beautiful lack of neon.

Mazatlan. I'm sure the very name strikes fear into your heart.

Or, more likely, you've never heard of it. It's almost due east of Cabo San Lucas, which is the southernmost tip of Baja California.

It's much nicer here. There's more to it than the tourist district, which is far anyway from where we are in the anchorage (the anchorage is its own little hassle, because there is NOWHERE to dock a dinghy, except this place called Club Nautico, and for the privilege of leaving your dink there they charge 50 pesos per day--about US$5.50--and it's not a needed expense if all three of us don't have to be in town at once; it's also 20-30 minutes into the Old Town from there, but hey, whatcha gonna do). Old Town is pretty cool, the people are really friendly, stuff is cheap--and it actually feels like you're in Mexico, unlike Cabo, which felt like not much of anything at all...a spiritually vacuous sort of place. Mazatlan has life to it.

Some microbe tried to kill me as we left Cabo. Maybe not kill, exactly, but I had a fever and diarrhea for a couple days, and my entire body was in pain, complete with shooting pains in the joints (which made me think it was an infection, so I started taking Echinacea). I'm much, much better now. It might have been the beef taco I had, but Greg had a marlin taco from the same taco stand and he was fine. So who knows.

We are without our phenomenally not-very-bright crew member: she was traded to Minor Threat for a woman named Emily, who subsequently disappearedfor a few days. I imagine she's ok; we might have waited for her a day or two, but that's something I think I'll decline to write about for the moment. There will be a massive travelog, I promise you, where everything good and bad will be laid bare (including stories of the aforementioned crew member, who said, when in Mexico and hearing Spanish on the radio: "Are they speaking Japanese?". Yes, my friends, the days are full of memories). We've no idea who any new crew might be, except that they're pretty much guaranteed to be female; we're hoping that if she'll be with us past Mexico, that there's more to the decision than that, but that might require some intervention.

New lessons, new challenges. But we're having an amazing time. My Spanish is getting much better, and Mona is starting to pick it up. We do miss friends and family, and Indian food and sushi and burritos (yes, you cannot find a burrito here, and if you find something claiming to be a burrito, it's meat and sauce and maybe beans, lacking such goodies as cheese, guacamole, or sour cream--very sad), so we will have those aplenty when we get back...but we're having fun. We sail for a while, screw around on land, sail for a while more. It's great.

I seem to be strangely lacking in deep thoughts today. Maybe tomorrow or the day after--internet is cheap here, although I'm on a godawful keyboard (regardless of its being Spanish, or the fact that I can't make it type a pound sign).

Oh. Beer logos here, writ large on absolutely everything. Pickup trucks, bathrooms, offices, restaurants, shoe stores. Corona, Pacifico, and occasionally Tecate.

Remember not to be in a hurry if you come here. The Mexicans aren't, really, and I think they're a bit surprised and maybe annoyed by people who are. If you have trouble acting like you have all the time in the world, make sure you do in fact have all the time in the world, and practice acting accordingly.

Hey, I think it's time for a nap. :-)