Saturday we made ourselves familiar with the town of La Cruz, checked in with the Port Captain & found a hand held VHF radio at the small chandlery in town, Todo Vella.
Sunday we wandered around the local markets in the La Cruz marina, ate some yummy food & chatted with a number of other cruisers. We caught a bus to the closest large supermarket, Mega, in the nearby town of Bucerias to check out our provisioning options & also grab a few groceries. Then it started to pour with rain.... we got very wet walking back to the marina & taking the dinghy back to the boat.
Monday it was still pouring & was a public holiday but we decided to catch a bus down to Puerto Vallarta to look for a fixed VHF radio for the navigation table & lots of spare parts for the Pacific. A large chandlery called Zaragoza Marine had our radio, but very little of everything else we needed. It was pretty miserable walking down the streets, so we grabbed a quick lunch & headed back to La Cruz.
Tuesday (which was nice & sunny) we headed back to the ‘Centro’ part of Puerto Vallarta to look for a gas shop. After two no go’s we found a very friendly & helpful young man at Moragas. He fixed us up with a system which will replace our European tanks & hoses at a really great price, so we were really happy. It was a struggle lugging the new 3 x 10kg tanks around Puerto Vallarta though! Managed to find a Volvo Penta store to buy new oil & fuel filters & an electrical store for extra 12 volt switches as well. Back to La Cruz on the bus then & dropped off all our goodies on the boat. We went back into town & had a lovely late lunch at Philo’s – a well known La Cruz hangout for cruisers.
Yesterday we started our jobs.... Steve installed the VHF radio & Ange started cleaning out cabins, airing mattresses & wiping down walls. Cleaned out storage areas & rearranged bits & pieces as well. The boat looked like a bomb hit it! At 6pm we walked in La Cruz, bought some beer & made pizza for dinner.
Today we are installing the new gas system. Wish us luck!!