04/11/2008, Zihuatanejo Bay
What a cool little town for such a mouthful of a name! The streets are all paving stones, many of them one way and some of them for pedestrian traffic only. Lots of shops and open air cantinas with a central "downtown" with a great municipal mercado for really fresh fruits, veggies, meats and hardware stuff. Rob and I found a great little "torta" (mexican sandwich on a soft roll with meat or chicken, lettuce, tomato and sauce) place for only 15 pesos! The whole downtown area is only about 6 square blocks with some angle streets heading out of town... Along the Malecon they even have a "cruiser's hangout", the Sunset Bar", with wireless internet, live ESPN TV and right on the beach. It just doesn't get much better than that! We are in this bay with only 6 other boats, so there is plenty of room. It's a pretty calm anchorage (only a few surge swells at night). We have decided to stay here for at least a week, do some of those boat chores (cleaning the bottom, polishing the stainless with a toothbrush, handwashing some laundry, you know the fun stuff) and enjoy the surroundings, instead of rushing off to Acapulco where the bay is dirtier, can't make water in that bay and you have to pay to be on a mooring ball (no good anchorages). There has been a beautiful breeze here most all of the time, so the humidity is much easier to handle! The hotels, bungalows and private homes that are built around the bay seem to be nestled right into the hillside, so it doesn't seem like the glitz and high rise touristy feel of Ixtapa. Even a cruise ship came for the afternoon on Saturday and the town, while a little more crowded was not jammed and handled it well. It's Sunday, the day after a cruise ship day and most of the establishments are closed. BUT it was fun to see families and street food vendors in the town square all just enjoying the day! We could even hear the local bands play in the square, from the comfort of our boat...On Saturday we watched some local youth basketball games with referees and everything playing all thru the day and night. We have tasted some "traditional Mexican Pezole" with a Mezcal chaser...(that's chicken soup with hominy and a STRONG tequila- type shot) I slept pretty well that night! We will most likely take a bus into the town of Ixtapa and a real grocery store on Tuesday. We are in search of some REAL, PLAIN peanuts(no lime, jalepeno or salsa flavors)! More to come as we explore this area over the next week, do alittle more work on the boat and with any luck our friends on "Sans Cles" will be arriving by the weekend as we look forward to traveling south with them.
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04/07/2008, Isla Ixtapa
We arrived here at Isla Ixtapa on Sunday afternoon under bright sunny skies only typical land & sea breezes! Except for the local pangas and a couple of fisherman, we are alone in the anchorage! This seems to be a great little place to get away from it all...Many "all inclusive" and club med resorts dot the hillside and Isla Ixtapa is where the vacationers come to hang out at the beaches, snorkel, dive, sail hobie cats and of course jet ski. The beaches are pretty much empty by 3 or 4pm and the palapas are all closed by 5pm! The snorkeling was GREAT....so far, 2nd only to Espiritu Santos Islands! Lots of beautiful fish, schooling right around you! The coral reef is quite large and many different colors. The water temp is finally 80+ degrees and the air pretty much upper 80's...ahhhhhhh. Food at the palapas along the beach is very good, but carry "California prices"! There is quite the marine life around here... Pipe fish and flying fish with tiny wings come out in droves at night. Of course can't seem to get a good picture of them but they are quite entertaining. Even in the middle of the night you can hear the dolphins swim around the boat, as they exhale when they break the water surface. I just never get tired of watching/hearing them!!! Wednesday we head for Z-town...but it's only about 10miles SE of Ixtapa, so no need to leave early! Oh my favorite words....
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04/05/2008, Somewhere
We left Las Hadas 6:30am with the day just dawning and the sun not quite over the horizon in the East! We wanted to be sure we could SEE the tankers anchored outside Manzanillo harbor and with some 36 hours ahead of us, be sure we got to the next destination in the daylight! The wind was pretty light and pretty much on our nose, of course so motor sailing was the call for the day. The next 100 miles has had the reputation for drug running and a presence of the Mexican Navy, so we wanted to be in as much daylight as possible...We had heard stories of people being approached by a boat of Mexican Navy personnel dressed in camo and wearing dark ski masks so as to not be recognized in fear of retaliation of drug smugglers as well as others who were just "interviewed" over the VHF. WELL...after about 7 hours we see a rather large gray frigate type ship about 2-3 miles off shore and sure enough as we got closer we were hailed, in Spanish, but heard the word velero (word for sailboat) so we identified ourselves. YEP they were hailing us and asked us (now in English) to divert course and head towards their ship for inspection. They told us when to stop our engine and moments later a panga sized boat with 4 people came out from behind the ship, circled our boat, then pulled along side and 2 men boarded, all with side arms and semi-automatics! They were very polite and able to conduct the interview in English, asking us some typical questions, who are you, where are you coming from, where are you going, are you on vacation, how long will you be in Mexico, and wanted to see our documentation, passports and permit to have the boat in Mexico. Then some unusual ones...What is your current position (you would think they would know where we were) so we gave them our lat & long...What is your current depth...(or course we were in over 600' water so our depth finder was reading 0 ) and this was a shocker...Do you need take anything now like medicine? We of course said no, (except for the Margarita I needed to settle the butterflies in my stomach) but in my true hostess style offered them water or a coke which they of course declined... They also wanted to see what types of communication we had on board. Rob took the officer below so he could inspect and document what we had. He also asked Rob how much a nice boat like this costs?????? One of the last questions they asked was how we have found the Mexican Navy to treat us? He had Rob write on the back of the form he was filling out how we had been treated by the Mexican Navy and asked both of us to sign it. Strange they would want to know what we gringos thought of the Mexican Navy! They at no time asked us if we had any weapons or drugs on board, which is what we were told they might ask about in a search. After about 20 minutes they thanked us for our cooperation and said they would be in the area if we needed them for "anything" to hail them on channel 16. Rob did have 1 request of me (before they boarded us)...that I NOT take any pictures of them...So I refrained until they left our boat and headed back to their "Mother ship". Phew...that was pretty painless, but that also made us look over our shoulder and during the night keep a watchful eye at any boat that came within 5 miles of us...Sunday brought about a new day as we finally saw a couple of whales slapping their tails and playing, we diverted course to check it out, turned off the motor watched for only a few minutes, got the camera out then POOF they stopped. Several dolphins put on a jumping show and we arrived at Isla Ixtapa after only 32 hours....that's 4 hours ahead of schedule! We enjoyed a great Rib Eye Steak dinner, a little wine and toasted 34 years of wedded bliss. Still pinching ourselves that we are able to dream the impossible and actually live the dream! Nothing is IMPOSSIBLE!
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