100 Countries

I was wandering the other day and came across the Los Barriles graveyard. I always find graveyards in different countries interesting because they are often so different. Much like the colorful houses that are part of Baja California, the graves also stand out for their color as well as their complexity with ornate sculptures:

It looks like this area of Baja California will escape Hurricane Rick. The hurricane has been downgraded to a tropical storm and made a sharp turn east so it appears that it will miss the entire Baja peninsula except for clouds and rain from the outskirts of the storm.

Those storm clouds are now coming in and giving me a different view as I work from the normal sunny skies, yet still beautiful in their own way:

The first of what I hope will one day be 100+ traveling art books has been completed and I hope that I find someone in the next couple of weeks to pass it along to another traveler. The progress of the book can be followed in the sidebar and I hope that those that end up with it will update where it is as it comes into their possession.

I debated whether or not to begin the first page of the book or not, but after helping to release over 300 baby sea turtles, I decided to decorate the first page with the certificate that I received as part of that help:

I’m excited to see how this travel art project works out and where the books ultimately end up. It should be an interesting journey…

People around town have started to prepare for Hurricane Rick. The good news is that it has weakened from a category 5 hurricane to a category 3 hurricane overnight and should continue to weaken as it heads towards us. If you have ever been in a hurricane before, category 3 is nothing to sneeze at and a storm you’d want to avoid if possible.

So while the houses board up the windows, what do the people do that have driven down here in RVs? They strap them down:

Those that live down here have come up with a more permanent solution to the wind storms by building concrete pillars around the RV to keep it safe:

Interesting, but I don’t have any desire to ride out any strength hurricane in a RV…

Tropical Storm Patricia put some worry into the people living in this area, but we got through it with a bit of rain and not much damage. Hurricane Rick looks to be another matter:

The good news is that this current category 5 hurricane is supposed to lessen in power and hit landfall as a category 2 hurricane. The bad news is the current projection is a direct hit on where I’m staying. The talk around town is hurricane preparation and bracing for a lot of rain.

I’m actually in a pretty good place to ride out the storm. I’m on the hillside so no worries about storm surge and I’m in the lower unit of the house which is built of solid stone and out of the wind.

The one major issue is that it’s a pretty foregone conclusion that power will go out and the house doesn’t have a back-up generator and it’s anyone’s guess how long it will take to get power and communications back up. That could mean days without Internet which is not conductive to me doing my work, but there really isn’t much that I can do but cross my fingers and hope that the storm decides to change direction and spare us any damage…

I have been told that October is the month when the sea turtle eggs begin to hatch in Baja California and the baby sea turtles make their way from their nest to the ocean. I’ve been taking late night walks on the beach in hopes of seeing some of the baby turtles, but haven’t had any luck thus far.

Last night one of the sea turtle conservation groups held a baby sea turtle release. These were sea turtle eggs that were gathered from nests which had been dug too close to the tide line and the eggs would have likely died. After the sea turtle laid her eggs, the conservation group took the eggs and incubated them. The group released hundreds of baby sea turtles last night and anyone that wanted to help was welcome to join in the release.

This was the first of many baby sea turtles I helped release last night:

And the first steps taken toward the sea:

All the baby sea turtles were released in the same general area and as more and more were released, that section of the beach was full of baby sea turtles.

When I was in Australia I had the opportunity to see a sea turtle lay eggs, but this was the first time to see the baby sea turtles head to the sea. I will still take my evening walks in hopes of seeing some more baby sea turtles that are hatching from their natural nests…

I found a new cafe that serves breakfast and lunch called Caleb’s Cafe here in Los Barriles that has Internet access. It has an outside area upstairs and, of course, a beautiful view. This is what I’m looking at as I work (and type this post out):

Hard to complain when mornings begin like this…

It was a beautiful day in a non typical way. With Tropical Storm Patricia trying to decide where she wanted to go, we had rain and sunshine and rain and sunshine all day which meant that we had rainbows left and right today:

Beautiful even when it rains…

We’ve had a tropical storm threatening to hit this area for the past few days. One day it is supposed to hit us directly and the next it isn’t supposed to come anywhere close (thus the true unpredictability of ocean storms)

At this time it looks like it’s going to miss us, but that hasn’t meant that the storm didn’t leave some effects.

I traveled up to La Paz yesterday and while it didn’t rain a whole lot while I was there, it was obvious that quite a bit of rain had fallen before I arrived. This included the following storm drain that had popped open and spewing out a gusher of water:

Which, of course, cause the street to completely flood:

The worst part of this is that it was most definitely raw sewage that was coming out. The small wasn’t pleasant at all and I certainly wouldn’t want to walk through that water.

For the most part, however, we have been spared any major damage which is definitely a good sign.

I’m back from Cabo San Lucas and will be spending the rest of the month is Los Barriles. Didn’t do too much work while in Cabo, so I decided to get up early to catch up. This is what greeted me for my office view this morning: