El viaje

Before you tackle immigration offices you gotta have breakfast!

Suddenly we realized how good our little Bed and Breakfast place is. We chose B&B Casa Juarez last night. It is run by an Italian woman and her Mexican husband. When you pay cash it cost around 50 bucks a night. While having Italian coffee at breakfast and eating those bacon wrapped , onion and gorgonzola stuffed eggs, we fell in love with the place . I stayed with Santi here a year ago but do not remembered it being so charming. Funny how perspective changes sometimes.

Now to more serious matters! Immigration!

But first the house number of the neighbors.

Couple of people in front of the door. Not too bad , but very VERY hot outside so Lu instantly called for help.

Magically, it worked and after waiting only 40 minutes or so we got to the counter.

All very serious but nobody really understood why we were actually here. Neither did we. But nevertheless we had nice, intense and very interesting discussions with several people. Even experts were being called. Experts for what you ask? Not even that they knew..

Turns out, our visas will run out in 6 days but that does not stop you from getting a temporary import license for your car, which anyway you do not actually really need. Only when crossing borders from Baja to anywhere, apparently, they think. Also in this particular immigration office you can only prolong visas that expire on the same day….So we will have to change that at a later stage, somewhere else. Where you ask? Somewhere else!

At this point an old Canadian dude , who was sitting somewhere in the back overheared our heated discussions and told me to just take a pen and write a 1 in front of the 20. „ Just make sure the pen is in the same color as the one on your offical visa. Trust me man, i have been doing this for 7 years!“

Thanks bro ! Great idea. Thats prolly why i met you in an immigration office… But anyways…

Back to the problem at hand.

„ What you have to understand Mr Altenburg , customs and immigration are something different in Mexico“

„ Oh really ? Thanks for the info ! So what do we do?“

„ Vuelve y espera que la loca de ayer ya no esté „

„Gracias ! Lo haré „

At least there was something to actually do now!!!

Slightly confused and not even the slightest bit smarter, we went to the next coffee shop to get a massive americano con hielo to sort our brains out but then i saw this sticker on the counter.

Levels of confusion were rising but upon having returned to the harbour and there having the perfectly sorted temporary import papers in our hands after 5 minutes we were slowly but surely questioning our sanity.

Quick , we needed to jump in the sea. But not in the mood for the same hike as yesterday in the painfully hot 2pm sun we decided to just go to a public beach.

They even had a library!

A strange library.

A very strange library!

Quick check if we could still trust our confused and sun blinded eyes.

Loopy books, loud music, cars , trash, beers , beers, beers and tons of people…Maybe public beaches are not such a good idea after all…

Then again, neither are privat ones…

And confirmed..

More distressed then before the decision was easy: Back to hiking it was.

And the instant fruits of our labor. From up there we had a pretty good view of our surroundings:

Slowly but surely sanity returned. Alone.

But to fully feel sane again we decided to have a beer for ourselves and watch the sunset from the beach walk.

After the whale and the sunset i obviously started having regrets of not talking my camera. Then again who takes a camera to the immigration office ? Then again, apparently, in La Paz , you should. Then again, ahh what do i know…. The pics do not do it justice but we have had that one before, i should be saying it for every picture, really..

A seriously good fish restaurant right on the beach walk in La Paz is the Bismarkcito!

I had hands down the best Tostada Atun with Santi here last time. But its not tuna season at the moment.. So tonight Lu had a Zarandeados Snapper with Salsa Verde. Also Delicioso!

6 Mezcalitos later , sanity was back and we were starting to feel normal again. Tomorrow we will try to get back on the boat. I mean, papers are in order now, or are they ?

Bonkers, fucking bonkers!