(Click to enlarge)

Here in La Paz we’ve been following the efforts of 6 swimmers who attempted a 113-nautical-mile world record relay swim across the Sea of Cortez . The current relay record of 75 nautical miles was set in New Zealand in 2009.

Just when Mexican-American relations in the media are reaching an all time low, here are 6 people building a friendship between the two countries and cultures. The top three swimmers from Mexico teamed up with three swimmers from the US with the objective to raise money for the Wounded Warrior Project (the US team) and to raise breast cancer awareness in their community (the Mexican team).

The attempt was made by Nora Toledano, Mexico ‘s number one open water swimmer, and her teammates Monica Ramirez and Edna LLoréns. The US team consisted of Paul Lundgrend, Christine Gonzalez and Vito Bialla.

Unfortunately, the attempt had to be suspended after more than 36 hours of swimming because 4 of the 6 swimmers had been attacked by jellyfish. Here’s the official announcement from team member Vito Bialla:

“We swam 63.8 nautical miles in 36 hours and 57 minutes. Nora was seriously attacked by jellyfish paralyzing her arm, stomach and leg. It looked like acid had been poured on her body. Edna was attacked as well but not as severe. Paul had multiple attacks and Monica had to have a Jellyfish pulled off her face. We could not swim another 40 nautical miles with a reduction of swimmers in 5 foot seas and 30 knot winds in our face basically blinding us. The conditions where the toughest I’ve ever been in and each swimmer performed well above all expectations with more courage than I’ve ever witnessed.”

Donations are still being accepted at Challenge Me Now and the swimmers have vowed to try again at a later time.

A few years ago one of the financial magazines named La Paz the best place to retire outside the United States. I don’t know if that’s still true, but our city still has its share of pluses. As I mentioned yesterday, La Paz is a less expensive place to live than nearby Los Cabos, even though La Paz has the fourth highest standard of living in all of Mexico. It’s also the state capital, so there are more services available here than in most other cities in Baja Sur. There are several excellent hospitals here already and the government is opening a brand new, state-of-the-art hospital next month.

La Paz has an international airport served by Alaska Airlines, among others, and a large ferry system that connects it to mainland Mexico. It has a Sam’s Club/Wal-Mart complex, a new Home Depot, Sears, Applebee’s, McDonalds and Burger King. Most major auto manufacturers are represented here and the CCC grocery chain carries many US products, including Tillamook cheese!

Several large marinas support an active cruising community and there’s an English-language book store in town. The nearby wind-surfing community of La Ventana is known as the “Hood River of Mexico” and the diving, snorkeling and kayaking in the Sea of Cortez is some of the best in the world. Jacques Cousteau once called the Sea the “aquarium of the world” because it’s home to more than a thousand species of marine life. Several islands just off-shore have been designated a United Nations Biosphere and are protected by the Mexican government to ensure that they remain unspoiled for generations to come.

If you’re looking for a place to retire with a little more charm and adventure than Sun City, Arizona, visit La Paz and see what you think.

In November, 2009, we moved from the little house in Todos Santos to a little apartment in La Paz. We chose La Paz over the Los Cabos area because the cost of living is less here and the city appealed to us more. La Paz is the state capital and a middle-class working city so we hoped it would be less impacted by the drop in tourism that had resulted from the (false) H1N1 scare and all the bad press about drug violence in the border cities up north. Unfortunately, the economy of La Paz has been (and is being) seriously hurt by the loss of tourism dollars.

A little nervous about the move to the “big city,” I convinced Marty to take an apartment we had found during the summer. Located in a small gated community called Las Brisas Villas, our place is one of 4 apartments in the complex. There are also 4 houses inside the walls and we all share a beautiful common area that includes a pool and a large palapa – a traditional thatched-roof patio for entertaining.

We’re now into our 7^th month in La Paz and I’m still very happy we decided on our current residence. Someday we may move a little closer to downtown or even to San Jose del Cabo, the quieter half of Los Cabos, but for now La Paz is a comfortable place to live and we have everything Los Cabos ha except a Costco.

As I mentioned, the economic crash has hurt all of Mexico, but we have a couple of clients here in La Paz and Marty helps son Mike with his Manteleta.com business. We attend the monthly Baja Foreign Business Group meetings and we’ve been to a few social events around town. We even had our picture in the local English-language newspaper, the Baja Citizen, following a benefit for a group that helps kids that live in some of the remote areas of southern Baja.

Yesterday I briefly described our journey from Portland, Oregon, to southern Baja, Mexico. The trip of roughly 2,000 miles took us to the small town of Todos Santos, located about half way between the resort destination of Cabo and the state capital of La Paz.

Our home for the summer of 2009 (owned by Canadians Pete and Cyndy Carter) was an incredible and fortunate house-sitting find we made back in December of 2008. In exchange for free rent, we paid the utilities (gas, water, power and telephone/DSL) and cared for the half-acre yard. Of course we also cared for the house and provided a presence to deter would-be snoopers.

“Casita Carter,” as we called the little house, was the perfect place to get acclimated to Mexico and Mexican living. Set on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the casita was “out in the country” about 2 miles from the center of Todos Santos – far enough away to provide the feeling of solitude and yet close enough to be served by municipal water and power and telephone/Internet services. The Carters provided Canadian satellite TV service and we were able to watch local network channels from Seattle along with all the usual cable TV offerings.

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Unfortunately, the house was not air conditioned, so we had some pretty hot days and uncomfortable nights during July and August, but nothing prepared us for the humidity that came with Hurricane Jimena on September 1, 2009. The storm dumped enormous amounts of rain but weakened significantly from its original Category 4 status before it plowed into the Pacific coastline 150 miles north of Todos Santos. Early predictions had it making a direct hit on our casita as a Cat 5 storm, so we packed everything in watertight containers and fled north to La Paz to camp out with Mike in his solid concrete apartment building. Before the end of October we would brace for 2 tropical storms and another hurricane, but none did any serious damage in Todos Santos.

With the return of Pete and Cyndy scheduled for November 1^st, we looked for and found a furnished apartment in La Paz. Unfortunately, unforeseen events prevented the Carters from returning as planned, so we continued to spend one night a week in Todos Santos until mid-February!

It was just a year ago today that we pulled out of our driveway in Portland, OR, waved goodbye to our condo and began our 2,000 mile journey south. The trip took a total of 4 days, so I’d like to use these next four blog posts to recap our first year in Mexico.

Loaded to the top!

We had intended to leave early Monday morning (5/11/2009) but numerous events conspired to keep us in Portland until almost 1:00 p.m. There was the last-minute trip to the vet to pick up LaBete’s health certificate, two unplanned trips to our storage locker with items we had hoped to sell long before departure day and the return of the rental car we had used so we could load our Chevy Blazer literally to the roof with all that remained of our worldly possessions.

We had hoped to make Sacramento Monday night but, due to the late departure, we only made it as far as Redding, CA that first night. We were concerned about our progress because we had already scheduled our son Mike to meet us in San Diego the next night to help with the Mexico drive. Fortunately, we got an early start on Tuesday and made San Diego the second night, right on schedule. Mike was waiting for us at the hotel rendezvous point and we settled in for our second night on the road.

Welcome to Mexico!

Wednesday morning, May 13^th, we left the hotel early because we anticipated bureaucratic delays at the San Ysidro (Tijuana) border crossing and we had a long drive ahead of us if we were to reach the Baja Norte/Baja Sur state line that night. When we reached the border crossing there were only two cars ahead of us and Mike used his knowledge of how the Mexican system works to get us a “green light” (basically, a free pass) and we rolled into Mexico with just a stop-and-go. As we were all grinning about how lucky we’d been, a lone border guard suddenly waved us over for inspection! He asked Mike some questions and then began shining his flashlight into the back of our totally packed SUV. At one point it looked like we were in for a lengthy delay, but when the guy saw how much crap we had stuffed into the car, he just shook his head and waved us on our way!

Fill 'er up!

After missing a very poorly marked “exit” we got momentarily lost in downtown Tijuana but Mike’s expert driving skills soon had us back on track and by 8:00 p.m. that night we were checking into our hotel in Guerrero Negro, 500 miles into Mexico. Our second day took us through some amazing country and took us back and forth across the Baja Peninsula 4 times in 16 hours. Finally, at 8:00 p.m. on May 14, 2009, we arrived at the little house in Todos Santos that would be our home for the next 5 ½ months.

Tomorrow I describe our first summer in Mexico.

We arrived in Mexico  just a little over 11 months ago and we’ve only been in La Paz 6 months, so it doesn’t seem possible that we’ve already said “Good-bye” to one of our friends here. Sadly, friend and client Bob Moore passed away April 16, 2010, from injuries suffered during a fall the night before. Bob was in his early 80s but he was very active in the community, especially the boating part of it. He owned and operated Seascape Charters, a La Paz-based company that offered 2 sailboats, a power boat and a motor home for weekly charters. Bob was a great guy and he will be sorely missed by us and his friends and family.

On a lighter note, this morning we had the pleasure of meeting with Juli and Merit of Se Habla…La Paz, the premier Spanish language school here in La Paz. Our 90-minute meeting was to kick off a project aimed at helping the school reach a broader market and attract students into the immersion and online language training. The school is located in a marvelous 7-story building just a block off the Malecón, La Paz’s downtown bay-front boulevard. Classes are small and informal, but they are taught by dedicated professionals and supported by the highest quality educational materials. The immersion program provides ample opportunity to experience and enjoy the community and the culture that is La Paz.

I’ve mentioined earlier that all the earthquakes you read about in Baja occur up north near the U.S. border and don’t affect us way down here at the southern end of the peninsula but this morning was the exception!

I’ve studied the USGS website HERE and the only thing I can find is a small, magnitude 3.8 event up north at 3:30 a.m. our time (09:30 UTC) but that doesn’t seem big enough to shake us down here, especially since we didn’t feel their big event back on April 4. But shake we did, for about 5 seconds. Our apartment is in a large, concrete building and it felt like the whole building just shuddered. At its peak, the shaking was strong enough to rattle our front windows in their frames!

Update (4/24/2010): It turns out that yesterday morning’s earthquake was much closer than the Mexico/US border – in fact, is was only 17 miles away! I don’t know why it isn’t listed on the USGS website, but the Mexican version of the USGS reports a magnitude 3.7 event 17 miles SE of La Paz at 3:23 a.m. local time.

The maps below show the location of this mornings quake (dots) and the path of the infamous San Adreas Fault as it snakes its way down through the Sea of Cortez (click for larger views):

If you’ve never visited the website I mentioned above, you may be surprised at how many earthquakes occur on our planet in any given day. As of 9:30 a.m. local time there have already been 36 earthquakes today larger than magnitude 2.5.

Last week-end we had friends visiting from the Northwest and it gave us the opportunity to drive the “Baja Loop” again as we showed off the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula to Todd and Michielle.

On Easter Sunday there was a magnitude 7.2 earthquake in northern Baja and we received a number of emails from friends and relatives asking if we were okay or if we felt the ‘quake. We certainly appreciate the thoughts and concern and, just for the record, we are okay and we did not feel anything.  The earthquake took place near Mexicali on the Mexico/U.S. border and we are more than 650 miles south of there, as the crow flies. By highway it’s more like 950 miles due to the fact that the Transpeninsular Highway (Mexico Highway 1) crosses the peninsula seven times between Tijuana and Cabo San Lucas.

La Paz, BCS, in relation to mainland Mexico and the U.S. Border

Actually, the Baja Peninsula is a pretty interesting place, geographically speaking. For all its vast length, there’s a place not far from our house where it’s less than 30 miles wide! With the Sea of Cortez along its eastern side and the Pacific Ocean along its western side, Baja has more than 2,000 miles of coastline and hundreds of miles of beautiful beaches that are only accessible by boat. Other than the short Highway 19 that connects La Paz and Los Cabos along the eastern side, Highway 1 is the only north-south road on the peninsula that doesn’t dead-end.

Baja is divided in half at the 28^th Parallel to form two huge states. Gringos often refer to these states as Baja Norte (north) and Baja Sur (south) but the proper names are Baja California and Baja California Sur, respectively. Although Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, the peninsula remained a remote, forgotten territory until the northern half was granted statehood in 1952. It wasn’t until 1974 that Baja California Sur (BCS) finally became Mexico’s 31^st state and parts of the Transpeninsula Highway remained a dirt road well into the 1980s. Just last summer that former dirt road was transformed into a four-lane divided highway with a posted speed limit of 90 kph!

So the next time you read about Baja – whether it’s an earthquake or another drug cartel massacre, just remember that we’re a long, long way from the border. In fact, we like to tell our friends back in Oregon that we’re about as far south of the border as they are north of it. Or to put it another way, we’re at about the same latitude as Hawaii!

Today’s blog post is a little late (OK, it’s a lot late) because I spent the morning snorkeling with whale sharks in the Bay of La Paz. There’s been as many as ten hanging around since before Christmas and we were fortunate to catch up with five this morning!

The whale shark, which is actually a species of shark and not a species of whale, is the largest living fish in the world, often reaching 40 feet in length and weighing in at 20 tons. The diver in the photo below isn’t me, but it will give you some idea of the human-to-fish size ratio. The good news is that whale sharks are plankton eaters not people eaters!

Our first encounter was with a young Tiburón Ballena (that’s whale shark in Spanish) about 15 feet in length. Although we were able to get close – within arm’s length – we had been instructed not to touch them and the fish wasn’t too thrilled about being surrounded by 6 humans so it soon headed down into the depths and out of site.

The second whale shark was a mature adult but it was feeding in a current of plankton and didn’t seem interested in stopping to play. Our captain followed alongside for quite a ways and we all got a good look, but we finally let it go and doubled back. In a matter of minutes I spotted fins sticking out of the water off our port bow and the crew quickly had us alongside a large adult, perhaps 30 feet in length. The shark was just barely below the surface and both the dorsal fin and the tip of its tail were sticking up like flags. This creature also didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere so five of us slid into the water and swam with it for several minutes.  Words can’t describe the feeling of being so close to something so big and to do it on the fish’s terms – in 90 feet of water a half-mile from the nearest shoreline!

On the way back to the dock we passed very close to a pair, probably mother and infant, but we were all so exhausted we just waved and kept on going.

Whale sharks exist in tropical and subtropical seas all over the world, so if you ever have a chance to get up close and personal with one of these gentle giants, DO IT – I promise you won’t be disappointed! To learn more about these magnificent creatures, visit http://www.whalesharkmexico.com.

Today is the first day of the traditional two-week vacation season here in Mexico. Technically, Holy Week begins tomorrow, on Palm Sunday (Passion Sunday) and is followed by Easter Week, which begins on Easter Sunday. These two weeks have great significance in Christian religions and are called Semana Santa and Semana de Pascua, respectively, here in Mexico. In fact, the predominantly Catholic society here doesn’t recognize the “Easter Bunny” or colored eggs as traditional symbols of the holiday. Schools are closed for both weeks and many Mexicans plan their family vacations during this period, while temperatures at the beaches and resorts are still relatively mild.

And speaking of the weather, it’s already started to warm up here in southern Baja. This year the vernal equinox – the first day of spring – occurred at 17:32 GMT on March 20^th, just a week ago today. As if on cue, the temperatures and the humidity have been rising this past week and I’m already beginning to regret that I didn’t spend more time along the Malecón and at the beaches because soon it will be 100+ every day down here! As I write this, it’s 9:15 a.m. and the temperature is already 78.7^oF (25.9^oC) in the shade. Yesterday we made it up to 86 and today looks like it is on track to be another warm one.

Our 5-day forecast, 3/27thru 3/31

The third big “event” that happens this time of year is Spring Break, when Mexican resort areas are filled with college students from around the world who come here to behave in ways they wouldn’t dare back home. Because of varying school schedules, Spring Break actually spans most of March and most of April, but these next two weeks are especially crazy because of the Mexican vacation season. If you have kids down here, please ask them to be careful and watch out for each other.

Tomorrow is my “day off” from blogging, so I’ll see you again Monday morning when I’ll be writing about The Informants, the work-in-progress novel that takes place right here in Baja California Sur.

In Baja, most government agencies seem to be operating with equipment from the 70s and budgets from the 20s! When we applied for our visas last May one of the things we had to provide was a new manila file folder for their file cabinet and when we applied for our senior cards, the document was prepared on an old IBM typewriter and we were instructed to go get it laminated at our own expense. So when I run across a local site, developed on a government budget, such as http://www.VivaLaPaz.net, I think it’s worth mentioning.

Tourism is a big part of the economy in Baja California Sur and there is both a federal and a state tourism office here in La Paz. However, the Municipality of La Paz (similar to a county in the U.S.) has put together an active, seemingly well-funded agency to promote La Paz and its unique tourist attractions. The La Paz municipality is the 4^th largest in Mexico, covering more than 7,800 square miles, so there’s a lot to do (and talk about) here.

We had the pleasure of hearing a presentation by Ricardo Garcia, the agency’s Sub director of Tourism and International Relations, a while back and it sounded to me like the Municipality had a much better plan than either the state or the federal government. This makes sense, I guess, when you realize that the federal government still treats the Baja Peninsula like a territory (we even have a different tax rate than mainland Mexico) and the state focuses all its tourism attention on the Los Cabos area with its 5-star hotels and cruise ship traffic.

The La Paz tourism office has not only put together a very attractive website, but they’ve done it in 6 languages – Spanish, English, German, Italian, French and Japanese! The site includes some (probably) paid ads, but it’s a pleasure to view and navigate. And it includes an excellent photo gallery (called the “Visual Gallery”) to give visitors a taste of the La Paz area. And they didn’t stop there – they also have an excellent Facebook page, a Twitter account, a presence on MySpace and a selection of videos on YouTube! This is the way it’s supposed to be done and if you’re building a hospitality/tourism web site I highly recommend that you stop by http://www.vivalapaz.net for a quick lesson.

If you watch the news or – worse yet – if you read the news on the Internet, you know about the narco-violence that’s reached epidemic levels here in Mexico. Since President Felipe Calderon launched his military-led drug war in December of 2006, more than 17,900 drug-related killings have occurred in Mexico. And it’s also true that the violence against the half-million Americans living in Mexico is on the rise – The number of U.S. citizens killed in Mexico has more than doubled in the past two years, up to 79 in 2009 from 35 in 2007. However, statistics show that Americans living in Mexico are safer than those living in Baltimore, where the homicide rate is 37 per every 100,000 residents. This compares to 15 homicides per 100,000 Americans in Mexico, mostly individuals who were actively involved in the drug trade.

That being said, the recent incident in Ciudad Juarez in which a U.S. Consulate employee and her husband were shot to death after leaving a children’s birthday party reminds us all that the drug violence touches everybody. When the infamous drug lord “El Teo” was captured on January 12 of this year, I watched the military helicopters circle overhead from my deck, just a few blocks from the house where the man charged with more than 300 brutal murders was spending his holiday vacation!

What the sensationalized U.S. media stories fail to stress is that the vast majority of the narco-related violence in Mexico occurs in very specific areas and that most of the victims are members of the Mexican drug cartels. What’s going on down here isn’t that far removed from what went on in Chicago in 1929 when Al Capone’s men killed seven members of the Moran gang in what has become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. During the prohibition area, the U.S. was plagued with gang-on-gang violence and many innocent “civilians” were caught in the cross-fire and died. I’m not suggesting that makes it any better – or any easier for the families of those killed – but it does put things in perspective. Chicago survived and so, too, will Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Mexico’s other border cities. It will be a long, painful battle, but justice will prevail and Mexico will be a better country for having survived the siege. And if we could just get the American and Canadian public to stop buying billions of dollars worth of illegal drugs each year, this entire problem would go away in a heartbeat!

One of the many things that surprised me as we began to explore the southern end of the Baja Peninsula was the size of the mountains. If you’ve visited Los Cabos by air, you no doubt think of Baja as a arid desert region that slides right off into the ocean. However, if you travel just 75 miles north of Los Cabos you’ll find yourself at the base of the Sierra de la Laguna Mountains, designated a Global Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO. This rugged range runs down the center of the Baja peninsula from just south of La Paz to just north of Cabo. If you were to walk from a beach on the Pacific side to a beach on the Sea of Cortez side (both at sea level) you would gain more than 6,000 feet in elevation and then give it all up again while crossing the narrow, 50-mile wide peninsula!

High up in the Sierras the terrain is much different than that of Cabo, La Paz or any of the coastal towns in between. The Cordon cactus of the lowlands give way to oak and pine trees at the higher elevations and more than 225 species of plants that grow here are found nowhere else on earth.  The annual rainfall in the mountains is more than 45 inches, compared to less than 10 inches for the surrounding lowlands, making the mountains a vital source of water for the entire region. There are a number of tour operators that offer 4 day/3 night walking adventures from one coast to the other. In most cases all your camping gear is carried on burros or pack horses and your guide does the cooking, so all you have to do is walk, look and snap a million digital pictures of the incredible scenery.

The Baja Peninsula is an interesting place in many respects, not the least of which is its geography. In round numbers, the peninsula is 800 miles long and varies in width from 140 miles at the U.S.-Mexico border down to about 30 miles on the southern end where we currently live. This long stretch of land is bounded by the Pacific Ocean along its western coast and by the Sea of Cortez to the east. Many Mexicans jokingly refer to Baja as an island because it’s surrounded by so much water and, indeed, the only practical ways to get from mainland Mexico to Baja is by airplane or boat! The city of Los Mochis is only 115 miles across the sea of Cortez from La Paz but to get there by land you would have to drive more than 600 miles north, cross a small strip of desert just south of the Arizona border and then make your way south again along mainland Mexico’s western coastline – a trip of nearly 1,500 miles! (If you’re not familiar with the geography of Mexico, now might be a good time to fire up Google Earth and take a look!)

Approaching La Paz from the South (click to enlarge)

Our beautiful, 400-year-old city of La Paz stretches along a large bay on the Sea of Cortez – a body of water Jacques Cousteau once called “the world’s aquarium.” The Sea is home to more than a thousand species of marine life, including 9 different species of whales and 5 species of sharks. Scuba diving, sport fishing and wind-powered activities such as kiteboarding, windsurfing and sailing are a large part of the local economy and the entire downtown area is fronted by a wide, sandy beach and a bay full of sailboats. Where else can you stand next to a 100-year-old Cordon cactus and be surrounded by water?