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Diving with the hookah

Today, the Don Quixote crew went on an underwater exploration. This
exploration was supported by our new hookah. A hookah, for those of
you who don't know, is a pump that takes air from the surface of the
water and pumps it into hoses and sends it to you, compressed and
ready for breathing. This way you can stay underwater for long
amounts of time without having to come up for air.

The area we decided to "dive" on was a clump of rocks that were about
20 yards from the shore of an island named Las Tres Marietas. The
three Marias. The rocks were mostly rock, but there is evidence of
coral beginning to take over. It's a really good sign. There were a
large amount of fish there that didn't really seem afraid of humans,
so you were able to swim with the groups of parrot fish. Just watch
out, they bite.

There were also eels and small octopi that hide in the coral. I
spotted two octopi in the same little cave. They were probably three
inches long with bodies the size of a half dollar. I spotted them as
they were moving, otherwise I never would have found them. They
changed color almost immediately to their surroundings. This is
called camouflage coloration.

My favorite fish was a small blue one. It had amazing colors. It
started at the nose with a dark blue and then darkened back to the
tail. There were three turquoise blue spots on the back that stood
out but made it look really bright and colorful. It was feeding
mostly on algae, but occasionally it would go to a chunk of soft
coral and bite off of that. It didn't swim in any schools of fish and
hid in chunks of coral alot.

The coolest experience swimming was when I swam with the fish
schools. They were very large fish, but they swam pretty slowly so I
was able to to drift in the middle of them. They didn't really seem
to mind me at all. A few little fish nibbled at my feet when I was
with them. It tickled my feet so much that I laughed hard enough to
scare them away.

Over all diving was a really good experience for me. It is definitely
something that I expect to do again soon.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! Welcome to the year of 2009. 

At the end of each year, I like to look back at all the things that happened. It dawned on me that this time last year I lived in a house. My family was just getting ready to take off on our voyage. I was also in the United States and it was snowy. In just one year, my life has turned around so grandly that I am almost living a different life. I live on a boat. I travel. I have met amazing new people and cultures, and I realized something very important. I thought about this for awhile. 

What would it be like to go back to how my life used to be? To live in a house and go to school and enroll in school activities. I thought about this all night. And I realized that if I went back to the life I seem to want so badly, I wouldn't be happy. I wouldn't be living in the sense that I feel is right. All of this thinking made me look at myself and my family and realize something extremely important. I am happy.

Thanksgiving Feast

Here in La Paz they have a Turkey Day potluck for all the people who don't want to cook a big dinner for Thanksgiving.  The deal is the chosen marina to host this dinner supplies the turkeys and the mashed potatoes. It is up to all the guests to bring whatever they think a Thanksgiving Day Meal is supposed to have. We chose to bring caramelized onions and black olives. The turnout at the dinner was relatively large. I believe about 200 people came to the dinner. The dinner was hosted by Marina Palmera. The marina has a huge boardwalk so thats where they set everything up. A few of my friends attended the dinner and we all took over one of the tables. All the kinds under 16 were the first to get served so we got the first pick in everything. I was amazed by how many people brought stuffing. There were probably about a dozen bowls for different stuffings. I served my food and went to go sit down and eat when I saw the dessert table. I think in the end I would have been better off if I hadn't seen the dessert table. But, I did. So, of course, I went over and loaded up a second styrofoam plate full of sugar. After the dinner my friends and I tried to play tag but its really hard to do that on a full belly. We ended up just sitting around a playing black jack. 

After the potluck was over we all migrated to Marina De La Paz for a classical Guitar concert. They were really good. It inspired me to practice more. I hope I'll someday be that good. 

I have persuaded my dad to leave La Paz on the 5th. I hope that we will get in to Mazatlan on the 8th. 

All is well on Don Quixote.

Los Frailes

We have been in Los Frailes since the 10th. We pulled in at about 4:30 in the afternoon and then went to bed early. We had a long day. On the 11th, tuesday, we went on a little trip on shore. The plan was to take a two mile hike to a beach that had really amazing snorkeling then a two mile hike back. What really happened wasn't at all like that.

We land on the beach after rowing in and grabbed ll our stuff we would need on the walk/swim/dive. We walked on the beach after some re-con to find the road that was going to take us to the beach. We started the walk along a very dry dusty trail. We walked about a mile before someone pulled over and offered us a ride. My mom and dad did the silent telepathic communication thing that I don't get and told us to climb on. We drove along the road for awhile before dad said I guess we are going past the beach. In fact we were heading for the town there. It took us about 15 minutes to reach the town. The ride in the back of the pick-up truck was really bumpy due to the fact that it was and unpaved, rocky, bumpy road. Once we reached the town though the roads got smoother. They were still dirt roads but they were less bumpy. 

We were driving through the small town when dad said "you girls got all your stuff? He's going to pull over soon." He didn't pull over though he just kept on driving. Right through the town. About a minute later he stopped really fast and turned around. My Mom said "You didn't forget us did you?". Started smiling. He said "Actually I did. I was kind of caught up in the music." It was all cool though because he drove us back to another beach right in the town. It was actually kind of a better reef because it had all the gear we would need for swimming at a good price.

We went snorkeling on the smaller part of the reef. There are two parts the shallow part of the reef that is closest to shore. Then there s a breakwater before you get to the big part of the reef. Thats where all the divers go. We bobbed around the reef looking at the fish and coral for awhile before we all headed inshore for awhile. We knew that we were going to get lunch in town so we scouted out the place with the best menu. And the cheapest menu. We settled for a small restaurant that had lots of beer. That mostly why my parents wanted to go there. We got a few plates of delicious burritos and nachos.

Jaime Conger

Swimming a Reef

Another boat in the Ha-ha has been here before so knows all the cool, cheap, things to do. So they got on the VHF and called all the Ha-ha kids and invited them to so snorkeling. My family said yes, as did four other boats.  Everyone started arriving at our boat at about 2:30 for some swimming on our mini island. One everyone was there we left for the reef. We were heading for a big rock called Seal Rock. Its not really a reef but it has amazing stuff growing on it and tons of wildlife. 

Once we got to the rock we had to anchor our dinghies. The surf was to big on the beach to pull up all our boats so we just dropped a couple dinghy anchors and rafted together. Then we jumped in and went swimming. At first we swam around the shore. The fish and coral was very impressive. Then we swam over to Seal Rock. It was incredible. There was a huge variety of fish and coral. The coral was the coolest. I spent half an hour diving down on the coral, then swimming up for air the going back down again. I love doing that. We are going to try to go back over today and check it out again. It really was a cool experience.

Jaime Conger

Bahia Santa Maria

Bahia Santa Maria was great! It was beautiful and sunny. The wind was at about 5 knots so the sun didn't get a chance to make us sweat. We pulled in the harbor at about 3:00 in the morning. We anchored temporarily near the entrance so that we didn't have to wind through the fleet. That morning we all slept in 'till about 10:00, and then moved the boat next to the "main" boat, Profligate.

After we finally woke up we had a big breakfast and went for a swim. Awhile back we bought one of those inflatable floaty island things from Costco. We decided to get that out and dad put up a homemade waterslide. We did all of this mostly for preparation of a water/kid party we were throwing that afternoon. It turned out to be a blast.  All the kids came from various boats in the fleet and we played games and dunked people in the water and splashed for 3 hours. Then we all sat down to watch a movie. The movie was probably really good, I didn't get a really good chance to watch it since the kid behind me kept dropping food on my head. After he ran out of peanuts he resorted to making farting sounds. Very comforting.

The kids all left with their parents who stayed for my parents' talk/adult party. A few girls spent the night and we spent the morning swimming on the float. That day was the Santa Maria party at the beach. I wasn't at the party much. My friend and I went to catch the really good waves with our boogie boards.  I flipped a couple times and once rode the wave backwards. The waves were pretty substantial. The biggest one was probably 5 feet tall. We decided not to ride this one. After awhile the sun went down and the water temperature dropped the party was over. 

We started for Cabo San Lucas in the morning. The race started at 7:00 on the 5th and quite a few boats stayed behind. We are about 50 miles away now and hope to pull in at 9 on the 6th. Wish us luck!