Return to La Paz

We arrived in Topolobampo early in the afternoon after the short bus ride from El Fuerte.  Brenda had received a telephone call from Baja Ferries a few days earlier informing her that the ferry would be a bit late in leaving, midnight or perhaps 1 AM instead of the expected 11 PM.

Topolobampo had very little to offer to two backpackers who had hours to pass.  We based ourselves outside of an upmarket restaurant sheltered from the sun for several hours, from where Brenda and I did some "walkabouts".  We then spent a few minutes cleaning ourselves up an looking as presentable as possible then walked into the restaurant for beers for me and a lemonade for Brenda.  Linda, attending to the bar, spoke good English and made us feel welcome.  We had a great conversation with her about life in Mexico.  She pointed out that the slip fees at the Marina Palmira, to which the Pelicanos restaurant is attached, is an amazingly low 170 PESOS per week, or about 500 pesos per month. We then took a table and had a good fish meal accompanied by a very nice white wine.  At 8 PM we left the restaurant and became back packers again, walking the 1 kilometer to the Baja Ferry terminal.

I went to the Baja Ferries desk, presented our tickets, and was told that the ferry would not depart until 2 AM.  I was shocked but did not know enough Spanish to either express my displeasure or ask for an explanation.  An hour later I re visited the desk and was told that the ferry would not depart until 3 AM.  I was fuming because neither we nor as far as I could see the rest of the putative passengers were getting any information.

About an hour later two things happened to cool me down a bit.  An English speaking representative of the company approached Brenda and myself and explained that the ferry was having "cooling problems" and was travelling slowly.  Is it already on the way? I asked, and Yes it is, so I was told.  The man said to expect the ferry at 1 or 2 AM.  I told him that I had been told 3 AM.  It didn't make a lot of sense to Brenda and myself.  Brenda had been told days earlier that the ferry would be late, so it seemed to us unlikely that there was an emergency that had sprung up from nowhere.  The other ameliorating measure was that the company brought in pizza for the hundreds of passengers in the terminal.  After waiting in a long queue we got two slices of warm pizza and a cup of what Brenda thought was cold tea each.  I found the tea undrinkable and threw it away, but the company had at least made a gesture.

After we ate I saw that the Baja Ferries staff were no longer at the counter.  This did not auger well.  Brenda suggested that we find space on the floor as so many of the other passengers had and soon we were bedded down on the floor.  I put on my Icebraker sweater and pants over my shorts then lay on my jacket in a successful attempt to insulate myself from the cold tile floor.  4 AM came around and Brenda and I not only resigned ourselves to spending the night on the floor but wondered if the ferry was even going to make it to Topolobampo, much less be in shape to take us to La Paz.

Dawn came and at about 7.30 AM the kiosk opened and I got coffee for Brenda and myself.   By then the girl had returned to the Baja Ferries counter and I asked her when the ferry would leave.  She did some mental calculations and replied "nueve" (nine).  I teased her with "Verdad?  No uno?, no dos?, no tres?, no quatro?", reminding her of the ferry tales that we had been told the evening before.  She smiled sheepishly and reaffirmed that 9 AM was the time.  In walking around the building I saw a truck load of military arriving, which made me wonder if they were preparing for the arrival of the ferry.  Then Brenda spotted the ferry in position, with trucks emergeing.  Then we saw trucks being loaded into the ferry.  Soon the passengers were admitted and at 10 AM the ferry was underway.

Things got better after that.  The ferry was probably their most modern, two generations ahead of that steel floating industrial machine that had taken us to Mazatlan 5 weeks earlier.  Our state room looked 5 star to us, who had plumbed some of the hotel depths of Mexico.  We had no porthole but the air conditioning was working very well.  I had a shower and shave, we went down for our complementary breakfast, then we crashed out for a blessed 3 hours of sleep in what was to us luxury.  There had been little hot water when I had taken my shower and to our disappointment the water was still not hot when Brenda took hers.  It may have been related to that "cooling" problem.  We noticed that the ferry seemed to be moving at normal speed.

We went to the restaurant to have a coffee and something sweet and Brenda spotted land.  From the look of it we were approaching the north end of the Cerralvo channel.  It did not take long to confirm that we were indeed approaching La Paz.  We passed between the same markers that Arnold and I had traversed so many months earlier and could see Playa Bonanza on Isla Espirito Santu to our right.  I shows how far we had come when the waters of La Paz felt like home.  At about this time we noticed a smaller ferry heading out.  This answered our question of how the ferry would be able to meet its schedules if this one was 12 hour late.  We figured that this older ferry had been pressed into service because it was leaving Pichilingue at about the scheduled time.

It took a lot of time to turn the ferry around, dock it, and get the passengers off, but at 6.45 PM we emerged from the taxi at Marina de La Paz.

We found the boat in good order, as though we had been away for only a few hours.  We put our gear down and after I made a quick trip for bread, butter, milk, and beer we set off for Rancho Viejo for a celebratory dinner beginning with a Margarita each.