The weather is the main driver of our movements. We hunker down for ‘northers’ then scurry north during calms. The forecast this week called for strong southerlies - rather unusual – the result of the series of storms that have been pounding the U.S. west coast. So we settled in to our anchorage at Agua Verde tucked in behind a hillside to our south.
The first thing we noticed when we arrived is the variety of sea birds that take advantage of the many reefs in the bay. We were especially excited to finally get a good look at the legendary blue feet.
Terns, gulls, boobies, herons, and of course, pelicans; they apparently get along pretty well.
This pelican had a belly itch, or maybe he was checking his BMI (“Its all muscle every inch of it, I’m not fat, I’m just big featheredâ€).

K also took advantage of the reefs to bring home dinner. There’s a reason fish like to hang out near rocks – after one too many hard landings, K’s pole spear was further reduced from two prongs to one (from the original three). Still good for poking holes in fish, but not so good for retrieving them. After ventilating a couple of fish that subsequently swam away, he swore off further pole spearing until it could be repaired.
We went ashore to see the village one morning and happened upon a political rally being held at the basketball court. With our limited Spanish we understood that Senior Marcos wanted to work for the people. He also had his minions toss bags of goodies to the crowd from 4 loaded pickup trucks. It’s great to see that Louisiana style lagniappe is alive and well south of I-10.
The village seemed idyllic, with free-ranging dogs, cows, chickens, turkeys, and our favorite – goats!
A few special goats and young troublemakers were kept behind sticks.
The Three Little Pigs were safe behind their windproof walls.
We chased some little red birds through the village all morning.
Eventually we got a shot at one through the trees.
All the houses in the village are small but tidy.
There are a couple schools, a church, a small tienda, and a lady with a chest freezer in her front yard full of produce for sale. We were able to reprovision with an emphasis on potatoes, onions and nice mild feta-like goat cheese. We bought about 3 kilos (~7 lbs) of this cheese to offset the expected shortfall in fish.

We found the restaurant but had no internet access to check the Yelp.com ratings, so we walked right by. Local knowledge said, “Great tacos†but you have to wake up the old man to go find his wife/cook in the village.
We also took some time to do boat chores. K worked on a set of dinghy chaps to save our little “Zeitoon†from the ravages of the sun.

S got caught up on some laundry with the awesome hand operated washing machine.

The boat even got a rinse; we unwittingly stumbled into the Middle Sea Drizzle Belt. It drizzled all day and all night while the hills to the north mocked us with their bright dryness. But we were not afraid nor vexed, for our salty crust was washed away.
This is as far north as we planned to go in the Sea of Cortez. But like Moses, we did manage to get a glimpse of what we’ll be missing.

25°30.87’N 111°03.75’W 18-Jan-10 14:00 MST