Day Ten: El Requeson to La Paz!

Today was a rough and rude awakening! Up WAY! before sunrise to Sis, petting my head and talking nonsense about a hammock and a wet blanket. Turns out she had wet her bed. Poor thing! Then, to top it all off, but kids have sand irritated eyes. Mister's eyes are completely crusted over and it takes some work with the wet wipes to work the crust off so that the poor kid can open his eyes. The wind has been nearly intolerable, thank goodness for our palapa, so that we have a bit of a hideout from it!

We begin to break camp, much to the disappointment of our Canadian neighbors, the Bridal family, and our nuevo Mexicana familia, who has is quite taken with our "gueritos" and have even dubbed Erin the "Chiquita Pamela Anderson!"

They have been playing with her all morning, even snapping pictures with her. She is quite the attraction!

The familia has even offered food and drink to them, and the bonus, kept them out of our hair so that we could get packed up and ready to go.
Lionel bought lobster from the pescadero with the pickup truck ~ 2 kilos of spiny tail lobster for $140 pesos. Bargain! Finally, the car is packed and we are off! Adios, El Requeson, it's been fun! We head south, with intention of hitting Loreto and deciding how much further to go. We get to Loreto around 1, pick up lunch at Taqueria Dianna's, and continue south to Cuidad Constitucion. Once there, we decide that we still have a lot of daylight left, and we push on to La Paz.
This has been by far the warmest day of our trip, and Mister seems to be feeling the brunt of it. Add to the mild-overheating his gooey eye from the sand, which seems to have given him a minor infection. We get to La Paz shortly before sunset and head to the malecon (the seaside promenade, kind of like a boardwalk) to find a hotel for the evening. The following picture is my attempt at photographing the large sculpture at the entrance to La Paz. On one side it is a whale tail, and on the other, a bird of peace ~ La Paz means "the peace".

We find a hotel, after two failed attempts...the first two we had chosen on recommendation of the Moon Baja guide book were no longer open. So, we came to Hotel Perla. An historic hotel on the malecon, built in 1940, the Hotel Perla is one of the largest hotels that we have stayed in. The rooms were simple, yet comfortable, and with the added bonus of secure parking, we were quite satisfied.
We all got cleaned up for dinner, and headed downstairs to the hotel's restaurante, La Terraza. The restaurante sits right on the main drag of the malecon, and is an open air establishment, so we could watch all of the cars cruising while we ate. It was fun to see all of the cars and identify which ones were families and which were teenagers and young adults looking to pick up chicks. It wasn't difficult to distinguish them! There were quite a few vehicles all decked out with neon lights, flashy rims, and all kinds of bling. This is the first time we have seen anything like that, but it is also the first time we have stayed in a major city!

Dinner was delicious! Camarrones and pulpo al ajillo (shrimp and octopus in garlic sauce), Fish tacos, and a hamburguesa for the kids. After 254 miles, we were ready to settle into our beds in room 202 for a good night's sleep!