Since Christi wasn’t up for cooking, we decided to celebrate Thanksgiving (Thursday, November 24) by eating out. Our friends on Oceananigans offered to drop us off in town on their way to their Thanksgiving festivities. This time, we rode into shore with them on their dinghy. The plan was that we would return their dinghy to their boat when we returned from town.

We all stopped for breakfast at a cafe in the Costa Baja resort.

Since it was too early for lunch, we had time to kill. Christi needed a haircut, so we had them drop us off at a hair salon near Chedraui that one of the cruisers had recommended. We were sad to see that it was out of business. From there, we went to another boat store, located near Marina de La Paz, looking for generator filters. Neither boat store that we’d gone to yesterday had them, nor did this one.

By now it was lunch time. We decided to go to a restaurant called Estrella del Mar primarily because it was close. The restaurant was literally the southwest end of the malecon, directly next door to Marina Cortez (and Marina Cortez was next door to Marina de La Paz).

The seating was on an outdoor patio under a bamboo roof that offered partial sun shade, with stunning views. It was such a windy day that all boats were prohibited from leaving the bay, and the wind was quite cool.

We knew it was a seafood restaurant, but we figured there would be something on the menu that Keith would like. Keith was not happy with the non-seafood choices. He ordered a dish called Hot Molcajete, which sounded like a beef stew when the waiter described it. None of us liked the meat. It was fatty, tough, and had a strange texture. While Keith generally likes most vegetables, he doesn’t like bell pepper or mushrooms, which appeared to be the only vegetables that were in this stew. He did like the broth, though, and ate the broth around the meat/veggies by dipping chips into the broth.

Later we looked it up. A molcajete is the bowl that the stew was served in, which was basically a mortar (as in mortar and pestle). As far as we could tell, there didn’t seem to be any consistent recipes online; molcajete dishes seemed to be whatever people wanted to serve in that bowl.

Our plan for the afternoon was to walk around the malecon and historic areas. By the time the meal was over, we were freezing from sitting out in the cold wind for so long. We decided it was too cold to go sightseeing and that it was time to head back to Kosmos. 

We walked across the street, where it would be easier for an Uber to pick us up, and tried to hail a ride. After several minutes of waiting, no one had taken our request. We started wondering what we should do when we realized we were standing right in front of a car rental agency.

Needless to say, we rented a car and drove back to Playa Pichilingue. The first photo is the front of the large restaurant. The second photo is a kayak rental place tucked into the south corner that we’d neglected to mention the day we’d arrived.

When we arrived back, it was low tide. We were horrified to find that Oceananigans’s dinghy was stuck in the mud! This has never happened to us before. Our dinghy only weighs 100 pounds (45 kilos), so we’ve always been able to pick it up and walk it to deeper water. But there was no picking this dinghy up.

Some boys that looked to be about Keith’s age followed us out on the dock and started talking to us in English. One of them was from San Diego! They were part of a large group, and the group invited us to join them. They were super nice people. We hung out with them for an hour, until the tide had come in enough that we were able to get unstuck from the mud. 

Our new friends had invited us to join them for their Thanksgiving dinner, but we were concerned about dealing with the giant tide swings in the dark. Instead, we had a quiet evening aboard.