7/20/2010 - Santa Rosalia

We made it to Santa Rosalia a few days ago after having a great stop over in Punta Chivato.  In Chivato, there was a super nice hotel with a restaurant overlooking the water.  The whole beach looked to be gringo rentals and was somewhat scarce since it’s the hottest part of the year here. But we met a very nice couple with their son and his girlfriend.  They had flown in on their airplane to the small airstrip in Chivato from Oceanside, CA and were headed for Cabo San Lucas for the next few days.  They invited us to accompany them to the next restaurant for dinner.  After showering back at the boat and getting ready, we began the hike to the restaurant.  We were a little over halfway (showers negated by this time) and a big suburban pulled up and asked if we were headed for the restaurant.  It turns out he was the owner and offered us a ride….IN THE AIR CONDITIONING.  We had a wonderful meal with our new friends and even got a ride back to the dinghy.  A storm came up the next morning and we high tailed it out of there pretty early.  We’re hoping they made it out ok on their plane.  We kept listening and looking but we were headed north and they south.

Hotel with Restaurant on the point

"Gringo" houses lined the beach.  One of the nicer areas we've pulled into.

So here we are in a quaint little town called Santa Rosalia.  It’s not very big but has all that we need…markets, restaurants, bakery, tortilleria, hardware store, and a pool J.  It’s got quite a bit of history according to our guidebooks.  Copper was discovered here in the 1860’s and within a few years, it was being mined.  Eventually the French took over.  The plant was officially shut down in 1986 but a lot of the buildings and machinery still remain.  That was the quick and dirty version where I left out all of the interesting stuff…it’s worth reading up on or if you’re in the area, visiting.  This is also supposed to be the place for the humbolt squid but word is they're not here this year.  No one really knows why.  Very disappointing to the captain of Savannah.  Andy was dying to pull one of those things onboard.  Talk about calamari!

We’ve basically spent our time here with me going into town each morning to slowly get our stores up and Andy/Jake working on the boat (oil changes, battery troubleshooting, etc.).  We eat lunch and in the afternoon we go to the pool to cool off.  It is extremely HOT with very little wind so we try to move as little as possible.  We were able to meet back up with our friends Scott and Teri on Ulalena and are spending a lot of time with them. 

Friday, our week is up and we’re headed out to Isla San Marcos.  We’re told there’s not much between here and Bahia LA (which is our northern most destination at this point) in terms of towns and markets, but lots to see nature wise.  On the anchor seems to be where we enjoy ourselves the most so we’re looking forward to it.

Iglesia de Santa Barbara, a structure of galvanized steel designed by Gustave Eiffel (as in, the Eiffel tower) in 1884.

We’ve gotten a lot of questions about our boat lately and living on a boat so I’m working on a blog entry to answer some of those questions.  If anyone has anything they want me to include, let me know!