At the Octopuss' Garden
07 January 2012 | Marina Riviera De La Cruz
Jay/ Hot
Tatewari. An excellent latin jazz group.
We are sitting in the shade of the huanacaxtle tree in La Cruz. There is a restaurant built around it. Today, we are having brunch at the restaurant (Octopuss’ Garden). Tatewari is playing and Anita and I are enjoying the music. 90 year old Jack is dancing to the music. His wife (Muriel) is the better dancer, but she hasn’t felt inspired yet. They seem to know where all the cool acts are in town. Anytime we are at anything really great, they show up.
The folks at The Garden are wonderful. The coffee is the best I have ever had… anywhere. We are going to have to clean up the deck of Karina as she is getting a lot of port dust on her decks. Next week we will be getting hatch covers put on. This should deal with the green water ingress when things get rough. Nick and Nancy (Jesse Marie) have appeared from Mazatlan. They are here for the first time. They are enjoying the anchorage here in La Cruz.
Life in the marina has been pretty good. We did a Mega run yesterday and discovered that the cash machine at the Scotia (next to Mega) will give 5000 pesos instead of the usual 3000 making trips to the money store less frequent. I don’t know if this is just this machine or bank or whether it is the beginning of a new policy. At an exchange rate of 13 pesos to a Canadian dollar, 3000 pesos takes about 10 days to blow through.
I guess I could comment a bit on expenses here. Cruising expenses are high when commissioning and the first couple of months on the boat. Then, as the winter wears on, things get a lot more affordable as we wind up spending more time on the hook and we start trying to use up food items on the boat so it is empty by the spring. Generally we arrive back in Canada with money to spare.