11/25/2011 -- Thanksgiving in La Paz

La Paz is an industrial type city built on a huge beach...which is the location of the major thoroughfare until you get into town...they've made a big push to clean up the Malecon (beach front boardwalk)... there are markets and tiendas all over the place and the people are generally welcoming to gringos...all in all, we've had a good experience here. Marina Palmira is several kilometers out of town...I'm guessing about 2 miles. Danny and I have mostly been walking but the marina runs a shuttle three times a day. At one point there were about 15 or 20 shops at the marina...they're all vacant now...the economy is tough down here as well...

It started raining this morning at 0300...nothing too hard, just one of those constant drizzle/rains that act like they'll be around for a while...the weather in La Paz has been problematic...days of dead calms followed by days over 20 knots...the problem is that the winds are not in a constant direction and there are no all weather anchorages. We're going to stay in the marina until the weekend then pop out to the islands for a couple of days to check things out.

Thanksgiving dinner turned out to be good. We went with two couples we'd met...the dinner was really quite good but we were the only ones in the restaurant...these places down here are really hurting...almost all of them are closed and the open ones are hanging on by their finger nails...

Rain has started pouring down...we've got to get into town today to get our park permits for the islands...looks like it might be a foul wx day...