.Isabela to Chacala 12/4/09

Our passage from Isabela to Chacala was very nice. Departed at 0615 and arrived at our anchorage in Chacala at 1530. Sailed all the way. Caught a spanish mackerel and another good sized dorado off the hand lines. (we also snagged about 50' of 2" poly line which we pulled aboard) We started spotting numerous humpback whales about 15 miles off the coast of Nayarit, some breaching over and over, very cool. As we turned the corner to make our way into the anchorage at Chacala, we all had the same awestruck reaction to this sparsely populated jungle cove. Our anchorage was nice and very settled, tucked way inside with both bow and stern anchor. That afternoon we flagged down a fisherman in a panga and offered him the line we had earlier pulled aboard, he seemed very happy with the offering and promised to return with some fish. We found the little village town of Chacala to be what you would hope to expect. Mainly just palapa restaurants on the beach backed by one dirt road lined with a few small tiendas and shops. Very low key. Local barefooted kids running everywhere, and very polite always offering a smile and hola. On our second day there, we took off exploring by dinghy and found this unreal cove just around the point south of us. Narrow deep cove formed by lava. Caves everywhere, with vines and palms growing on the edges of the 20 to 50' high lava rock walls surrounding the cove. The cove ends at a fine sandy beach where we landed the dinghy and were the only ones there, very secluded. A couple of days later we made our way into the town of Las Varas where we lightly provisioned with fresh fruites and veggies. The day before leaving, Natalie and me took the dinghy around the point to the north of us to try and get some waves. This is a really nice left point break where we were alone for about 30 minutes then were joined by one other surfer who said he flew down here just to surf Chacala and Punta Mita. I guess we were a day in front of a big swell making it's way from Hawaii. We were already seeing it begin to build. Very nice solid overhead left. When getting ready to depart for Punta De Mita, we'd realized we forgot to dump our trash and our dink was already loaded on the boat so I flagged down an incoming panga to see if he would offload our garbage for a fee. As he approached, we held out the trash bag along with 50 pesos. The fisherman who took the trash bag wouldn't take the money so I tried offering it to the skipper. He wouldn't take it either and pointed me back toward his crew who was pulling fish from his basket to give to us. I then realized it was the fisherman we had given the line to when we arrived. Couldn't ask for a better send off