For the holidays we were really fortunate that my Mom, Doreen Johnstone, and our youngest daughter, Ariel , were able to come to visit. Ariel arrived late on the Dec 20th. She flew into the La Paz airport which is about 1/2 hour away from the marina. I was asking at the marina office about the best way to get to the airport as her flight arrived at 11:20 pm and I was worried a taxi might be difficult at that time. The people here are so friendly.  One of the nice ladies who works in the office immediately offered to take me to the airport. She gets off at 9 pm and lives over that way so she just dropped me off at the airport, very nice. Ariel arrived no problem but we had to kind of break into the marina as the gate was closed when we arrived back well after midnight.
I am very used to decorating like crazy for Christmas and I found that a bit different on the boat as all I had were 4 Christmas placemats and 4 Christmas pillowcases!!
Ariel and I did some shopping and exploring around town before Christmas but she got a 48 hour viral illness that was going around and spent a couple of days in bed.

With everyone being in town we decided to rent a car for a week. That was an experience. Stop signs here are a suggestion, not a rule. Actually it seems to work well. Most intersections have 4 way stop signs but almost all the roads are one way so you really only have to deal with the traffic coming from one direction. As you approach an intersection you slow down and look. If no one is coming you just keep going, none of this “wasting effort” to come to a stop. If someone else is coming you treat it like a stop sign with the closest one continuing and the other stopping. On a couple of the more major streets there are signals but about 80% of those don’t work and so are treated like stop signs.
Pedestrians are treated very well. Don’t stand at a corner as everyone will stop for you. On the Malecon there are many pedestrian crosswalks and a single foot out into traffic brings all the cars to a halt.
Mom’s flight arrived in San Jose del Cabo on Dec 25. It is about a 2 1/2 hour drive from here. (That piece of information took about 5 hours of computer research as there was a strong rumor that there was a new better road to take but finding it other than just a mention that it was ready to open (where, how do you get to it?) was nigh on impossible.
The flight arrived on time and after about 2 hours getting through the long lines in customs she was out the gate and ready to head to La Paz. Of course we had a time constraint. A bunch of cruisers got together and arranged with the local restaurant to cook Christmas dinner. The dinner started at 4pm and Mom and I were San Jose del Cabo at about 2:30 Of course I had found the short cut on the way to the airport but somehow the signs were lacking on the way back so we had to drive through the center of town and eventually , after a few wrong turns made it to road to La Paz. Christmas is a great day to drive really fast:). There was no traffic and no policemen so I drove fast. We made it to the dinner at 4:30, pretty good. A great time was had by all including my first taste of straight tequila. It had never appealed to me before but someone bought one for Mom as they felt she deserved it as she had left Fort Myers at 3:30am and it was now 4:30 pm , plus 3 hours. We split it and decided it was pretty good!
We did the typical OB GYN Christmas which means Christmas is celebrated on whatever day you are not on call. So since we were all there on December 26 it was treated that like Christmas morning and we did the whole thing with stockings and presents and all.
Unfortunately this is where Hartley’s saga starts. He woke with severe dizziness and nausea. As it turned out he has vestibular neuritis, which is a viral inner ear infection that affects your balance control center. He was so bad we had one of the local family medicine doctors come out to the boat and check him out. They gave him a lot of motion sickness medicine but it really didn’t help much. Our lovely primary care doc in Phoenix, Dr Claire Bowey, called me back while she was on vacation and gave me some insight into the problem and helped calm us a little. Thank you.
By the 30th of December he was still feeling pretty bad, so we found a sailor who had seen an ENT here. Appointments here with doctors are fast. We got in that evening and she confirmed the diagnosis and suggested some prednisone to help with the symptoms. Hartley is gradually recovering but we haven’t even thought about taking the boat out yet. He is to the point where he is starting to do some balance and eye exercises to challenge his vestibular system and retrain it.
I got to try out the local medical system as well. I developed thrombocytopenia, which is a low platelet count resulting in lots of bruising. Again the doctors were very responsive and moved me efficiently from the internal medicine doctor to an appointment the next day with the hemotologist. Again I need to thank another doctor in Phoenix, Dr Jeffery Isaacs who also called me back while he was on vacation to review my results and tell me what to expect and how to deal with this disease process. I have been very fortunate as it turns out our boat neighbors are both recently retired hematologists and have helped me follow my test results and given me the latest greatest theories about the disease process. This is usually a self limiting disease and I have great hopes it will soon be gone.
Ok enough of that, just needed to record it as hopefully it will all be a distant memory in a week or two.
Since we couldn’t go anywhere on the boat Hartley and have been exploring the city. We decided to take some Spanish classes. I have got to figure out away to speak more as I find when I push myself I can actually communicate. One of my techniques for practicing is to always ask for something when I am at the store and then I get taken around and shown all the possibilities to fulfill my requests. Hartley is just starting on his vocabulary and is enjoying figuring out new words.
Well Hartley was pretty incapacitated for the time Mom and Ariel were here so I am afraid we went off and did our own thing.
We drove to Todos Santos which is an artsy little town about an hour away. We wondered around town stopping in all the little shops. Of course we had to stop for a lovely lunch at one of the restaurants in town. Nice and relaxing.

Todos Santos restaurant

Three generations

We also stopped by the beach and enjoyed the crashing waves.

Mom and Ariel at Todos Santos

Ariel at Todos Santos Beach

The approach to the beach at Todos Santos

There are very few signs (none) to get you where you want to go. Asking how to get to the beach results in a general hand wave in that direction. As you can see we made it.

Enjoying

Another day we drove to a different beach near Pichilingue. (pee-chee-LING-way).

Mom and Ariel at Pichlingue

A little closer up

Of course we had to try something a little daring while they were here. We decided to go swim with the whale sharks. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t the greatest. The wind was blowing at about 12 knots making the sea pretty lumpy and it was cool. I did have a wet suit for each of us we kept us from freezing. We went out on this little panga ( a panga is a  little fishing boat ) and found the whale sharks.You have to flip yourself off the panga and into the deep water and swim along trying to keep up with the sharks. The big trick is getting back on the panga as the waves are bouncing the boat up and down. You should have seen the lovely bruises we got.  The whale sharks  are huge. The ones we saw were young ones, only about 14  -20 feet long. They can get up to 40 feet long.  ( I assure plenty big when you are swimming along following one and you turn around and there is one close enough to touch , right there with its great big mouth wide open.

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(from TOMAS posted on Bajainsider.com)

This picture I had to borrow from the Internet but it just how they look.

Our intrepid whale shark group