Festival…

Early February into late February was a lazy 3 weeks of relaxing poolside and the occasional foray downtown. And we have this deck so every morning I’d make a beeline for it, coffee in hand, to sit and enjoy the sea. Today it’s low tide so lots more sandy ocean bottom is exposed.

It’s still too cold (mid 60’s to mid 70’s F) for most Mexicans to want to enjoy the beach so I could have it all to myself if I wanted.

On the 5th it’s Baja’s Independance Day I think?, and San Felipe’s b-day. So there were speeches and festivities going on downtown. Walked the 2 blocks to downtown…this is the main street that goes right by Campo San Felipe where I’m staying. Goes straight to downtown, just one long block from here.

My local coffee shop. I buy my espresso coffee from here. Mexican grown and well worth the $4.50 US it costs me for a 1.1 lb bag.  I should have put my hand next to this to show it’s size. That’s a regular sized napkin. It’s a tiny cinnamon roll. They haven’t, as yet, bought into the need for giant pastries to serve tourists. Good. And down at the malecon, several army trucks making their presence known because of all the officials that are here to give speeches.  Still too cold for much beachcombing.  Yea! Government officials, elected types, giving speeches. I don’t understand the language so have no idea what they said. Got tired of that quickly, and headed over to Fat Boy’s for a sandwich.

This is across the street from the RV park, they rent those quads to tourists. Sometimes I walk by here and there’s only one or two of them left so they’re fairly popular to rent.

And back down on the malecon a week after the b-day party for San Felipe there’s a motorcycle meetup and show. Hundreds of them crowd into town from near and far. LA, El Paso, La Paz, etc. Most of them wearing gang jackets. Some of them just sleep on the beach, but the hotels are packed too.  The threatening weather has conspired to keep the crowd numbers low…it’s jacket temps and the wind whips through once in awhile, but it never rained while I was downtown. Sure looked like it was getting ready to though. The big storm is heading up north…that-a-way. Turned into a monster storm up in the US a couple days later. This is an old one. You can make out that the wind is whipping the sign around a bit in this stage setup for the bands, speeches, and awards handed out to bikers. Built in the 40’s I think, based on style. I happened to wandered down to this shindig around lunch time so most all of the bikers were in the bars and restaurants.

After a couple hours of gawking at motorcycles, I headed home and had one of the delicious handmade corn tamales I got up at the Saturday Swap Meet at El Dorado. Making a good one is an art, a great one is a masterpiece…and the gal who made these (I bought 5 a few days before) is a master. Sooooo good. I’ve had tamales all over Mexico and finding a good one is hard. This is a great one, and my dinner.

Next day was another report of a even bigger storm…a continuation of the one mentioned above, and it hit later in the afternoon. I’d gotten my awning up, but my satellite dish was still extended. Wasn’t until around 7 pm that the signal was dropping out so much I retracted it to avoid damage.Workers trying to stay ahead of the wind blown sand that ends up in the pool, so they’re vacuuming what’s already gotten in over the last couple days.And there’s the surf. Fairly strong compared to most days around here.Just out of picture is a small boat with three people in it that had the engine die on them and they were frantically trying to get it started so the boat wouldn’t end up capsized by the surf. This jeep is a town official who came out to see if they needed help. As it turned out, they got the engine started and safely headed to a sheltered harbor down the coast 4-5 miles. Like the last storm, heading north into Arizona and points east. Several people died in the central and southern states from all the tornadoes spawned by this storm.That night, the wind got up to 50 MPH sustained with gusts to 70 MPH or so. I rained a little around 9 PM and then buckets of rain early AM. I slept through that part, but here’s the deck the next morning.
See that stream of water down there, pouring onto the beach? That is from under the town, from sump pumps in that public building. Keeps the main part of town from slowly slipping into ruin from rain and surf. This whole area is built on sand. When it rains heavily, the interconnected sumps all fill up with water and the pumps kick on. Or so I heard.Still have high surf, but the worst of the storm is over.

Took several days to get back to normal weather here. I did enjoy the coolish temps, though I could have done without the wind.

Thanks for visiting!