the quest for some milk...

We're out of milk... not a crisis, but it comes in handy... and I like it in my coffee. Yesterday Brian and I embarked on an adventure to get some provisions in San Carlos. We had hoped to dinghy across the bay here (about 6 miles) to a narrow part of land that separates this bay from Magdalena Bay, then portage the dinghy across land to the other side, and run the 3-4 miles into "town". We left the boats at around 9am and there was some pretty good chop due to the wind. We decided to follow the beach around, just outside the surf line to try to get some protection from the wind and chop. Eventually it calmed enough that we could speed up and plane the dinghy, but the wind kept clocking around so that it was on the nose the whole way so we got pretty wet. The surf breaking along the coast was pretty impressive - at least 6-8' waves crashing on the beach... needless to say we didn't feel like landing. We both agreed that we could probably time a landing and make it in on the back of a wave, but we'd never make it back out again thru the breaking waves. We kept following the land around to the end of the bay hoping that we'd find a sandbar or shoal that would cause the waves to break and expend their energy off the shore and we could tuck in behind them... didn't happen. The next option was to continue along the coast to the south end of the bay where a mountain might offer a bit of protection from the western swell. If we were able to land there, it was much too far across land to portage the dink, but we figured we might we able to walk to Man-o-War, a little fishing village, and maybe find some provisions. Sure enough, there was a little nook that looked land-able, and there were a bunch of pangas on the beach and a truck. The locals would beach their pangas, load them on a trailer and truck them across to Mag Bay. It was about a three mile walk, and when we got there we found that there were TWO grocery stores! The first had some cans of stuff... beans, spam, and things like that. I inquired if they had 'leche'. I could pick from canned condensed milk, or powdered. I inquired about 'leche fresca' and she smiled and shook her head. I bought two packs of powdered. The other store had some fresh things - about a pound of potatos and a couple of onions... other than that, about the same selection of cans. Brian was hoping for some beer, but struck out there, too... plus we both agreed that transporting beer back to the boat would not be worth the effort. Launching the dingy thru the surf was a wet experience. After we cleared the surf, the wheels wouldn't retract, so we had to land again, monkey with them for 15 mintutes, relaunch on one wheel only (and get even wetter). The wind was on the nose all the way back to the boats, strangely clocking around again... So, 28 miles travelled (about 5 of that walked), about $10 worth of gas burned, 6 hours spent... all for two packs of powdered milk. And people back home wonder what we do to keep busy each day...