Ensenada Grande, Isla Partida

Monday. February 1st
We move to the next bay North and anchored next to a family with two small children; a 20 months old; Alex and a 4 years old; Sean and their parents Tim from Australia and Tracy from South Africa. They are heading towards the South Pacific. We will spend a couple of days with them and it is exciting for the girls and for me. I will be able to compare notes with other mom.

Tuesday, February 02, 2010
We had an extraordinary day, it was overcast all day, it rained in the afternoon, but zero wind. The ocean was a pond. The calmness of the day was suspicious, as if the winds were just saving the strength to hit us at night. There was a breeze at about 9 o’clock at night, Matt expressed his discomfort with it saying to me that wind at this time should have been dead. It is now almost midnight and I was awaked by the slamming of the bow onto the waves and the winds which from the inside seem a lot more ferocious what they really are. Matt is already up taking care of things. I tried to help him, but he asked me to go back to bed. It always makes me nervous when he is outside fighting the weather.

We started this morning with a ride to “Los Islotes” . It is a set of little islands on the NW side of Isla Partida where the seals go to have their babies. It was an exiting sight, the seals come up to you and swim around you. The girls were clapping and giggling because of the show they were putting for us. Matt jumped in, but didn’t last long, the playfulness of the seals was getting a little dangerous, they were nibbling at his feet and increasing in number. It was definitely time to retreat back to the dinghy. They are so fearless of human that they were jumping on top of our boat. Trinidad was not happy now! We come to the conclusion at this animals are being fed by other boats so they were expecting the same from us.

In the way back, we were flagged by the Park ranger who wanted us to see the blue whales swimming next to his boat; a mother and her calves. We were probably 50 feet away. This has been the closest so far. I wanted to get a little closer, but it was not safe.

This afternoon we had dinner with our friends from Gijima. We had a wonderful time and so did the girls. They share some beach toys with us and Tracy gave me some eggs because we are running super low.. Thank you Tracy!

Its 1:15, we are still rocking.. I am getting sea sick, I am going to sleep hoping that it doesn’t progress.
Another day in Ensenada Grande, the wind has not settle yet, we are debating weather to go to the south part of the island or spend another day hoping that it will calm down a little. Our friends from Gijima were staying and the kids were loving the beach and the company of Alex and Sean so we decided to stay. By the afternoon the seas seemed a little friendlier. I prepared some sushi using the supplies given to me by my friend Dyna in Tubac and took it to Gijima as a contribution to the nice diner prepared by Tracy. Again at night the wind picked up We had a difficult time getting in the dinghy to go back to Endurance, it was moving forcefully up and down. Matt was regretting the decision of staying the extra day. Luckily it was all fine after 11 and the morning could not have been better to start our journey towards Mazatlan.