Personal Narrative: Baja Sur

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Jim swore our family could live cheaper and he’d never shovel snow again when we sold everything in rural Colorado to move aboard our sailboat in Mexico. When we sailed into Baja Sur’s capital city, La Paz, its unexpected “small town” peacefulness surrounded by the coastal beauty of the Sea of Cortez charmed us into staying. We landed a house-sitting gig by word-of-mouth and enrolled our 12-year-old daughter in a Mexican public school to learn Spanish.

A two-day drive from the California border through saguaro and organ pipe cactus gardens, and only 1½ hours north of Cabo San Lucas, La Paz sits like a pearl where the Sonoran desert sand meets the glimmer of the Gulf of California. Writers’ groups, a community organic garden, live theatre,

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