Tis the Season

A bunch of cruisers have purchased gifts for children at Rancho San Antonio, the poorest area of La Paz.  The children wrote letters describing what they would like.  The little girl that wrote our letter asked for sturdy long pants.  Two days ago while out at Walmart with Rob and Linda we found wrapping paper, ribbon, and gift bag.  The one high end department store had Levis for 559 pesos (close to $50 U.S.).  We put a "nix" on those, especially since the letter specified "economical."  So yesterday, Rob and Linda and we went downtown to shop for pants.  We first went to Sears and found a very cute pair but they were priced at 319 pesons, still a lot, so we did an exhaustive search at many stores within a four block area but didn't find anything that was anywhere as sturdy or cute as the pair at Sears.  When we went back to Sears and had them rung up we were pleasantly surprised to learn that they were included in a 20% discount promotion, costing 255 pesos, a price similar to some of those that weren't quite as nice in the other stores.  Our gift bag includes a box of pencils, a flashlight and spare batteries. We were asked to include a  letter with our gift and have it written in Spanish.  Gabe, the manager at Costa Baja Marina, where Damiana is currently located, is helping with that!

Small world time:  During our search for pants, Roy's stomach alarm went off (signaling lunch time), so we went to a "food court" in downtown.  This is a roofed, but open air place that has about 8 or 10 different vendors with a few picnic tables near their counters.  Each vendor has a menu board.   Near the entrance was a table with a Mexican family plus two English speaking women eating lunch.  One of the women looked at the 4 of us and said, "this place is good, we ate here yesterday as well."  She moved closer to  her friend on their side of the table and the Mexican family scrunched together to accommodate us as well.  So we're sitting there, talking with the two women who mentioned they were from Nanaimo, B.C. and had driven down west coast, the Baja (we compared stories) and planned to take the Ferry across to Mazatlan the next day and then continue on to Manzanillo.  We asked them "what is the attraction in Manzanillo?" since that town is mostly an industrial port town, not a highly sought after tourist destination.  One of the woman said, "well, I have a house there."  Turns out that she knows MJ and Stan (previous cruisers -- Solmate) who we had reconnected with earlier this year.  MJ and Stan have set up permanent residence in Manzanillo and are engaged in a variety of local activities, most notably PATA, an animal welfare organization.  Stan provides weather reports for cruisers we well.  These two women claimed they met some of their friends with a boat and are quite sure they met Linda and John on Nakia as well!

~~~ Marlene and Roy ~~_/) ~~