Week at Buena Vista with Auntie Woo and Uncle Miles

Another installment on our month-long adventure in Baja.*

The week of the "flying rays"

(Click to view larger!)

After Uncle Josh, Aunt Tiff, and Stella left, we stayed in San Jose del Cabo waiting for the LandCruiser to get fixed. Then we rented a car and spent a couple days at Lumbini Gardens before it was time for Woo and Miles to arrive. That was Papi's birthday, and, incidentally, the day of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. We didn't know what to expect ~ if anything ~ being a mile off the eastern coast of the peninsula. So we packed up camp early, ate breakfast, and picked them up at the airport. That night we celebrated Papi's birthday with pizza at Otra Vez restaurant in Los Barriles, where a Mariachi band serenaded him. The next night Auntie Woo made "molten lava cakes" to celebrate! Yum!

The week was relaxing. We spent most of our time there at the same house we rented last year, drifting from sunbathing and swimming in the ocean, to sunbathing and swimming at the Hotel Buena Vista ~ the natural hot spring-fed spa just steps from our back door. Anjali grew ever more comfortable with all forms of water, especially the hot tub.

Under the umbrella with Auntie Woo.

Mommy swam in the ocean every day.

In the hot tub with Auntie Woo.

Kayaking with Auntie Woo and Uncle Miles.

Papi took a kayak out to fish almost every day.

We enjoyed meals at the house and out at restaurants (including inadvertently finding the loudest place in the area for "gringos" to celebrate St. Patrick's Day! Haha!), and stargazing from the back deck at night. The almost-full moon outshone the stars a few nights, though!

One afternoon we drove to visit Lumbini Gardens and Cabo Pulmo. Anjali came down with a cold that kept us close to the house laying low for a day or so. She was fortunate enough to have Uncle Miles there to do body work on her. More than once, she dozed off on his lap as he worked.

Papi and Uncle Miles did a lot of talking and planning for Lumbini. Very significantly, Papi and Uncle Miles drove into La Paz to meet with our lawyer there to add our family as official group members of Lumbini Gardens! Just as monumentally, they applied for FM-3 cards, allowing them to live there for extended periods of time, and legally do business.

The focus of the week, by far, were the sea creatures! We saw whales cruising on the horizon, a dolphin, a sea lion rambunctiously feasting on a school of fish just feet from the shore ~ so close we thought he might beach,

Hard to tell, but that's a large sea lion playing like a dog with his catch, very close to shore.

and thousands of small fishes leaping out of the water. And to top them all, thousands of manta rays in schools, jumping sometimes several feet out of the water, and then slapping back down loudly on the surface.

Slap slap slap!

It was curious and wondrous. It happened for days! Here's an article that describes the phenomenon well (which calls them "mobula" ray, as opposed to "manta"). Every day as we enjoyed the cool of the morning on the deck, we would gaze out at the water, thinking, "What spectacle will we see today?"

Once again, it was hard to leave at the end of the week.

*By the way, the memory problem with this computer is not solved yet, so we have to wait some more on the photo albums. So sorry!