03/19/2012, Navidad Lagoon
We are currently in in Bahia Navidad lagoon. We had a pretty bumpy ride down from Banderas Bay. We had no problems coming around the infamous Punta Corrientes, however when we got 20 miles south 5 miles off Ipala bay holy hell broke loose with 30 knots of wind and 8 ft breaking sea's. I would not let Leiann in the cockpit as it was just to dangerous and she was sick as a dog anyway, rough night for me. At one point I was doing 8 knots with no sails up! At that point I hove to for the next 4 hours before continuing on to Chamela Bay. We met our old friends Bonnie and Kevin on "Kist". It was a great having a meal with them on their boat and walking around town and hanging out at the hotel pool together. Both of us got good dunkings on the beach with the dinghies. When we both headed out to the boats for they last time the surf was huge at 4-5ft. We watched the local Mexican fisherman who knew the surf like the back of their hand, they waited and waited then went out with no problems. So after studying the surf from the resturant over several drinks (me Fresca) we finally decided to give it a go. We both had our dinghies in the water with one person on each of the dink. We patiently waited for the surf to pause for a moment. Finally getting what we thought was our best chance we headed out as fast as we could and then jumped on board and franticlly trying get the motor to start before the next wave series starts, the outboard fired up and we were out past the break. Now Bonnie and Kevin were still in the process. Bonnie on the oars pulling hard (me yelling Go Bonnie Go). Finally Kevin got the out board going after some difficulty and then they too were safe out side the break! We said our final goodbyes to Kist not knowing if we will ever see them again but they live in Bellingham so most likely we will as some point. Thanks you guys for feeding us it was great hanging with you! More to come later.
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03/04/2012, La Cruz
Well todays the 4th of March and we have been in Bandares Bay since Feb 13th. We have stayed much of that time at La Cruz. La Cruz is in the North part of the Bay, and it is a kind of cruiser mecca. There are several restaurants and bars owned by gringo's who were once cruisers and put down the hook here. There are also lots of Mexican restaurants. The town still has the sleepy feel of old Mexico, roosters in the back yard, cobble stone streets, nice buildings next to one falling apart, you know real Mexico. We have spent most of time here on the hook. We are at the dock now to do a couple repair jobs that are easier than on anchor. We plan to leave for parts south on Monday.
We spent a couple days at Punta de Mita when we first got here, a few palapas, a nice beach and I tried a little surfing .
After a week a La Cruz we went over to Puerta vallarta so we could provision and play tourist for a day. We rode our bikes all the way from the marina to old town (about 5 miles) then parked the bikes and walked for several hours. At one point we were in the oldest (run down, falling apart, scary) in the dark, Leiann said OK we have seen enough let's get the heck out of here. By the time we got back to the boat were both worn out, but felt that we got to see most of Vallarta,
Then we headed to the south end of the bay to Yelapa. This little village is only accessible by boat. While now it has regular tourist visitors it still a very remote and unusual place. The entire town is built on the hillside with little paths going everywhere. Some of the paths are cobble stone while others are still dirt. Prior to Qauds that zoom up the narrow paths, burros were the only transportation and are still used. We were walking off the beaten path up from the town when here comes an old Mexican on a donkey with two bags of Raicilla (bootleg tequila) he smiled and let us take his picture. Yelapa was great and we with we could have stayed longer but high winds were predicted and there is little protection there so we headed back to La Cruz after one night. Leiann's version: Dave has this uncanny ability to take us where we are going in a round about way. We were headed to the waterfall when we discovered the man on the burro. Only we ended up going up a very very steep hill, which actually had street lamps, and found the cemetery. Which isn't a bad thing because the cemeteries here are quite a sight to see with their little houses built for family members. Anyways we kept trekking up this windy path and came to pickup trucks sitting on a road?? We found out that there is a road into Yelapa for delivering items to the town but the actual town has no raods in it. Dave decided that we should take what he thought was a shortcut and down we went through follage and boulders. It was a shortcut but it was interesting taking that path (uh actually a dry creek bed) down. DAve is right, we could have stayed alot longer in Yelapa but had to leave because of the weather. He did however get the T-Shirt he has wanted since we learned of Yelapa which says "I'd rather be in a palapa in Yelapa than a condo in Redondo".
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02/15/2012, Punta de Mita
We Arrived in Punta de Mita ( the entrance to Banderas Bay) Monday evening the 13th. We were welcomed by several of our old friends Velella Velella, Jean Maria, Kist and Marionetto, all boats that we had met somewhere on our trip down at some point. This is one of the simple pleasures of cruising, running into each other as you cruise. You never know when you are going to run into someone you met. Always a great reunion. I guess it's because we understand what we each go through to be here. We enjoyed our stay at Chacala, staying four days rather than the planned 1-2. Then after a couple hour cruise, down to Jaltemba. Jaltemba shares the beaches with two other towns Guayabitos and Los Ayala. One long continuous beach stretched out in a 6 mile crescent. These are rather unknown tourist beaches with all the trinket sales. It is a beautiful beach but the tourist part is not attractive to us. We walked the beaches, and what there was of a town (not much). We did not find that there was much to see here other than the ocean, islands and beaches (like that's not enough). We are always interested in local architecture (churches, old building, ruins). And getting to meet the locals. Well we will head over to La Cruz today (7miles) where we plan to hang out for a few days, maybe longer. La Cruz is a cruisers hang out with grigo hangout resturants and places that cruisers can get off the boat for a while, shower, read, socialize, etc. We plan to take some short trips to other ports of call in Banderas Bay (Puerta Vallarta, Yelapa, Marietas Islands and such. The plan which is quite flexible, is to hang around Banderas through the end of Feb, then head further south. Today it's quite overcast and weather reports say a large system is moving through. So will head to La Cruz today and expect wind and rain for a couple days. I keep telling Leiann that there will come a day that we will miss that clouds and pray for cooler weather, but as for now we have not had enough sun, even though we are both getting pretty tanned. More later on Banderas Bay. Now it's Leiann's turn: When coming frpm Jaltemba to Punta de Mita we were lucky enough to see a show from a humpback whale. These things are HUGE! and how I know that is that this whale wasn't even close to us but we could see his whole body come out of the water and splash down and then we could hear him. It sounded like a belly flop does only louder. I was whining that I wanted to see them closer but after talking to our friends on Jean Marie I have decided I am perfectly content to see them from afar. Jean Marie had a whale hit their boat (15ft juvenile) while in the marina. Lucky for them that no one was hurt, and the only damage was to some lines that they were able to tighten back up. And then they were out sailing and one came too close for comfort.....but good news is it was just tooclose no impact. So I am perfectly content to see them from as far away as they want to be! or go to an Aquarium if I need to see one up close. Now I am going to tell on myself before the story gets out there and blown way out of proportion. Oh that's right I blew this story way out of proportion! Bonnie and Kevin from KIST and
Dave and I went to shore in Punta de Mita so the guys could surf and bonnie and I could wander around. While we were meandering along the beach I glanced out at our boat and saw a power boat and panga very close to it. I looked again and saw someone on our boat and told Bonnie. She said are you sure? I told her "Look they are moving from side to side." We started running down the beach to the dinghy, and this was no easy feat considering the beach is slanted, and yelling at the guy from the hotel asking if that was their panga. He said no so we kept running towards our dinghies. Then there was the local native guy that was whistling to someone out on the water and I just knew that he was alerting whoever was on our boat to retreat. We came upon the dinghy and since I don't know how to run one ( I know, I know, lessons coming) we got got Bonnie's with the help of Eric (from Marionetto) and off we went to capture the burglar. Bonnie asked if we should stop for Dave and Kevin and I said no there's not time. As we wer gaining on the suspect and he got closer I realized it was nothing more than our jib sail cover swinging in the wind. Oh boy....Bonnie was wonderful and was very positive about needing to run lickety split across the beach, jump in the dinghy and go tearing off across the water as if the grim peaper was after us! Thanks Bonnie. So we discussed that it was a drill, kinda like a man overboard drill. And I also told Bonnie her and I couldn't hang out together after dark as our two imaginations (especially mine) could get us into a predicament for sure. The other thing I learned was not telling my boat name to someone on shore.....a whale watching tour guide kept telling us to go out with him to see whales and I said I saw them from my own boat. So when he asked the name I told him. I thought for sure he was the culprit behind the stranger on my boat. Live and Learn, just another funny sailing story to share along the way! Oh and a great big thank you to our friends at Punta de Mita for not laughing at my expense.
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-Bonnie
02/08/2012, 21 00. 0'N:105 00.0'W
Well we finally left San Blas. We had a great time in San Blas and it was a great place to work on the boat. We managed to get most of our projects done ie: re bed the leaking keel bolts, replace the bent prop, striaghten the bent prop shaft, repair the broken shaft strut, re do the plumbing on the holding tank and what not all the while spending as much time as possible goofing out. We spent alot nights eating ice cream in the square watching nonstop festivals of one kid or another;lChristmass 24th throught 6th of Feb not mention new years eve. Then bull riding, horse dancing, did I mention the carnival that show up two weeks early for carnival, and then their was San Blas days. And then everytime a kid has a birthday (read nearly daily) they close of the street hang streamers accross it with ballons and music and lots of pastel (cake). I swear they make up reasons to have another party. We ate at outdoor cafe's where we would actually be sitting in the street with cars driving by a foot from your back (hey it's Mexico). Our favorite hangout was Billy Bob's bar where they had a real live Croc whose sixty. Billy Bob's was a gringo hangout where we could find out where to find nearly anything and get the local dope on San Blas. We will have found memories of San Blas and friends we made their. We had a nice sail down to Chacala it's only 22 miles by sea. Chacala is a very small town with a beautiful beach, palms, jungle, valcano, not mention a good anchorage. We were just going to stay a day or two but we are on day 3 and it's hard to leave. Leiann say's one more day. I tell her whatever she wants to do, no hurry. We climbed the valcano yesterday (see pix's) . Today is lay on the beach day. Tomarrow who knows. More latter
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01/29/2012, To Puerta Vallarta
Hola still from San Blas! I have people ask me what we do in an average day and since we haven't been on the boat in over a month......really has it been that long? It seems like no matter what time you get up there is never enough day in the time! We have become a "locals" now and people expect to see us and if they don't they become worried. So when we went to Puerta Vallarta by bus we let them know we would be gone for a couple days so they wouldn't worry. How quickly one becomes part of the environment!
We left San Blas at 7:30on the 25th and took the bus to Puerta Vallarta, but the time was really 8:30 cuz the tme changes along the way. This isn't a bus like we know it. I mean it is a nice big Greyhound like bus but this bus has to slow doen for speed bumps all the way as well as the passengers waiting on the side of the road to be picked up. Seriously there is a bus depot but very few use it. It was a windy, bumpy ride and yes I didn't take anything for nausea. I managed to make it without too much problem but would have been happy to take over the driving! We had a movie on the way and it was quite good, Australia, however it was in Spanish. I think we understood about 1 out of 200 words!! Half way to PV the bus stopped to pick someone up and a couple got on board selling sandwiches and drinks. Bonus! Ever see that happening at home? We arrived in PV at noon or 11:00 San Blas time. Dave likes to go by the time we left, me not so much. I don't need more to confuse me.
We went to the local Marine Store and pretty much had to spend our retirement check on parts for the boat. Ouch! But what do you do when you have to have it? The bottom paint we bought in the states was $220 a gallon, here it was almost $500. Needless to say we setlled for the $200 one.....good thing it's for touch ups only! Then we called Howie. Dave met Howie 2yrs ago when he helped deliver the Jolly Roger from PV to Hawaii. Howie is known for his "special' margaritas and I had told him I would come have on when we got here. (I had two and yep they are the bomb!) Howie took us for fish tacos at one of his regular places and as we were eating lunch our friends from the Cricket walked by. Too funny....they had left San Blas the week before. They sat with us for awhile and then we were off to buy more parts. Yep more moolah! We went to a place for a cutlass bearing and the Greg (owner) dug through his pile of parts and couldn't find one. He then had us follow him in his car to another one of his shops and lo and behold we got the last needed part. Yeah!!
Howie then took us to his condo and I got to see his sailboat, meet his daughter and boyfriend, and numerous other friends who stopped by for happy hour. It's a regular occurrence daily. He then took us to the bus, yep another bus ride, so that we could go look up our friend Dennis who was anchored at La Cruz. This is the cruisers mecca! Dennis has the sailboat Shamaness. Dave met him via the ham radio on the trip from PV to Hawaii but never met him personally until we were in San Diego getting ready to leave for Mexico. Poor Dennis.....he was patiently waiting for us to get there around 6 but due to my drinking problem (the two margaritas) we didn't get there until 7:30. And that might have been fine except we walked around for an hour at the marina looking for him and trying to communicate with him through his girlfriend June. Not a big deal except she was in San Francisco.
So we finally found Dennis and he and his friends Jack and Caroline were waiting at Ohilos for us. This is a local gringo hang out for cruisers and it was busy. We ordered dinner and Dennis asked the owner where we could find a cheaproom. He said right here and took us back through the restaurant and showed us a room. We took it. Dennis was not feeling great due to a cold he had so the three of them went back to his boat with plans to meet the next morning for breakfast. While we were finsihing up in wallked our friends Dick and Tami from the sailing vessel Journey. They were the ones we hung with in Mazatlan. Too funny! They then passed on to us that our friends from foreign Affair were in the marina. Wow old home week or what?? They left and we went to our room. Was this really all in one day? I'm tired just typing it.
We got up the next morning and met Dennis at Ya Ya's another cuiser hang out, Jack and Caroline decided to stay on the boat, at. Best darn breakfast around four 45 paso's ($3.50), we told the owner we would be regulars when we got to La Cruz. We then went with Dennis in his dinghy to see if we could find Greg and calel. We found Foreign Affair and Greg but Calel had left for Guadalahara the day before. It was the end of the road for Calel.....time to find Greg a new sailing mate. Any takers? So we're visiting with Greg and he says he is getting rid of extra stuff on his boat. He asked if we needed any fenders and we said no but Dennis walked away with one for next to nothing. Deal! Then I asked him if he had a gusher pump (for pumping out the head contents) and he said well yes I think I do. He had a brand new one and since we still needed this one last part we bought it from him. Out came the last of the money and I mean the last I had on me! So off we went to the bank to get more.....good thing there was some left. We said goodbye to Dennis and Geg, Dave and I went by taxi to find an ATM since the ones in town were not working. We were successful and said goodbye to Greg and jumped on yet another bus back to PV. We still had to go buy paint so we ended up at Wal Mart and as we were waiting for Howie, who insisited we not take a taxi, who should walk by but Lynn from Cricket. Really? PV is a big town and twice in two days?
Howie took us to the bus depot and we went in to get tickets for San Blas. We discovered however that the next bus to San Blas was manana...tomorrow for you non Spanish speakers. But my hubby being who he is and always coming up with plan B bought us tickets to Tepic where we could catch a bus to San Blas. How many buses is that now? I thought that since Tepic is a rather large city that his bus ride would be different...nope we stopped on the road alot to pick up passengers. The nice thing about this ride is that the road was straight. This bus ride took us almost 4 hrs and WHAT? No Movie!! We survived, we had our books. And one again someone got on the bus and sold food.....good thing cuz we were too busy to have lunch. So we got to Tepic, got on the bus to San Blas and sat back knowing we would be home, yep home, in another 2 hrs. We did have a movie on this bus, an animated disney feature that we could understand by just watching. The exciting part of this trip was when the military came on board in their camoflage (sp?) and masks carrying their M-16's. True story. They asked a guy to remove his coat he had laid on top of him and asked his girlfriend to remove items in her purse. They looked at us, we were right across the aisle, and then turned around and got off. The way we look at it is that we don't mind the millitary and their guns as it makes us feel safe. Of course it is a tad intimidating.....but it is the norm here as we are finding out.
We arrived in San Blas at 9:00 or 8:00 PV time and got a taxi to take us to our casa. Did I mention we had about 4+ bags of stuff?? So that my friends and family is how we spent just a couple days. Now we are working to get the boat done and back in the water so we can move on before we end up like other gringos in this town. They came here and never left. Sorry no pics this trip....so busy didn't even take the camera out once. We will be there again and promise to post pics then. Adios Amigos. Hasta Luego!
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My name is Lynn. You talked to me last night on 20 meters. 4/24/2012 10:56 Pm. I love what you are doing. Thank you for picking me out of the pile up. I was the only woman. You could barely hear me.
01/15/2012, North of Peurta Vallarta
We have now been here for two weeks so thought I would put a bit about San Blas. We came into the esturary without any dificulty using our garmin GPS/plotter, just went real slow. The shallowest reading was 8ft and we draw 5 so no problems. It was however not low tide, so at low a boat may see a shoal of 4 foot. We got tied up and did our paperwork and found the showers and then went into town for a look at our new spot to explore. San Blas truly is a sleepy little "real" Mexican town. No tourist shops or time shares here. The old Catholic church written about in the famous Wadsworth poem "The Bells of San Blas" is still here standing next to the new church which is quite old itself. We were suprised to see that the old church is still being used. The bells have been replaced however they do not ring them as it would most likely cause the belltower to fall down. But inside the ancient church has all the typical catholic statues, candles and pews. It does look as though the church is used in a rather ornamental way, purhaps special occasions. Outside the churches is the town square which comes alive after dark. It seems the whole darn town comes here to vist, boys sitting with their sweeties, old men watching and chatting, children playing. When we got here it was a couple days after Christmas and the square still had christmas tree lights up along with alot of holiday decorations. We later found out that the people celebrate the 12 days of christmas. The first day being the 25th and the last the 6th of January. It seemed that there was a party everyday. And when you thought that they were through they had a huge party giving presents to children, food, candy bouncy thing for the kids. We latter found out that this was the last day of Christmas the 6th of Jan, who knew. We went to the beach one of the first days here on our bikes. When we got down to the beach their were about ten beachside reaturants (if you call them that, grass hut things, with a small kitchen). We were riding along the street on the bikes trying to figure out which one we wanting to try. As we are riding past the signs one jumps out at us "Stoners Surf Camp". The place was a crackup. It had little grass huts on stilts that you can rent for $18 dallars a day, right on the beach. However no lights, toilet,shower, just a mattress but the shower albiet cold is availible next to the crude toilets. We sat with out feet in the sand enjoying the warmth and a cool drink taking in the view. We stayed until the little "famous San Blas No See Ems " aka jejenes came out and it started to cool off. We walk to the square nearly every night and sit, eat ice cream, and people watch. We have met many Grigo's here who live here and found the gringo hangout that serves as a meeting place where one can find info on most anything. The place is called Billy Bob's even though the sign on the front says Torinos (never got around to changing the sign I guess. Blly Bobs is an old bar that has been around for many many years under different names which includes being a brothel at some point. The bar came with a Crocodile when Billy bought it. No kidding it seems that this croc is like sixty and has been in the bar for years (nobody seems to know exactly how long, but long). I asked what they feed her and they said just go down to the market and tell them you need fish heads for Fluffy! This I did and sure enough all I had to do is walk up to the fish market and say "fish heads for Fluffy the Cocodilla" and bingo the lady who spoke no english hands me a bag of heads. I got to feed Fluffy who rarely ever moved. When she saw the fish she came over and grabbed them out of the tongs I was using to feed her. It seems at times in her life Fluffy sat in the bar and got little attention or food and water. A shame, but Billy seems to take decent care of her and she would not make it in the wild now. I mentioned the market which comes to life early in the mornings with carts sat up all along the street in addition to the building full of stuff. "You can find anything you want at" San Blas market. Few of the streets here are paved, some coble stone brick, some coble stone (with stones) and most off the city center dirt. Other that the new goverment marina the town has not had any new building or improvements for years (which we like). It seems that the government poored a lot of money into creating modern marinas up and down the west coast of the mainland in hopes of economic developement. So San Blas was supposed to sprout condo's and hotels and attract tourista's. But it seems the plan never really got past the building of the marina, which is quite nice. There are a few upscale hotels but too upscale for us at this time of limited budget. The population here they say is about 5,000 but it seems smaller. Lots of people get around on bicycles and scooters. We have been filling our days with some sight seeing and working on the boat. We went up to see the old San Blas fort late 1700's , Spanish Invasion. It was very interesting and a great view of the city and the esturay dumping into the sea. Rather that a single river joining the sea, at San Blas there is a real jungle spread out over hundreds of miles of flat drainage which comes to the sea creating a huge swampy estuary home to the salt water crocs and all the other creatures attracted by the abundance of food and water. Who said Mexico is all desert. Ok now that Dave is done with his bit I am going to add some. We have met many locals and some who are snowbirds only just in Mexcio not Arizona. We were out to dinner with a couple, Bill and Sammy, and their friends Morris and Nancy. Turns out Morris and Nancy are from Mt. Vernon. Really? Too funny. There are guys that live here on a regular basis that are from the states and they have been helping us with tools and such. One guy is known as Holiday and then there are the Tims. Tim 1, Tim 2 and Tim 3. Sounds kinda like Thing 1 and 2 from Dr. Seuss. There is a woman here who apparently doesn't like blondes as she has come after me twice now....the first time she was screaming in the wooded area by the marina (did I mention she's a tad loco?) and the 2nd time was at the ice cream store. Luckily I was on my bike when she came screaming out of the woods and ran after me, I could hear her feet pounding the cobblestones but I just kept riding. At the ice cream store she came up, asked me my name in Spanish and then shook my hand and left. A few minutes later she came up to the store and started yelling at me in Spanish. (Did I mention she is loco?) Then she left and came back again and was talking to me like we were old friends......so we have to have a little bit of excitement right?? There is another American blonde here who has had issues with her too. Interesting town to say the least, no different except the language, than being downtown Seattle and seeing the sights! Enough for now...I know Dave wrote about people adding comments so we know you've been here but it seems to have disappeared from his posting so I am writing it again. I also put up an email icon (over on the right) in case anyone is interested in letting us know what they are up to! Asta Lavista Baby! Yes we are still learning Spanish.....and being around it is a lot easier than taking a class. More fun too. Adios mi Amigos!
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