El Nino is causing Bahia De Los angles to have more of a windy winter than usual. The wind picks up during the night and continues to blow. Once again we are fortunate that we are sleeping in the car as the neighbors in their tents are awakened by the wind. Trying to get back in the habit of a morning run we start off just after sunrise. Returning to our palapa we have breakfast, noting the dark clouds over the mountains. Soon the wind picks up even more, the temperature drops and the rain begins falling. it is raining so hard that I decided to sponge some of the mud off of the car. This is the first rain that this area has experienced for several months. The last rain was last fall when the hurricane hit and caused a lot of damage. During the rain storm, a large animal is rapidly swimming right next to the shoreline. When it surfaced we were able to see that it was a large male sea lion hunting for fish. As it chased fish to the surface the pelicans followed dive bombing the area. Both species were successful in their forage for food. Meeting the neighbors is an added bonus of slowing down our pace. Lisa and Noah are from New York. she is a professional singer and violinist. We have enjoyed the music coming from their palapa. Next to them is Tina and Thomas, they are on a 3 year or so motorcycle journey. They started two years ago at the tip of South America and are now headed to the States and eventually to the Arctic Ocean. Their blog is tintom Kiwi. With the wind blowing, we decided that going to check out the town is a better option than kayaking today. There are no banks in the town and only 3 small mercados. Food choices are limited, but adequate. a good find is the pandanaria. The bakery had a good selection of warm, fresh and delicious baked goods. Several of the small stores offer internet service for a fee. We are curious if Ryan's boat won an award at the Parade of lights so we stop at one and purchase an hour of service. Great news! Their boat won first place in its division. Back to the beach, the tide has gone out exposing a rocky tide line. The bird feeding fenzy is entertaining. We observe. red breasted mergansers, eared grebes, brown pelicans, yellow footed gulls, herman gulls, whimbrels, white egrets, snowy egrets, american oyster catchers, reddish egrets and more that I am sure we missed. The wind is still howling so we move our car to a location that we can get a wind break from a building. Car camping does have its advantages. Ryan told us that some of the roads in Northern Baja have been closed due to rain. Glad that we made it this far south. Evening in the car consisted of a game of banagrams, a review of Spanish words and some reading.
