We delayed our 500 days of cruising party a bit to join up with SV Bella Star and celebrate their 6 months of cruising at the same time. We used some of our Google Ad revenue* to buy an assortment of Mexican beer for a tasting and Bella Star brought some tasty guac for palate cleansing and beer-food pairing tests.

The beers: These are all of the kinds that we could find in 3 super mercados in Ensenada excepting any light beer or the beer with Clamato in it.

The tasters (hover over photos for names):

The ratings: Overall, Bohemia (Clara) was a big hit. None of the crew liked either type of Dos Equis as much as they thought they did, when tasting naively. Carol still preferred Pacifico and could even pick it out of the line-up. Aaron still thinks PBR deserves its blue ribbon.

Our goal was well satisfied. Carol and I know what beers to order in a bar (Bohemia Clara if available, Pacifico for Carol and Sol for Livia if not). We also know what beers to buy in the grocery that we both will enjoy (Bohemia, then Sol/Tecate/Corona as second choices) and what beers to avoid like the plague (Barillita and Victoria). We’ve also decided that all of the beers tasted better with lime which doesn’t bode well for the genre :)

*I say it all of the time but I mean it. Thank you to those who click on the ads on the site or in the email/reader versions. You funded this craziness.

We left Ensenada in the late morning intending to sail about 30 miles to Punta Baja. We planned to anchor overnight there and, unless it made us say “wow”, to continue on to San Quintin in the morning. It was wide open and full of swell but we were about to drop the hook for rest anyways when we saw people carrying large white bags from the village, by hand, across rocks, to a location about 2 miles from the village. They were piling the white bags near a slot in the cliff face, right where we were going to anchor, and in an area that looked beachable by small boat.

Aquaculture is the most likely explanation, but just in case it was big bags o’drugs, we thought, maybe anchoring at the drop-off/pick-up isn’t the wisest course of action so we’ll do an overnight. Lovely sail most of the rest of the way to San Quintin which we made just after dawn.

No, I did not break out my telephoto lens and take copious pictures. Ahem.

San Quintin was both lovely and a bit of a bummer. The bummer part is we had hoped to kiteboard but there was a Southerly swell making beaching our kayak difficult and kiteboarding out of the question for two beginners.

On the other hand we discovered that if you meet someone nice enough, and there is nowhere safe to leave your kayak, you might get a ride to the local happy hour. THANK YOU CB!

While at happy hour we hung out with a community of ex-pats over cheap beers. We learned a lot about Mexico and ex-pats at the same time.

We also saw an absolutely enormous lobster than one of the men had recently purchased (not the man in the photo). YEEGADS! I included the small dog on the bottom right for reference. I can’t imagine how old this thing must be to have grown to this size.

We spent a bunch of afternoons lazing about on deck in the sunshine but every morning until noon we had grey, damp marine layer and we decided that, without kiteboarding, it was time to continue moving SOUTH.

Hover over the photo for the location: