Ephemerica

We are finally leaving La Paz this morning, a little later than we anticipated. It turns out our information about the frequency of the ferries to Mazatlan was a little out of date, so we had to wait a few extra days for the next boat to leave. The ferry terminal is actually north of La Paz, near some reportedly nice beaches. So we’re planning on taking an easy bike ride up there today and finding a place to camp on the beach.

La Paz is a very nice town, but it hardly seems fair to judge it based on only having seen it during Carnaval. Carnaval, by the way, was pretty entertaining, but very G-rated. When we talked to some random people about being on our way there, they assured us that we would see lots of skin, just like Mardi Gras. We figure this must be some kind of urban legend among people who’ve never been (unless they were just teasing us), because the whole festival was oriented toward kids. Lots of rides, carnival games, booths selling knick-knacks, and of course, lots of food vendors. There was lots of local music as well. Our hotel is open-air and about two blocks from the festival. One of the stages was placed at the end of our street, which created a sort of funnel of sound that projected quite well from the stage up to our hotel long after we had grown tired of walking around the fair.

The most Mardi Gras-esque part of the La Paz Carnaval was the parade last night. Lots of shiny colorful costumes, throwing items into the crowd (no beads though), music and dancing. The parade started off with floats from the major sponsors: the beer companies—Corona, Modelo, Pacifico (each company had girls clad in skin-tight outfits on their float, this was the adult portion of the festival). Then came the local floats, with lots of kids either in marching bands, or performing dance routines. People along the side of the route threw confetti, including emptied eggshells filled with confetti, which precipitated some friendly egg fights along the parade route. We’ve posted a few more pics from Baja in the photo gallery, including ones from the parade last night. You can now add comments to the photos, if you are so inclined

We’ll be incommunicado for a few days until we get to Mazatlan. We may not hang around too long there, as we’re itching to get moving again. Our next major destination is Guadalajara. Cindy found a website called couchsurfing.com where you can sign up to host travelers in your town. We may give it a try in some of the bigger cities to help meet locals and get a better taste of life there.

P.S. I should also mention that the GPS section is all up-to-date, and I’ve added more elevation profiles as well…hopefully some biker will find them helpful in the future.

Posted by Matthew on February 19th, 2007 | Filed under: Mexico