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In June of 2024 we put Dovka on the hard in San Carlos Mexico. Hurricane season approached, and it was just getting too hot to be on the boat. And after 8 moths aboard Dovka, we were all ready for some land time.
We began our overland travels in a beautiful, mountain town called Guanajuato where we shared a home and meals with a local grandmother. The girls and Ben enrolled in Spanish language school, while Lauren enjoyed free time strolling the winding alleyways of this ancient town that used to be the wealthiest in Mexico thanks to its silver mines. In Guanajuato, Ben contracted Covid, so we quickly bussed (with masks on) to Mexico City, where we were able to quarantine as everyone in the family got sick one-by-one. But it passed quickly and we were able to enjoy the treelined boulevards, delightful cafes, many museums, and splendid churrorias of CDMX. By August, we were back home in San Francisco so the girls could enjoy another year at Camp Tawonga and some time in Tahoe with their cousins. But by September we were itching to hit the road and decided to visit as many National Parks in the Southwestern U.S. as we could. We did pretty well, making it to Great Basin, Zion, Grand Canyon, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Arches, Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly, and Mesa Verde. In Santa Fe, we went our separate ways. Lauren flew to Paris with her family to celebrate her mother's 80th birthday in style. Ben took the girls to Falls Church to visit his parents and celebrate the Jewish high holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. When reunited in Santa Fe two weeks later, the four of us hopped in the car and drove to Omaha, Nebraska to spend the last three weeks of October working on a Senate Campaign. We did everything we could to help get Dan Osborn, an independent candidate, elected to the U.S. Senate. In the end, while he vastly outperformed expectations, he lost by about 4 percentage points and election night was a sad one all around. Come November, we hightailed it back to San Francisco to celebrate more family birthdays, bar mitzvahs, thanksgiving, Christmas, Hannukah, and new years.
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When you’re a kid on a cruising boat, there’s only one thing better than pulling into a beautiful anchorage and seeing other kids playing in the water.... seeing kids you know and like playing in the water, on a boat that’s been turned into an all out water jungle gym. (CONTINUED BELOW...) When we sailed into Chacala, just north of La Cruz, we spotted Dream Reach, a bright yellow Compass 47 with two girls, 8-year-old Eva and 5-year-old Rauni aboard. The kids were swinging off poles, ropes and hammocks strung from the rigging and plopping into the water. Seconds after dropping our own anchor next to Dream Reach, our girls were in the water swimming over to join their neighbors.
For the next week, we lazed about Chacala - a quintessential beach town that was hopping with Mexicans on vacation for the Semana Santa holiday. As our own kids splashed about, a dozen local kids swam by as part of an official swimming club, chaperoned by a woman and toddler on a paddle board and closely followed by a dog who looked like he too was used to regular long swims. A panga zoomed past towing a banana - a long inflatable raft straddled by 14 people being towed around the harbor. (After being buzzed repeatedly by reckless, high-speed jet skis in Cabo, this disturbance seemed quaint.) We quickly met the other cruisers in the anchorage, including a couple from Paris with their two girls, and were invited on a group hike up to the local hilltop overlook. We spent a lovely week, swimming, hiking, getting the occasional meal or ice cream ashore, and generally practicing the art of doing very little while the kids enjoyed the company of other kids. Our stay culminated with the celebration of Alexandra's 7th birthday. We baked a chocolate cake topped with chocolate frosting and maraschino cherries, carefully rowed it ashore, decorated a palm fringed cabana with a "Feliz Cumpleaños" banner, then were joined on the beach by Dream Reach for a lovely party.
But La Cruz is also a Mexican Mecca for cruisers with an active community of sailors headed in all directions from that one port. This meant not only services for boat work, but lots of information being shared, activities such as outdoor movie nights, weekly markets, and many friends new and old for both the adults and the kids. In short, a great place to spend some time - especially for the kids who could (once school was done) run down the dock to play with friends, swim in the pool, or take the pesos from their allowance up to the store to buy chips and soda.
Six weeks passed quickly and it was time for us to head north. So we were soon saying goodbyes, getting our final ice cream and agua fresca from our favorite sweet shop, getting propane and fuel filled, paying marina bills, and hosting one last sleep over for the kids’ friends… then another last sleepover. La Cruz ended up being the perfect place to spend six weeks, even though we never intended to. |
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