There is a scent that comes with the sea.  Living on The Pacific, you don’t enjoy it much as the winds are a constant assault, but here on the Sea of Cortes, it is always wafting along the breeze.

We heard the waves last night; crashing upon the beach but the morning shows no such sign of storm.  It is warm with little to no breeze and we are glad for the occasional clouds to give us a little relief from the sun. Soon after waking (we must be the last ones in camp to wake), I heard the much anticipated call of "tamales" and rushed to dress and catch the vendedora.  I caught up with her as she was selling to dad and brought a sample of 5 tamales back to the trailer.  Sissy and Ellen enjoyed them so much that i went in search of her to buy more.  I ended up with 11 tamales and 4 empanadas.  The empanadas reminded me of a mix between a chillean and an argentinian empanada.  The Argentinian ones are tiny and deep fried.  The Chilean are large (they can fill an entire 1/2 plate) and baked and filled with olives, eggs, meat and papas.  These were fried and filled with meat and papas.  I should have bought more.  The kids LOVED them.

If there was any doubt as to why we are here, these pictures of the girls tell the story.  I know those of you surrounded by cold and snow were rooting for another cold day for us, but unfortunately the day has continued warm and bright.  No sign of the storm intended for Alta California. 

I finally took some pictures of SOME of the shells the kids collected.  If you’d like one, simply drop an email or comment and I’ll send one (or more) off.  Also, lmk if you’d like some sand.
Oh My Gawd we are full of debauchery.  We are drunk on shrimp and garlic.  Tata sent a chocolate donut and other pastries which arrived right after dinner.  Like Romans, we would need to purge to finish off the remains of the garlic/cilantro shrimp….  Poor, poor, pitiful us.  I’m sure you can spare SOME sympathy.  No? 

Mike, the resident San Felipe sea god, just alerted us to the fact that jumbo prawns have arrived fresh off the boat.  I went to check them out, and they were so fresh that the legs were still wiggling on one or two (heads were off).  Grey blue and absolutely ENORMOUS, I got a kilo (shhhh…at $18).  I promise to take a picture when they stop wriggling.  :)   Jamie has taken to eating the very fresh ones raw, so I’m hoping that some will be left by morning.  Hopefully our dinner engorgement will keep him out of the fridge.  I wonder if we’ll ever tire of shrimp?  Jesse is the only one who doesn’t like shrimp and Ellen more than eats his share.