We left La Paz a couple of days ago and got to thinking about some of our experiences there and want to share a little bit about our visit. La Paz has some sort of magnetism for Mexico cruisers. There’s a whole subculture. La Paz isn’t touristy in the way Cabo San Lucas or Puerto Vallarta are at all. There are certainly tourists though. The Americans in La Paz are expats that live there full time. The life-style is inexpensive and the culture is quite forgiving of cruisers with little money or a lot of money. There are boats ‘anchored-out’ with permanent residents or not. A boat at anchor doesn’t incur any moorage fees (to my knowledge no one comes knocking if the port fees for the harbor aren’t paid).
Boats are always breaking and La Paz is the best place in Mexico to find parts that I’ve seen so far. Elsewhere, you will have to figure out how to import them somehow. The cruisers look out for one another too. There’s a VHF net every morning where people introduce themselves and ask other cruisers for advice or help. Occasionally, all the cruisers pitch in to offer one of their own help.
Last week a local expat “Cactus Bob” was in the hospital and needed one pint of blood for his upcoming surgery and he didn’t have the 3000 pesos ($147 USD) to pay for it so the hospital wouldn’t do the surgery. The cruising community was contacted for help and we all jumped into action and donated the necessary money (plus a little extra) to buy a pint of blood for Cactus Bob. The commodore of the club rushed the money to the hospital right away and Cactus Bob had a successful surgery the next morning. It goes to show how incredible the cruising community is. Most hospital visits in Mexico (no direct experience) are cash affairs. Inexpensive enough that most of the cruisers just pay cash.
La Paz is known for its great restaurants and great street food. We randomly went into a taco place before we left that smelled so good and had some of the best tacos we’ve had in Mexico. There’s a good tamale stand near the public market and some of the best steaks we’ve had anywhere have been in La Paz. A nice steak dinner in La Paz is about 1/4 the price of the same in Seattle. So for all those reasons Americans come in and never leave.
At the coffee hour at Club Cruceros (Cruisers Club) at Marina de La Paz we met Matt and Mary who got married and brought their boat down to La Paz from the States 60 years ago and never left. Along the way they founded Marina de La Paz (a bit by accident according to them). Now Marina de La Paz is the cultural center of the marina district and cruiser life in La Paz.
As we returned to La Paz this time we were excited to see some familiar faces and a little sad to know that some of our friends had moved away or moved on. Our cohort of 2022 Coho Ho Ho and Baha Ha Ha cruiser rally boats are spread from San Diego to the Mediterranean now. This year we don’t have boat projects to keep us here in La Paz so we’ll move on before we find a reason to stay longer!
On another note: As we were cruising out of the channel in La Paz we noticed the 116 Meter exploration cruiser “Multiverse” reportedly owned by a tech billionaire, Yuri Milner. A yacht so big we had a hard time finding the obligatory helicopter on deck (apparently it has a hanger for the chopper so maybe it was just put away).
Leave a Reply