After searching for the drone in the freezing water for another 30 minutes the following day, we left Punta San Telmo, drone-less. We had about a 3-hour sail to the next town, Agua Verde. Although we were hugging the coast, the wind turned out to be extremely variable, ranging from 2 to 20 knots in 10 minutes increments, right on the beam. Along the way, there were two other sailboats, SV Dolce Vita and SV Hajime, on the same route and we quickly became radio friends, asking how the wind was reading at the various points. After constantly reefing and un-reefing the sails for some time, we finally decided just to motor the rest of the way.
Upon arriving in Agua Verde, SV Dolce Vita called us on the radio to invite us over for drinks a little bit later that evening. We headed into town to do some light provisioning and grab a few cervezas, since we couldn’t show up to happy hour empty handed. That evening, we met Dennis from SV Dolce Vita, who was a 77-year-old solo sailor with endless stories to tell. He had also invited over four other boats, which made for a full cockpit and fun evening. We made plans to do a local hike in the morning once the margaritas wore off.
The next day, we met up with the other boats and set off on a hike to look for some local cave paintings. We also passed by a small cemetery and saw some of the beautiful coastline. We made it up to the cave with the paintings, which were a series of hand prints on the walls. We never quite got the story on how they ended up there, or for how long they had been there, but they were still interesting to see. Once we got back to the boat it was time to stock up on water, and some of our new boat friends suggested trying the local restaurant. Agua Verde was about the same size as Santa Barista, with one tienda and one restaurant. Without a water distribution system, the restaurant owner said they also needed to fill up water and offered us a ride to the local watering hole. We sat in the back of the pickup truck with our jerrycans and were able to fill up from a cistern that somehow supplied water for most of the town.
The next day we took off for Bahia San Cosme which was rumored to have a nearby hot spring. The anchorage was also quite beautiful and had some of the clearest water we had seen thus far. We took the dinghy in and explored some of the trails to try and find the hot spring. After walking around for some time, we gave up and went to the beach and were surprised to find some kayakers had arrived and were setting up camp. They had been on a multi-day kayak camping trip from Loreto and their guide showed us the hot spring, which had been right in front of our noses.
The hot spring pool was tucked in a rocky area that was submerged at high tide. We headed back to the boat to check tides and plan our optimal soak time with the next high being at 8 pm. We went back to the hot spring pool around 5 pm and Eitan measured the temperature to be around 107 degrees! At 5 pm it was still quite hot out so we only sat in the pool long enough to drink our margaritas, then headed back to Sierra Wind
With our haul out date quickly approaching, Eitan needed cell service to coordinate with the marina to make sure we were still on schedule. We headed over to anchor in front of the resort called Villa del Palmar at The Islands of Loreto, which we heard had wifi available in the bay. The entire bay was extremely shallow and we ended up anchoring the dinghy halfway between the boat and shore and walked the remainder of the way. The resort was stunning and we were able to get a day pass to get drinks at the restaurant and pool. We enjoyed the rest of the day at the pool followed by a nice long soak in the hot tub!
