Stalled in Concepcion

Playa El Burro, Bahia Concepcion, BCS, Mexico

Still here!

We spent a couple of nights at El Burro, partaking of Bertha's restaurant until the prevailing winds got a bit stronger and changed to the SE. We returned to Playa Santa Barbara along with 2 of the 3 boats that were with us in El Burro - Santa Barbara is the best protected spot in this area for southerly winds. As far as we can tell, the four boats, including us, who are in Santa Barbara represent most of the boats that are in the entire Bahia Concepcion area. I'm not sure why as this is such a beautiful spot with such great anchorages and even some eating out opportunities. One of our new friends has suggested that it is a little hotter here than most places in the Sea of Cortez, but I'm not sure I buy that. Oh well, more room for us!

After a few nights in Santa Barbara, learning the benefits of Mango Margaritas from our neighbors, we weathered some rather overcast days and one near-miss of a thunderstorm. We even got a few drops of rain one night, although not enough to actually get wet. During the cold snap the daily temperatures were only getting up to about 34C in the afternoons but still did not drop to much less than 30 at night. It was actually kind of nice not having the sun beating down so relentlessly for a while - the only downside was that we actually have had to run the engine to keep up our batteries as the solar panels are not producing very much.

Now that the sunshine has returned with a vengeance, we motored the 2 miles back to Playa El Burro, managing to get our anchor down in time to head for Bertha's for breakfast - quite a treat for us. Our new friends have been raving about the stuffed clams that are served in another restaurant just across the highway (maybe a 10 minute walk) and also suggested that we try the shrimp dishes at Bertha's as they are "to die" for. So this evening we walked to the, hitherto unknown to us, restaurant, only to find that they were closed (no idea why). So we went back to Bertha's to order up a shrimp dinner. Sorry, no shrimp, no scallops, no fish, no seafood at all! So we settled for some chicken tacos instead. Somehow this just seems to be our luck.

Tomorrow we will most likely start making our way northward again. People keep telling us there is no hurry and we have heard from a lot of boats on the SSB radio that are still making their way up from further south, but we are getting a bit low on some staple supplies such as bread and veggies and such, so Santa Rosalia is looking very tempting.

Basically the plan is to be in the Bahia de Los Angeles area by the end of August, as common wisdom has it that this is far enough north to avoid the worst of the hurricane season. This is only some 150 or so miles north of us now, so we still do have lots of time.

BTW: Have you noticed the complete lack of originality in the naming of places around here. You might almost think you are heading up the west coast of California. I wonder who got the names first?

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