This riotous country can sometimes overwhelm the senses with the colors and sounds of everyday life, but the smells also are so varied and particular that they will always evoke memories of this coast.
So here's a typical day remembered through the nostrils:

7.00 a.m. RICH OVER-RIPE GUAYABAS
In a bowl in the galley overnight, the little space is heady by daybreak.

7.30 a.m. FRESH GROUND COFFEE
This is a coffee producing state and we are putting in supplies of local beans which we store way back in a locker adjacent to the engine, The unpleasant task of changing the transmission fluid is now tempered by the strong aroma of coffee.

8.00 a.m. ACRID PELICAN GUANO
We row ashore passing the white splattered jetty. The pelicans and the fishermen are inseparable. They earn their livings together.

8.30 a.m. EUGH! THAT'S ME I SMELL
Not bad but definitely there. Hey, it was a mile and half row and we're cruisers.

9.00 a.m. SWEET FRESH FISH
The Co-operative market sells fish fresh off the pangas that return from their night labors. Shrimp, red snapper, sierra mackerel, grouper, octopus, dorado ... its all here and only hours out of the water.

9.30 a.m. COMFORT FOOD - STEWED CALF'S HEAD
We walk up the hill past "Yanet's" taco stand. A plastic table and a few chairs on the sidewalk outside the front door of Yanet's house serve as a gathering point for a gabbing group of locals, all munching down on taco's filled with something unspeakable that's boiling in a pot to the side. Unspeakable or not the brothy smell makes me hungry.

10.00 a.m. NAUSEATING DEAD DOG
There are dogs everywhere here, loved and unloved. None have collars. Most have homes. But those that don't often look pretty manky., and as we walk through town the rank odor of rotting corpse occasionally pumps up. Hurry on past it.

10.30 a.m. PLANTANOS, FRESH BREAD AND RAID - ALL MIXED TOGETHER
We stop in a liltle Mini-super, selling Abarrottes (groceries). About half the size of a single car garage, and often the front room of someone's private house, these are on every block. The selection is sparse, but they have a little of everything.

11.00 a.m. EUGH - CRUISER ODOR AGAIN
We pass friends in the street, and although he's proud of his linen shirts it doesn't help. He's a cruiser and he smells too.

11.30 a.m. TOO MANY TO SEPARATE
We stop at the municipal market, many varied stalls in one large building Fruits ...many tropical, smoked peppers, chicken, fish and fishermen, tamales and menudo all together under on roof. A riot.

12.30 p.m. WARM FRESH TORTILLAS
Every few blocks there is a tortilleria that turns out piping hot corn tortillas by the kilo. We buy ½ a kilo, but only ¼ will make it back to the boat. We eat the rest on the fly.

1.30 p.m. SMOKED SIERRA
For lunch, Sierra Mackerel, smoked over mangrove, some rice, a Pacifico and a lime. Simple. Delicious.

2.30 p.m. REALLY NASTY BAD SEWER
On the way back to the dinghy the stone cobbled street crosses a culvert that really reeks. Hey, it has to go somewhere.

3.30 p.m. DUSTY STREETS AND TIRED OLD ENGINES
Like the panga fishermen the drivers here know only two speeds - stopped or flat out and also like the fishermen's outboards the car and truck engines are kept alive way past their life expectancy. The consequence is that any busy street is thick with an eye tearing mixture of dust and fumes.

5.00 p.m. FRIED DOUGH AND CINNAMON
Crossing the plaza we are drawn to the churros man cooking up great swirls of dough in his vat of oil, turning them with a metal hook when brown and then dipping them in sugar and cinnamon and breaking them into small pieces to put in a bag to go. Healthy? No. But I defy you to resist.

5.30 p.m. INCENSE- BURNING COCONUT HUSKS
Back in the dinghy we row out past a group of beachside palapa restaurants. The mangrove estuary close to here produces nasty little gnats called jejenes, which bite like crazy, but the restaurants burn coconut husks in small saucepans on the ground to act as natural insect repellant and keep the no-see-ums away.

6.00 p.m. SAGE AND CREOSOTE BUSH
Back on Mandy it's sundowner time. Here a considerable way off the beach we can smell the land in wafts drifting over from the hills behind the town.