We made it to Mexico, arriba, arriba!!! We sailed all night from San Diego and arrived in the morning. We went to check into customs at 1030 hours and finished about 1430 hours. There were a ton of people getting their Mexican Visa's, the Baja 1000 a vehicular race from Ensenada to La Paz started today and everyone in the race, driving a vehicle, maintaining a vehicle, or just watching was checking in, there were over 400 people that are involved in the race so it was busy to put it mildly. Anyway we signed, made copies and filled out forms for 4 hours. We now have a 6 month Mexican visa and our boat is eligible to stay here until 2016 if we wish. After we finished that ordeal we wandered around town and had some supper then went back to the boat and hit the hay, we were all pretty tired from the overnight sail.
This morning Barry and I went to see some of the racers start. We saw the 4 wheelers and the motorcyclist go flying by, but the trucks, cars and dune buggy start was an hour later so we wandered around and took some pictures of the dune buggies. The area we were watching was packed with spectators, there were taco stands, and they were selling t-shirts and some guy had a wagon with peanuts in the shell that he was wheeling around, it was quite the event. They had a jump set up that the vehicles had to go over, it was interesting the watch, the first bunch of riders would gun it over the jump and get a lot of air and then the riders near the end would slow down and take it pretty slow over the jump. This is the first time I have been in a country where something other than English is spoken, so I was feeling pretty stupid. my attempts at Spanish were received graciously and when I said muy amable (which means you're so kind) to some of the officials in the customs office I got a big smile, not sure if it was the way I said it or it wasn't quite the correct usage of the expression, but what the heck.
Our cell phone does not work anymore and we will be out of internet range for quite awhile so to get in touch with us, use our ham radio e-mail address ve8bl@winlink.org. Just please try and remember to just send a message, don't send back to me what I have written to you and we can not receive attachments through that address, no pictures, no funny jokes, just "the facts".