Hot Diggity Dog

Since we've been in La Paz, Jacob and Julia on Pisces have been working hard to convince us that hot dogs are in an entirely different realm here in Mexico. So together, we decided to make it our business to find out more. Last night, we decided to do a crawl of a few of the hot dog stands that line the streets of downtown La Paz.I know, some of you are thinking that this sounds like absolute craziness. After all, how can one assume the food safety of these delightful morsels, when the vendors have no running water, or means of cleaning hands or implements, let along food. But hey...we're in Mexico, after all. And our stomachs have proved themselves to be mostly tough to the local conditions.

So after a couple of happy hour beverages at the local cruising club, Club Cruseros, we set off across town in search of the best hot dog in La Paz. For your reading pleasure, Pisces has documented our evening, hot-dog-stand by hot-dog-stand...all 5 of them. Plus of course, the corn stand that we threw in for good measure.

We agree with their rating, that our final tasting at the stand on the Malecon was by far the best. How could it not be? It was an exquisite culinary feat with hot dog, bacon, grilled ham, melted cheese, carnitos (shredded pork), lettuce, tomato, avocado, onion, mayo, ketchup, mustard...oh la la. Hot dog heaven, I tell you.

But, since this was the last dog of the evening, it was a bit more difficult to get down:

We did differ slightly from Pisces in our opinion of the number 2 rated dog. We vote for the "Radio Shack" dog. Not the especiale dog, but tasty delicious, all the same. Eric recommended this stand to us, and he was right. The best normale in town. Hard to compete against the especiale, though.

Here we are eating the "Radio Shack" dog - it was our first stand of the night, and we're obviously still very happy about this idea:
In any case, check out Pisces' blog to read their detailed account of the evening's (mis)adventures.

La Paz Living

La Paz continues to enchant us. John's spirits are high - with both a new (to him) spear gun, and a refurbished outboard motor. I am stocking our shelves with enough supplies to take us into the next phase of this adventure. And, we're enjoying sharing the company of the other cruisers down here. Here are a few images from the last week or so.

The La Paz malecon - or main drag - is a wonderful tiled walkway along the waterfront, complete with ice cream, kettle corn, and a variety of street vendors. And at this time of year, families flock to the malecon to test out their new Christmas prezzies - skateboards, bicycles, and roller blades!

Bronze statues are common along the malecon

This radar tower in front of the navy is dressed up all pretty...

Everyday involves shopping for provisions for the next leg of this adventure. This requires me to take inventory of what we currently have in Renova's stores. Here is a photo of the re-provisioning process, as a tribute to the similar photos that SV Pisces loves to share.

Isla Espiritu Santos...Boobies!

Yes, the title is a blatent attempt at gleening more visitors via keyword searches. I'll let you know how it goes.

But it isn't completely unmerited. We spent the weekend at two islands near La Paz, Isla Espiritu Santo and Isla Partida. These are now a national park site, and are a wildlife mecca. We saw Brown Boobies, Magnificant Frigatebirds, brown pelicans, turtles and many others. At the north end of Partida you can swim with a tame group of sea lions, but we decided to save that for another day.
At the islands we hiked on shore amid cacti and gecko to explore the beaches and fishing camps. John was ever hopeful with a fishing line off the stern of the boat...and even a small line off the dinghy as we went to shore. We swam in glorious, torquoise waters (and scrubbed the hull, while we were there). We devoured a fabulous fresh-caught snapper meal on board Wandering Star, along with the crews of Magenta, and Jesse's Girl.After this quick 2-day escape, we're now back in La Paz. We wanted to try to get a spear fishing gun for John, have someone look at our non-starting 1972 outboard engine, and stock up on a few odds and ends and provisions, once again. And...perhaps one more lunch at the ever-delightful Mercado Bravo.