We drove back to Calgary from Rossland on March 12th through Fernie –– it was a blessedly clear day so we didn’t get hit with any sideways snow, fortunately. We spent about a week in Calgary running errands, filing taxes, and finalising our packing for La Paz!
In Calgary, we celebrated Jonny’s birthday with 3 more birthday dinners (out of 4 total, we had one with D&H in Rossland before we left), one of which had a surprise guest! Annalise and WW conspired for Annalise to show up for a short and sweet surprise visit to Jonny’s birthday dinner at Gwen & Jeff’s house.
And on March 19… we woke up at 3AM and caught our flight down to San José del Cabo, México! Our flight had a wonderful view of the Canadian Rockies on our way down, and as soon as we stepped onto the tarmac, we felt the heat, saw the palm trees, and instantly regretted our all-black clothing choices.
J It’s been so nice being back in La Paz! I came here when I was a kid, but very rarely as an adult. The city has changed in so many ways, but it’s been lovely to come to a place that already feels familiar. Definitely adjusting to the reality of working in a place where I am normally in ‘vacation-mode’, but I suspect this will get easier with time. We’ve already had so much good food and good wine – whether at restaurants, or at home (often times with our neighbours John and Linda).
W our first couple of weeks in La Paz have been a bit of an adjustment! We spent some time getting our office setups in a good place, including wiring new Ethernet outlets and purchasing new routers, but we are settling in. It’s also been interesting trying to cook –– availability of some ingredients has been hard to find at local grocery stores, which means we have had to adapt to cooking a little differently.
I have been particularly enjoying sitting in the front garden and doing nothing but watching hummingbirds on a sunny day.
We might not find tofu or chickpeas at the grocery store, but they do have massive piles of dried chilis that I would love to learn how to use in cooking.
Sunsets continue to be glorious, especially when you have a rooftop to watch them from.
We went to Playa Tecolote on a windy day, failed to fly a kite, and felt the sand in our toes. It felt good.
We’ve also had a ton of Gelato from our favourite local spot ‘Dulce Oasis’, run by a friendly Swiss couple Maurizio & Ornella.
A pelican landed on our boat to say hello.
A highlight was the whale-watching trip we took from Puerto Chale with our guide Benjamin. We saw multiple grey whales, dolphins, sea lions, and even had a pelican friend land on our boat! At one point, we followed the whales into too-shallow water and they pulled a U-turn directly under our boat –– it’s hard to get a sense of scale when you see whales come to the surface far away, but when they swim under your boat and you see a massive silhouette pass by, it puts them into sharp perspective.
Look at those whales! We saw so many good ones!
The beaches here are unreal!
So far we’ve only been to 2 beaches: Tecolote and Los Muertitos. We went to the beach during the Easter week holiday (in Mexico Semana Santa is a whole week off) and it was incredibly packed! It was super neat to see what is normally a pretty deserted beach transform into a week-long festival-like campground full of families.
We’re excited to have even more adventures in La Paz over the next 1.5 months! Thank you Don and Sheila so much for having us here! We love you!
We also posted some more photos & videos here.
