Story #3 Why is Mexican Medical Care More Accessible Than the US of A's?

So, here my family is, foreigners living in a "Second World" country in which we enjoy the beauty but do not support by paying taxes. Our personal wealth is far above most of the inhabitants of this country, yet we really we are not even middle class by American terms anymore. I share this story with a sense of awe and shame that my "First World" country cannot offer the same kindness to the foreigners living on her soil.


On the last day we planned to stay in the LA Bay area, we chose to anchor at La Mona, which is in a corner of the giant bay area. La Mona boasts a beautiful rock hill, which almost looks like an ancient city since the rocks have very grand geometric shapes, and look like building blocks stacked on each other. Jack was throwing Rudy's last tennis ball against one of the rocks and it lodged way up on the cliff. Jack climbed up to get it, barefoot. Of course, he fell without good footing. He fell six feet onto a small ledge and only caught himself because his foot got jammed up on some rocks. One of his toes was the only thing that kept him from falling another twenty feet onto a pile of rocks. His toe looked like it had been pulled off and put on backwards. He was in a great deal of pain.


I looked at his toe and thought that he had dislocated it, but was not sure if instead it was broken. Like I said, it was obvious that it was not put on the right way. I knew that a dislocation could be snapped back into place, but a broken bone should not be manipulated so harshly. I wasn't sure what to do. Jack did not want to be my guinea pig. We consulted a fellow cruiser with a lot of medical experience and she just said, "Take him to the clinic in BLA." So we did.


We walked into the tiny clinic. We waited about ten minutes for someone to be able to see us. They then examined Jack, got the doctor and had her examine Jack. Then the doctor said in perfect English, "This will hurt." She pulled Jack's toe out and we all heard it snap back into place. Voila! They then gave us pain medication and told us how to care for his toe. When we asked how much we owed, we were told that we owed nothing! We were stunned. We asked if we could give a donation, and were refused.


Can you tell me, how in the world a child of a foreigner who does not pay taxes can die from an ear infection in America because the family can't affort to bring him in for care, and yet my family can walk into a Mexican clinic without an appointment, without giving our name, without signing one form, without waiting hours, and receive not only free medical care but also free medication? How is that possible? It makes me feel very ashamed and sad.

Story #2 Shopping at The Godfather's Food Mart - Remember the Horse Head in Bed?

Shopping for groceries in Bahia de Los Angeles is full of interesting contrasts. Since it is so close to America, the shelves of the five major (all tiny) food stores are stocked with American products not seen in other parts of Mexico - even the big places like Mazatlan. Here you can find molasses, brown sugar, David brand sunflower seeds and Kirkland brand everything. Yet, while you are happily snapping up G&H Dark Brown Sugar, you can find quite a few other items "not seen at Safeway" as Jack sarcastically states.


Take for instance this skinned cow head with attached horns. It first showed up in the tiny freezer section of Guillermo's tienda about a week or two into the summer. It was gently placed on the cement floor, on top of a piece of cardboard with a plastic bag filled with it's innards next to it. Since it was tucked into the corner, the first time I glimpsed it in the dark room, behind the 20# bag of carrots I was reaching into, I gasped. But then over the following seven weeks, each time I inadvertantly glimpsed it while heaving around and restacking the boxes of veggies, looking for oranges or celery, I would still be surprised. Even though I KNEW it was there. But that last shopping expedition, when I was grabbing up handfuls of fruits and vegetables for the last sailing expedition up to Refugio, I screamed. Its eyes had by now fallen into its head, the tongue was lolling out blackened. Truly a gruesome sight and one I will never forget. What meal do you cook with that as the main ingredient?

And that wasn't the only thing that was "not like Safeway." I still remember picking through a pile of apples in a refrigerator in one LA Bay store last year, and coming upon ones with fresh rat bites (were the rats in the freezer section with me????). Or walking through the aisles of another store and dodging four cockroaches busily moving around the bags of bread. And another cruiser had the fun of watching a street dog peeing on the box of fruit just unloaded from the delivery truck outside of one store. A decaying cow's head just inches from the carrots? Ok, as long as the carrots were from the TOP of the bag.


And that is the fun of traveling off the beaten path - it keeps you focused on the fact that this is a great big world and there are lots of ways of doing things. Is Safeway food safer? I doubt it. One thing is for sure - I now religiously wash every piece of fruit or vegetable that comes on the boat in an iodine bath - and I will when I am back in America, too.

Story #1 Thar She Blows! - Encounters of the Whale Kind

We are finally back in civilization - okay it's just Santa Rosalia, but we are tied to a dock, we have all the hot running water on the boat we need, all the electricity we can use, cell phone service, and INTERNET on the boat! We are in heaven. Internet was so spotty up in LA Bay and beyond that I never got a chance to share some of the pictures and stories of the summer. So over the next week while we are enjoying civilization again, I'll be posting some of the better stories, and this one was an amazing experience.

On our way south from LA Bay, we decided to visit Isla Salsipuedes (Leave if You Can Island). Who wouldn't want to visit a place by that name? We had to see it. It is said to have very jagged, detached, submerged, pinnacle rocks around the shore; very strong currents; and an extensive reef. The island was lovely and we had no trouble leaving, but getting there was a different story!

You have to cross a very deep channel to get to the island which is about 14 miles off shore. As we were crossing, directly in our path to the island we could see the blow spouts of dozens of whales, covering about a mile. In the distance, a few whales were breaching completely out of the water, and all around in front of us we could see their tails lifting up out of the water as they dove. We angled our boat off to the side, to avoid them, but it didn't work. The pod was too big, the area they covered was too large. Soon we found ourselves encompassed in a vast pod of sperm whales - about 100 or so.

Sperm whales are a very different looking whale. They look a little like a rectangular-headed submarine - they have very dark, sleek and shiny skin, and a sort of knobby knuckle on their back instead of a dorsal fin. They have tiny eyes that are hard to distinguish and very thick, stubby tails. They average about 50 feet long, so they are pretty big. Sperm whales are known to be aggressive toward boats that get too close, especially during mating season. Not being a whale, I don't know when mating season is - I just know sperm whales have rammed boats.

The whales would come up from feeding with an explosive breath of air and then stay on the surface for up to 20 minutes or so just breathing and then dive again, lifting their stubby tails straight in the air. We slowed our boat down to 3 knots by letting most of the wind dump out of our mainsail, we rolled up the jib, and then we turned on an engine and left it in idle just to make noise so we wouldn't sneak up on anyone. The wind was blowing pretty good, so the waves were worked up and the white caps and swell were making it hard to see the whales as they lollygagged on the surface. We all got on deck, scanning the water. For an hour, we threaded our way slowly though the huge pod, turning left and then right by 30 or 40 degrees - always trying to get to the outside of the herd, but then more whales would surface and we would be surrounded again.

At one point we found ourselves with a mom and a baby about 70 feet to starboard and a big bull about 70 feet to port. We turned hard to port, trying to bring our boat around the back of the bull in order to give the mom and baby more room. This, of course, brought us closer to the big one. We were within 40 feet of him and moving parallel alongside him. Still the whale was showing no sign of noticing us, or moving. We continued slowly along, trying to get behind him.

Suddenly, dolphins showed up out of nowhere. We hadn't seen them before this. They came up to our boat and instantly we had a phalanx of about 10 dolphins around us. At the same time, the whale started and came to life in an agitated manner. He lifted his massive head up out of the water to fix us with his eye. Then two of the dolphins did a very brave thing. They swam over to the head of the bull and got within feet of his snout. The whale reared his head higher, and then gave a mighty lunge toward the dolphins and away from our boat. With a huge splash, he dove.

That is the second time in Mexico that I have seen dolphins come from out of nowhere to help us when we were in potential danger. There is something very special about dolphins, and I will be forever grateful.

Our First Step in the Journey Home....

We celebrated a two momentous occasions just a few days ago. It all started when we went north once again to celebrate Jack's birthday in his favorite place, Puerto Refugio on Isla Angel de La Guarda. Our good friends on Adios 3 decided to come along too, to help us celebrate and to enjoy the wild beauty of the anchorage. All the blocks were in place for a memorable 13th birthday, but it turned out differently than planned. Jack became violently ill with the 'flu on his birthday eve and most of our time at Refugio was spent watching movies and recovering. Still memorable, but not what was planned!

And then another momentous event happened. After waiting out a wind storm, we made our first step on the journey home. Refugio was the farthest north place we reached this summer and when we left it, we were headed home. From now on we are working south. We have decided that our next step is to sail to Hawaii in spring and from there to the PNW. In the following six months, we will be traveling south to the tip of the Baja and preparing our boat for the ocean crossing. We have much to do, but our focus now is leaving Mexico instead of enjoying it.

We no longer have a "home" waiting for us, but in our hearts the PNW is our home. It is exciting and sad to be leaving such a beautiful country. We have found everything that we were looking for when we first decided to start this journey - greater family bonds, personal growth, and peace of mind.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Good
I didn't break my leg when I fell through the hatch in the middle of the Great Race.
Meri has Amoxicillin on her boat that she is willing to give me.
Third Day brought down the Spectra water maker part from the US to fix our water maker.
LA Bay has two Internet cafes.
The lump on my head I got from dropping a 10 pound water can on it is finally small enough that I can put my snorkel mask on.
The starter on the boat's port engine can be tricked into starting with a well placed screwdriver.
Patrick is able to bleed the air out of the diesel lines before starting the boat engines whenever we need to move.
Patrick has jerry-rigged the dinghy motor so he can shift it into forward with the help of a vice grip and screwdriver.
We have been having a great time with Hotspur and Third Day, and today Adios III showed up in LA Bay.

The Bad
I did break my brand new camera when I fell through the hatch in the middle of the Great Race.
Rudy has developed a staph infection on his skin that is no longer responding to the antibiotics I have on board.
The part that Spectra sent to us is not the right one and our water maker is still broken.
The Internet in LA Bay is as slow as molasses and it's hard to upload pictures.
I still have a lump on my forehead from dropping a 10 pound water can on it three weeks ago.
The starter on the port engine cannot be fixed until we reach a larger town with a parts stores.
Despite working for hours to figure out why we have air in our diesel lines, there is still air in our diesel lines.
The dinghy motor can only be shifted into forward.
Third Day left this morning headed south and we won't see them for about a month.

The Ugly
Our dinghy broke two days ago in two different ways - the shifter cable snapped and it no longer can be tilted up when entering shallow water. Our breakdowns are just becoming ridiculous.
The bruises on my leg from falling through the hatch in the middle of the Great Race are truly just ugly.

Things are looking up!

First off - no new break downs. Well, not really. Our water maker stopped working, but Patrick quickly figured out that the water flow was stopped by the three (now dead) Gobi fish who had been sucked into the water intake valve and were clogging up with pipe. But that's not really a breakdown. Thank God we did not make any fishy tasting water before we found the problem. And he also found two dead fish in the engine water intake valve in the same week, so our boat is doing better than us lately at catching fish this week. Depressing!

Meanwhile, our friends on Third Day and Hotspur have finally shown up in LA Bay. Both the captains of those vessels need Internet for work, so hopefully they will be able to manage in this absolute desert of Internet services. There are two Internet "oases" in town, but even they are not always reliable for service.

Another change for the better is that the kind American who drove the cruisers around in his pickup on provisioning runs last year has set up a "Cruiser's Sleigh Ride" for tomorrow. He shows up in his pickup and trailer and everyone who is there climbs in the back, hangs on and gets driven around town to all the grocery stores, propane, laundry and gas station. It is heaven and very fun.

And best of all, there has been a respite from the heat. Lately the morning temperatures have been in the high 70's and the daytime temperatures do not go too far over 90 degrees, so life has improved immeasurably.

The Summer So Far

We just came back to LA Bay after spending about 2 weeks out in the anchorages. We returned to Quemado which is a south wind anchorage, but when the winds changed to the north, we took our opportunity and moved to Este Ton on Isla Angel de la Garda. What a beautiful anchorage. It is very small and really only fits one or two boats. Everyday there were whales feeding just outside the entrance and at night you could listen to them breathing just over the sand spit. Every day while snorkeling we saw sea turtles and octopus.

And the beach combing was superb! I found hundreds of beautiful little shells (most, no bigger than a pea) that were all different shapes, colors and varieties. They look like jewels. Jack was thrilled to find buoys, a "perfect" bucket, and even Patrick kept a length of line he found coiled up and waiting for him. I also found a perfect skull of a tiny shore bird, a length of dolphin spine, and lots of sea urchin shells and dried starfish. Needless to say, I think JaM is floating a little lower with all our "treasures". We were going to stay even longer but one day the wind changed again and suddenly we found ourselves bounced out of the anchorage on big swells and 20 knots of wind from the wrong direction.