SV Gallant Fox

Son of the Staysail Burrito

So.

When last we left the staysail burrito, it had torn itself apart in boarding waves on the trip from Topolobampo southeast to Mazatlan in May 2008.  Oh, sad.

On the upside, GB rescued the staysail itself when it fell overboard, which is nice.  And I re-used much of the non-shredded staysail burrito fabric to construct the new cover for the Sailomat on the Fox's stern.  Always a success, when a girl can re-use $30-per-yard Sunbrella.  The Sailomat cover took 3 yards, more or less.  So I'm glad the fabric was already paid for.

While in Maz for hurricane season 2008, one among many sewing projects was to design a new staysail bag.  GB had certain ideas - chief among them being, NO external sail ties.  On the dearly-departed burrito, the seams affixing the external ties to the bag had held fast in the boarding waves but after several hours the surrounding fabric failed from the force of the water.  In the redesign - with GB's input - I built a bag with one piece of new Sunbrella, using a rectangle roughly 9 feet long by almost 4 feet wide, tapering to a little over 3 feet wide at either end.  82-inch zipper on top to close, with Sunbrella flap covering zipper for extra protection from water and sun.  Protective flap secured by Velcro.  Grommets on the bottom for ventilation & drainage.  Both ends sewn closed (like a duffle bag) per GB's desire to further prevent water and sun penetration.  Webbing loops on outside of bag - two at each end, on either side - to affix bag (not sail) to boat regardless of the bag's position on deck (port or starboard).  Here's what the bag itself looks like when it's full of sail, but not yet tied down to the grab bars along the coach roof.

Downside:  despite its size the bag is fairly compact relative to the sail it holds, so it requires sail ties (per GB's direction) around the staysail to compress it inside the bag; plus more sail ties around the outside of the bag to secure the bag (and the sail inside) to the boat.  Because the ends are sewn closed the staysail has to be pulled out of the bag (instead of having a zipper running the entire length of the bag which when unzipped would allow the bag to fall completely open, a design I thought might have been more convenient).  GB assures me that his design will not cause a problem when he raises and lowers the staysail.  He's confident he can handle both the staysail and the bag in the higher winds in which this sail will be deployed, and still manage the dozen or so sail ties that will be flyin' around.  I have my doubts.  I expect there will be a torn bag and a lot of lost sail ties in my future.  But then, I'm the pessimist on this vessel.

GB insisted on buying the Sunbrella himself, as he wanted to match the fabric to all the other boat canvas projects I'd done.  Alas.  He bought a "natural" color Sunbrella which is actually much whiter than the "oyster" shade we'd used for almost everything else, but what the hey - neutrals go with other neutrals, and after a week or 2 on the Fox it'll all look the same anyway.  I'm just glad it wasn't me who'd done the color selection.  We've also relocated the sail and bag from the side deck/bow area where the staysail burrito had ridden and where the force of boarding waves is strong, to the coach roof area aft of the mast, which hopefully takes on a lot less water.

But for now, as I look at the long, narrow, white bag sitting on the coach roof, that tapers at both ends, I'm reminded of a 9-foot-long...joint.  So the Staysail Burrito has transformed into the Gallant Fox Ganja.  Or, as I shall now refer to it:  the Staysail Spliff.

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Cruising to Mexico - Unsolicited Advice Part 2

We’ve been traveling in Mexico for almost a full year now, yet we still hear other cruisers - even those who have been here at least as long as we have - lament: “There’s no wine in Mexico!!”

Allow me to retort.

I’ve said it before: the Guadalupe Valley northeast of Ensenada is the premier wine-growing region of Mexico and worth a day trip by car if you happen to be in the area. There are wineries both small and large, well-established and new, producing wines that have won medals in international competitions. They tend to export their really fancy stuff, but there‘s enough wine remaining in Mexico for every taste and budget. Our favorite Mexican winery is Chateau Domecq; reasonable palates may differ. Still, as but one example amongst the many Guadalupe Valley wineries, Domecq offers a range of excellent every-day drinking wines that start at about US $6 per bottle (Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, red or white blends, etc.) Domecq has two brandies (Azteca and Presidente) that are both outstanding. No; we are not paid to endorse Chateau Domecq - we just enjoy their products and have tasted enough of them to know what we’re talking about. Bonus: Domecq and the other Guadalupe Valley wineries sell their wines in practically every Mexican town large enough to support a supermarket or a liquor store - in other words, almost everywhere you’ll be likely to visit by boat.  So you're set for wine.  Which is nice.

The same is true of local brands of gin (Oso Negro and Karat) and vodka (Oso Negro). These sell for about US $8 per 750ml bottle. You will never confuse them with Bombay or Skyy but they’re just fine and won’t make you blind. If you have a favorite scotch, gin or vodka you just can’t live without, bring along a few bottles - but save them for the Very Special Occasions because imported hard liquor is generally harder to find and expensive in Mexico. Otherwise, buy locally and don’t fret; you’ll remain happily lubricated. Come to Mexico and take a chance on the local hooch. You're an awesome nautical adventurer - what’s the worst that could happen?

The Propane Chef would now like to commandeer this post and discuss food.  Mexico has some.  And boy howdy, is it GOOD.  Please be assured that Mexico has plenty of pasta and rice (mostly white; brown rice is not available universally), and all kinds of flour & sugar, fruits & veggies, beef, pork, chicken & fish, basic condiments, oils & sauces, cookies, crackers & cereal.  You will not starve no matter how hard you try.

However, if you're a more adventuresome cook there are some items that are rare or unavailable down here, so if you plan to be in Mexico long term you'll want to bring them with you.  Especially since you're coming by boat and have far more space to carry goods than you could manage via aircraft.  If for example you cook Italian & make your own tomato sauce for spaghetti or pizza, Mexico has canned tomatoes and tomato sauce, but no tomato paste.  So bring your own tomato paste in cans or tubes.  Same thing with anchovy paste in tubes.  And dried polenta.  If you cook Chinese:  bring your favorite high-quality soy sauce (Mexico has some but brands and quality vary).  Bring hoisin sauce, duck sauce, chili paste, and all types of Asian noodles as they are hard to find here.  Thai:  bring all assorted types of curry paste & powder, fish sauce, rice stick noodles, & dried mushrooms.  Japanese:  bring wasabi, soba (buckwheat) noodles, nori (dried seaweed - there is some available in large sooper marts but not everywhere).  The larger cities (Mazatlan, for example) have sushi restaurants but for some reason even they're stingy with the wasabi, giving you pea-size portions that leave hard core sushi enthusiasts begging for more.  If you're hyper-particular about your salt, bring along some Kosher salt as it's not in every market here; and if you're into home-baked bread bring yeast for the same reason.  If you use a lot of chicken stock, bring some cans or boxes of stock with you; down here, everyone makes their stock from real chickens (which for the Propane Chef is no large deal but it might be for others).  BQ sauce is rare to nonexistent here (you generally have a choice of a few mild Hunt's brand flavors, which -- meh), so again if you make your own, bring mucho tomato paste.  And GB says if you bring a whole bunch of this stuff, give some to him & he'll cook you dinner.

Changing the subject from food & drink (bye, Propane Chef!) to conversation, let's address the issue of Spanish. You can get by in Mexico (at least everywhere we've been, which is plenty) if you speak no Spanish, but if you don't your experience here will be more awkward and less rich. So bring at least one Spanish-English dictionary along. Two would be better, since the words and phrases of some dictionaries are more Old World Spanish than New World Spanish, if you get my drift. I actually rely on several Spanish-language references, but the two I seem to use most often are: (1) Harper-Collins’s Spanish Concise Dictionary (3^rd ed.)(2004)* (I picked it up in a used-book store and so can you; it‘s great for basic grammar and words and phrases in general conversation); and (2) the one that‘s specific to boating: “Spanish for Cruisers - Boat Repair and Maintenance Phrase Book” by Kathy Parsons (2000).  Totally get this book* - it’s easy to use and covers most of the usual boat yard, chandlery and mechanic situations you’d encounter. Besides - it’s a fun book to read for some practice with words and phrases you can’t find in a standard Spanish-English dictionary.

Cruising Guide Books. Handy for maneuvering into many places, as the available charts are often so small-scale they’re useless for rounding headlands and approaching anchorages. However, we’ve found that each cruising guide we have used has combined some excellent information with outdated information and errors either in the writing or the editing. As an example, the John Rains “Mexico Boating Guide” (2d ed. 2006) has spot-on GPS waypoints and directions for anchoring on the southwestern side of Isla Cedros near Turtle Bay (p. 48) and Santa Maria Hook near Topolobampo (p. 180) - these are so good you don't need to use anything else. However, Rains wrongly reports on page 69 that there is a fuel dock in San Jose del Cabo (as of November 2007 there was no fuel and only a partially-built dock); and on page 79, his sketch of the San Lorenzo Channel approach to the La Paz area has the colors of the channel buoys reversed. We've heard others report more errors, elsewhere.  In good weather errors like these are just annoying, but they’re the kind of thing that leaves you wondering what else in the book is wrong that you might not catch in bad weather or at night until it‘s too late.  So, use the Rains guide with caution.

We had similar trouble with “Charlie’s Charts of the Western Coast of Mexico” by Charles & Margo Wood (2005). Its appendix with GPS waypoints is an excellent guide (p. 249) for spotting each of the dozen and more entrance buoys approaching Topolobampo, which are often obscured by fog. However, the appendix has a typographical error of about 7 miles in a GPS waypoint for Isla San Francisco (p. 244). The biggest criticism I have of Charlie’s Charts is that the majority of the information seems outdated, and oftentimes its black-and-white sketches of the anchorage approaches were less than helpful to me.  So, I would use the Charlie's Charts guide with caution.

This November, we’ll be putting to sea with the Rains and Charlie’s guides still on board despite the problems I‘ve found with each of them. However, this season we’ve added a third guide I‘m excited to start using: Om Shanti’s “Sea of Cortez - a Cruiser’s Guidebook” (Breeding & Bansmer (2007);* the information in this book looks easy to use, appears more comprehensive than the others, and is certainly more recent. Unfortunately, this guide does not include information on most of the mainland side of the Sea of Cortez, so if we return to the Topolobampo and Altata areas we'll default back to Rains and Charlie's Charts.  With caution.  Still, based on our experience from having cruised one season through the Sea of Cortez, I’d advise everyone coming down this way to study a little, then choose whichever Mexico cruising guide looks like the one that has the most information and is the easiest for you to understand and to use -- and then select a second one (if not a third) to cross-reference.

So get busy: buy some more stuff, slap on some sunscreen and come on down. We’ll be seeing you out there.

* Nope; not a paid endorsement.  Just a satisfied consumer talking about what makes her happy.

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Cruising to Mexico - Unsolicited Advice Part 1

Hurricane season will soon end, which means that Cruising-To-Mexico season will soon begin out here on the Pacific side of the continent. There are many sites and blogs that discuss how to properly outfit a boat and otherwise prepare for the long coastal trip from Point A (wherever you are in Canada or the US) to Point B (anywhere in Mexico you decide to stop).  (Actually, if you've been planning to sail down here from the PacNW or Canada, you've probably already left - but you'll likely go ashore in Southern California for some final provisioning.)  (Anyway, where was I?) (Oh.  Right.)  I shall now add my bit to all the other cruising information that’s flying around in cyberspace. I’m even repeating some of my earlier unsolicited advice.

Experience counts, but apparently you can still cruise Mexico without much of it.  Unlike most of our encounters in the PacNW, down here in Baja we have crossed paths with a number of people who for whatever reason appear - to us - under-prepared for boat travel: we avoided a 2:00 a.m. collision off Vizcaino Bay with a smaller sailboat that was under power, on auto-pilot, and with the VHF turned off so that its crew of three could sleep without being disturbed. We helped a single-hander get his sailboat into a Sea of Cortez anchorage at sunset - he had no charts or guide books to tell him where he was, no GPS, no radar, no weather information, a malfunctioning engine, nonexistent rigging, and only a close-range hand-held VHF with almost-dead batteries. A few months later we learned he’d finally reached his end-destination, hauled-out the boat for repairs…and then abandoned it. We have seen other people who either have very little anchoring experience, or inadequate ground tackle (example: a 15-pound anchor attached to rope instead of chain, for a 34-foot multihull). In the long term I’m sure folks like these will learn better practices, but right now in our eyes they’re hazards to themselves and the other boats they meet. I suppose they haven’t yet experienced how quickly the tides and the weather can turn against you, or how if you don’t practice good navigation you can make your boat crash into something hard - but if you’ve cruised the PacNW or elsewhere for a while, you already know the importance of good anchoring gear and technique, and know why navigation, the tides and the weather demand attention. For you, Baja travel will be a piece o‘ cake and you should get down here pronto.

However, Baja and the Sea of Cortez are unique, just like every place else, so in addition to a heavy primary anchor and at least 200 feet of chain and knowing how to use them in combination, you might want to bring one or more of the following items. Some might seem to be frivolous - bells and whistles; but they may eventually become essentials for you -- and what becomes an essential might not be the item you expected. It all depends on how you travel and what you experience along the way.

Offered, then, for your consideration: a watermaker; bug screens for all hatches and portholes (it turns out many places in Baja have docile, non-stinging, but very thirsty bees who will swarm a boat to sip water from faucets, puddles left in sinks, etc.); wheels for your dinghy (the biggest, fattest-tired wheels you can buy, the better to haul the dinghy out of the surf and up a steep-to beach); a pressure cooker (saves propane and doesn’t heat up the boat’s cabin as much as a conventional stove/oven); and a Sun Shower (a very handy and inexpensive way to conserve fresh water and battery capacity while not denying oneself a healthful and refreshing hot shower).

You will want to bring field guides for all the birds, fish and seashells you will find. Or, if history or archaeology is more your hobby, plan your library accordingly - you’ll be glad you did.  Even if you’re not a history fan, you may find T.R. Fehrenbach’s book, “Fire and Blood - a Bold and Definitive Modern Chronicle of Mexico” helps you better understand Mexican culture - especially if you re-read it as you travel and visit the places he describes.

Install a few 12-volt (DC) fans below decks and make or buy fabric wind scoops for the deck hatches, so that you’ll stay fairly comfortable even while cruising Baja in late spring and summer. A K.I.S.S. wind generator goes gangbusters when the wind blows above 10 knots, and is a quiet and efficient way to recharge boat batteries. Solar panels? They often work better than a wind generator, so bring as many as you can comfortably manage. We have two; we could use four if we could make space for them somewhere.  And, they're among those items that are more expensive and hard to find down here south of the border so bring what you think you'll need for the length of time you plan to be traveling here.

Finally, if you plan to cruise long term, you'll eventually need to repair or replace a lot of boat canvas and such, so you may want to consider the pros and cons of buying a sewing machine for the boat - like my trusty Pfaff ClassicStyle 1525.

So much to think about, and so little time.  Of course, a well-found and well-outfitted boat may not need any of this stuff to cruise down here - but these things enhance long term livability and comfort in The Land of the Hot Sun.  Oh, there's even more cruising advice soon coming...

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Guanajuato - More Turismo

August is a nice time to visit Guanajuato.  It's the off-season so the locals remark how uncrowded it is.  My goodness, I'd hate to see it any busier - the streets and the sidewalks were just packed.  It is a hilly city, and its historic district is full of narrow streets and a network of tunnels below street level (some to allow for drainage, some to accomodate traffic).  All the topography, Spanish Colonial buildings, fountains and sculptures make for a lot of visual texture.

The August weather was highly entertaining:  pleasantly cool and dry relative to Mazatlan's tropical climate; yet every day like clockwork big clouds would begin to pile up about noon, warning you that you had about an hour to finish your turismo and seek shelter or get very, very wet when the inevitable thunderstorm arrived  in midafternoon.  By happy hour the storm would pass so that visitors like us could continue our sightseeing and people-watching from the umbrella-covered comfort of the premises of a purveyor of fine martinis.  I have never before experienced such considerate weather.  I like this city.

The arts are alive and well in Guanajuato - the historic center has two theatres, open-air music performances of all kinds, and several museums all within easy walking distance of one another.  GB found a karate dojo.  A botanical garden surrounding a former hacienda is accessible by taxicab, as is the Museum of Mummies if your tastes run to the macabre. If you enjoy religious art, you will spend a few days just visiting the ever-so-many churches within the historic district.  You can have your pick of Spanish classes; or take a bus or taxi up into the city's hills to tour the oldest section of the Valenciana silver mine.  There's even a Cervantes festival here every year.  Guanajuato loves it some Don Quixote.

Guanajuato's oldest house dates from the 16th century and is now a museum/gallery (El Museo del Pueblo) featuring everything from Mesoamerican ceramics to modern art like this here naked lady riding a dragon (or is that a winged demon entity?).  A few rooms have had their original stenciled wall trim restored, and two of them plus the house's chapel still have their original terra cotta and tile floors.  Think that linoleum in your kitchen will last 500 years?

The granary with all its bullet holes from the 1810 revolution is also now a museum that chronicles Mexico's and the region's history from pre-European contact, through the Colonial and revolutionary periods, to industrialization and the present day.  If you can see only one museum in Guanajuato, it will be difficult to choose between the Museo del Pueblo and the granary.  Personally, I'm a big fan of everything from Neolithic artifacts to pre-contact textiles and ceramics, and GB's more partial to recent military history.  So we see a lot of museums wherever we go.  In Guanajuato, we both get satisfied.

If fresh food is more to your liking, Guanajuato's old central market, Mercado Hidalgo, was designed by Gustave Eiffel but was originally intended to be a train station.  Sadly, no trains ever chugged through it, but the structure has an upper level which is a great vantage point for sightseeing. (President Porfirio Diaz was quite the Francophile and during his administration around the turn of the 20th century Mexico purchased (commissioned?) several Eiffel structures - such as the pre-fab church you can visit in Santa Rosalia on the Baja peninsula, and Guanajuato's mercado.)

Take some time to travel to Guanajuato - whether it's your only destination in Mexico, or if you're trying to get some relief from the summer heat and humidity along the coast.  We'll likely spend a second cruising season in the Sea of Cortez, and if we spend another hurricane season in Mazatlan we'll certainly want to make a second visit to Guanajuato and hopefully spend more time there.  It's just too nearby not to take another bus trip there.

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Return of The Gary

GB and Cap'n George returned home to Mazatlan yesterday evening, after a successful sailboat delivery.  All is well, and I'm eating meals again that include sauces, and more than two ingredients.  Heh.

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¡Viva México!

Happy Independence Day, Mexico - and a good many more!

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Guanajuato and the 1810 Revolution

Guanajuato is an old Spanish Colonial silver-mining city that is located near Mexico's mountainous geographic center.  The climate is cool, dry and sunny; and the buildings and their surroundings are so pretty and colorful it's hard to recall Guanajuato's bloody past.

Guanajuato was at the center of the Mexican Revolution of 1810 - the revolutionthat Mexico celebrates on September 16 as its Independence Day.  Briefly, on September 15, 1810, Father Hidalgo assembled a number of (mostly) Mexicans and Indians from the lower socioeconomic castes in the town of Dolores and urged them to revolt against the Spanish crown.  The people's hatred of Spain ran deep (as did the economic gap that naturally evolved from the local silver mining industry, i.e., the Indians and Mexicans did the mining; the Spaniards and upper-caste criollos kept the silver).  The roar of the crowd in response to Hidalgo's encouragement to overthrow the government is now celebrated on the evening of September 15 as "La Noche del Grito" (loosely translated, "the night of the enraged scream").  The crowd followed Hidalgo,Ignacio Allende and other leaders from Dolores to Atotonilco, then to San Miguel, adding to its number along the way.  Riots, arson and looting were involved.  The improvised army - ultimately about 12,000 men, women and children - circled from San Miguel back to Guanajuato.  On September 28, 1810, they stormed the Spaniards who had barricaded themselves in the fortresslike public granary, el Alhóndiga de Granaditas.  One of the insurgents, a miner nicknamed El Pipila, burned down (or blew up, depending on which version of history you prefer) the entrance doors to the Alhóndiga; a monument dedicated to him overlooks the old center of Guanajuato.

The insurgent army fought the Spaniards room to room in the Alhóndiga.  Youcan still see the bullet holes.  According to historian T.R. Fehrenbach,* no Spaniard survived, but the insurgents nevertheless continued to burn and loot Guanajuato.  Many more lives were lost and the survivors never forgot the massacre.  The revolution soon failed and Spain recaptured Guanajuato.  As vengeance for the uprising the Spanish commander ordered a decimation of the Indian and half-caste populations.  The four principal leaders of the uprising - Hidalgo, Ignacio Allende, Juan de Aldama and José Mariano Jiménez - were pursued, captured and executed.  In July, 1811, Spain returned their heads to Guanajuato, placed them in iron cages, and hung them for public view from hooks on each of the granary's four corners.  The heads remained suspended from the granary for 21 years.

You can still see the iron hooks from which the heads were displayed.  Small wonder that Mexico's desire for independence did not die with the insurgents.

* "Fire and Blood - A Bold and Definitive Modern Chronicle of Mexico"

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Atotonilco

The Sanctuary at Atotonilco, about 8 miles north-ish of San Miguel de Allende, was started by Father Luis Felipe Neri de Alfaro in 1740.  An artist from Querétaro, Martin Antonio Martínez de Pocasangre, painted Father Neri's poems and sermons on the walls of the sanctuary.  And on the ceilings.  And the doors.  Inside and out.  What's even more impressive than an artist and his crew painting every available surface of a church, is how much of it remained after some 250 years.  Especially considering that the structure was built above a warm spring which sort of accelerates deterioration of things like, oh I don't know, PAINTINGS.

GB and I stumbled into good fortune the day we decided to visit the Sanctuario.  A few days previously the Sanctuario had been designated a World Heritage site.  This is a Big Deal, as it opens up new funding opportunities for continued restoration and preservation of Pocasangre's paintings and the Sactuario as a whole.  (Pocasangre's work has been compared favorably to Michelangelo's in The Vatican's Sistine Chapel.)  In celebration of the World Heritage designation, the Sanctuario opened the restored side chapels to a group of visitors - us included.  Awesome.

It's not just the state of preservation or the quality of the recent restoration that's important; the Sanctuario is also historically significant because it was where the martyrs of the revolution were baptized.  Ignacio Allende, one of the hero/martyrs of the revolution, was married here.  And on September 15, 1810, Father Hidalgo, Juan Aldama and Ignacio Allende stopped here with their revolutionary army and received the Sanctuario's priest's blessing for their cause.  The revolutionary army took a banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe from the church wall, appropriating her as the patron of the war for Mexican independence from Spain.

Photos (mine, anyway) do not do Pocasangre's work justice.  Here, I've tried to take some closer views of a few details of his art.  On the left, we have a cluster o' demons romping around the ceiling of the fully-restored left chapel; and over to the right we have a seashell niche in the silver-encrusted secret room behind the altar in the right chapel.  We were told that in order to preserve the artwork, these two chapels are ordinarily not open to the public so if you travel to Atotonilco to see the Sanctuario, plan a bit ahead, make some inquiries, and see if you can get special permission to view something you will never see anywhere else n the world.

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Road Trip to Mexico's Colonial Heartland

About a month ago when we thought it was as hot and humid as it could get in Mazatlan,* GB decided on a trip to higher (cooler, drier) ground.  We took an 8-day loop by Primera Plus bus to explore the old Spanish Colonial towns of San Miguel de Allende, Atotonilco and Guanajuato.  All are located up in Mexico's central highlands within easy bus-traveling distance of one another in the Mexican state of Guanajuato.  Visit these places if you can:  the climate is pleasant, the architecture and topography makes for a rich visual texture, and there's enough history to keep you studying for a long time.  The Spanish Colonial period started about 450 years ago in these parts, and these towns were Ground Zero of Mexico's bloody 1810 revolution.  So take a trip and get you some history.

Our first stop after transferring buses in Guadalajara was San Miguel de Allende.  It has quite the norteamericano expatriate community but in August most of them seemed to have left for elsewhere.  In fact, August seems to be the off-season for everyone hereabouts, but GB and I were thrilled to have cool, dry air to go with all the sunshine - for tourists like us, it's the perfect weather cocktail.  Enough resident expatriates remained in San Miguel, though, for us to have a National Geographic moment one evening.  We saw what appears to be a gringo hangout in the old town center - a Dolphy ice cream store with a Dunkin' Donuts inside.  As if the local nieve and churros wasn't far superior.  I just had to take the pic above: 

Much has been written elsewhere about San Miguel de Allende, so I'll be brief:  the city is a Mexican National Monument and because of the historical events that happened here and the good preservation of so much of the original Colonial architecture, it is on the United Nations' list of International Treasures to be Conserved.  San Miguel has a well established arts community that arose in large part from post-WWII American veterans who went there to study art on the GI Bill.  Which would have been a pretty sweet gig back in the day when San Miguel was very small.  Nowadays, there are galleries, musical performances, and art exhibitions for every taste and budget.  There is also a large artisans' market full of the artwork and crafts that make this area of Mexico famous.  Bring pesos.

We arrived in San Miguel de Allende on a Sunday and the main plaza, aka El Jardin, was jumpin'.  It stays jumpin' in the evenings, too.  Balloon vendors, musicians, and entrepreneurs with their food carts.  Check out this guy and his clientele in the middle pic - he's selling corn-on-the-cob (elote) and his cart was one of the most popular - he was still bringing them in after sundown:   

The red-pink sandstone church on the Jardin central plaza is La Parroquia de San Miguel.  It's as stunning as any big-city cathedral, but is actually much more modest:  it's simply the main church of the parish of San Miguel.  The original church was built around 1680 but in the 1880s a local stonemason freshened up the facade based, it is said, on picture postcards he saw of European cathedrals.  Personally, I think he did pretty well - the Parroquia looks good day or night:

There are a lot of hyper-cool centuries-old Colonial houses in the old part of town around the Jardin; doors, windows and roof ornaments are works of art in themselves.  For example, on the left here is but one of many custom door knockers you see while walking around town; and on the right is the unique balcony/wall art of Casa Cohen, which presumably belonged at one time to a Jewish family in a neighborhood I'm guessing was predominantly Catholic.  There must be some good stories about Casa Cohen, but in the short time we were there I couldn't find out anything.  Pity.

The area around San Miguel is beautiful and rich, and the old town center is full of historical buildings; walking around San Miguel must be similar to the feeling a tourist of history gets in places like Philadelphia or Boston.  Some of the revolutionaries of 1810, like the Allende brothers (Ignacio and Jose) lived right on the Jardin in San Miguel, and planned their revolt against the Spanish government here.  People risked their lives - and lost them - here in the revolution.  Nowadays San Miguel is such a pleasant place to visit, it's hard to believe how dangerous the times were here, 200 years ago.  Here's hoping things stay nice, peaceful and prosperous for many centuries to come.

* Ha.  What folly.

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En Route

So, today is Day 11 of the sailboat delivery that GB and Cap'n George are making.  I last heard from them 3 days ago and all was well (Cap'n George has a cell phone so when the boat is in range of a cell tower we can reach one another via our laptop and Skype - 21st-century technology is wonderful).  They are still following the Baja Bash route up the Pacific side of the Baja California peninsula, and I'm guessing they're traveling within 25 miles of shore. By now they should be somewhere between Turtle Bay and Ensenada, their last stop before checking-out of Mexico and crossing the border back into the US.  (And checking-in.  Before they check back out.  And back in to Mexico.  Following me?)

I've heard there have been some mechanical breakdowns along the way but the fellas have kept the boat afloat and moving north.  We've been watching the weather here in Mazatlan and it has stayed as calm as can be expected for heading into prevailing northwest winds and swell.  So, good for the two of them.  I'm sure there will be the telling of many sea stories when they return.

Why, yes, I do miss them.  Especially the guy on the left...

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