfortable, however she continued anyway and relaxed back into it once we were about 10m down. The dive was really good and we had sea lions swimming around us during most of the dive along with a small amount of coral and a varied amount of tropical fish. The second dive was my favourite as I had a large sea lion swim about 1½ arms length away from me for ...