Mexico report........

I just spent 2 weeks in Bahia de Los Angels. The roads were great, lots of new highway where they have been widening the highway. There's still a ten mile detour before you climb the hill before Santo Thomas valley. The military check point is still on the mesa before you head down the hill into El Rosario. Almost no gringos on the road except for the pre-runners of the Baja 1000 off road race which started last friday the 18th. I watched the start. Bikes and quads started about 0630 and trophy trucks etc. 4 hours later. An unusual thing took place after about 15 of the trophy trucks started. About 4 miles out of Ensenada a trash truck got stuck in the mud crossing the race course road. The racers couldn't get around the truck so the race stopped as the cars backed up. There was about a one hour delay as the police escorted the other 15 trophy trucks down the river bed and out to the traffic jam. The trash truck was finally removed and the trophy trucks got a new start 30 seconds apart. Things were pretty quiet at Gillermo's in L.A. Bay. He salvaged that 40' sloop I wrote about in my (Your Auto Pilot Can Kill Y0u) Blog a couple of weeks ago. She's all chopped up and on it's side in his compound. The Mexican locals are all hurting because almost no Americans are coming to Mexico. Over the past year we've had break ins of our little homes. Two neighbors lost over $20,000.00 in goods from their Baja hide-a-ways. I've been lucky and haven't been broken in to. We solved the problem by fencing off entry to our little area called Rincon which is on the opposite side of the bay from the village. We have a 24-7 guard and a cool raise-lower gate. I only say 2 yachts anchored off the village. The local Mexicans all monitor and talk on channel 16 VHF. We gringos all monitor channel 68 and shift to other channels when talking. We've got some serious boaters living in quite a few of the houses lining our little bay. Ex mayor of San Francisco, ex #1 man at the Monterey Bay aquarium, several circumnavigators, boat builders and other nautical types just chilling out in Baja. We've done quite a few rescues through the years. Cruisers don't seem to know how hard the wind can blow in our area in the winter time. Don Juan bay is the only all weather harbor in our area. All the other anchorages are exposed to the wind from some point on the compass. This is getting a bit long. I'm in writing this little note from a little log cabin in the Rocky mountains. I'm wearing my ski boots to break them in a bit before I hit the slopes at Snow Mass tomorrow. Happy almost Thanksgiving.......