It's now Thursday and we are settling in. After yesterdays journey to Immigration, bank and the grocery store, I went back up to the marina office to finish checking in here. I knew we still needed to go to the Capitania de Puerto for the last bit of checking into Mexico. The marina office is closed from about 1300 to 1600 so I walked up once I saw their doors open to see about the Capitania de Puerto and get checked in here at the marina. I was met with "Oh, when you are going to leave, come up a day or so ahead and we can do the marina paperwork then"!! I know Mexico is laid back but not this laid back. Don't check into the marina till it's time to leave? OK, fine by me. As for going to the Capitania de Puerto? "Come and see me tomorrow and I'll show you where you need to go"(insert Mañana here). Again, fine by us. We will have to take a taxi as it's a bit of a walk and we sure want to stop back in at the grocery store to really top up on our old favorites that we have missed. Taxis aren't expensive but in the heat of the day, a necessity.
About 1730, we decided to head up to the restaurants/bar and have a beer. There are several restaurants here in the marina complex but nothing that screams out"BAR". We saw an upstairs to one of the buildings and it looks sort of like a bar so up we went to be greeted by the manager(Besame Mucho restaurant). He spoke enough English that it was easy to converse. "Where are you from?", Where are you going?"Is this your first time here in Huatalco?" We filled him in on our plans and then he told us that since we had just come in and it was the first time at his restaurant that the first drinks were on the house. Tracy ordered a glass of wine and I had a frozen Margarita. The manager was smart enough to put us along the railing so we could be seen from below, encouraging others to come up(smart business man). Have already looked at his menu(and feeling a bit guilty about the free booze)we ordered the Quesadillas with flanks steak(also called Arrachara). We'd fallen in love with Arrachara when we were last here and had thought of it many times over the years. He was thrilled that we wanted to order some food. One for each of us. Off he went and shortly, a server came by with our drinks and some bread sticks along with a seasoned butter and pesto(slightly spicy) to have on the bread. The music played in the background old favorites and the clouds drifted by above us along with just a slight breeze. We had the place to ourselves. Our Quesadillas showed up with steak and cheese and spices on the tortillas along with a healthy pile of chopped lettuce, carrots and onions to add to our Quesadillas. What they called Quesadillas was more of a soft tortilla taco which was just fine. With the Quesadillas came a special bit more spicy sauce to add to the mix on the tortillas. It was great!! Tracy had another glass of wine and I had a coke and we both continued on eating our unexpected dinner(we had just gone up for beers, remember). By the time we were finishing, a group of two had joined us along with another group of 7 so it was an active night for the place. Total cost was $335 pesos or $17.04 for everything! A great dinner at a really great price.
Once the office opens here, we will be heading for the Capitania de Puertos office to finalize everything and then hit the grocery stores and see if we can find a cell phone service store. The marina has free internet but having phone service would be nice. We also need to take our propane tank in for filling and that's going to take a taxi as the station is way out of town.

We're now back from finishing checking in with the Capitania de Puerto and hitting the Super Che grocery store as well as the local phone/internet place. We took off about 0900 and grabbed cab and headed into town(cost--$30 pesos=$1.50US). His office is right beside the other "marina" that's supposed to be here in Huatulco. We found it to not really be a "marina" but a water basin for the fishing and tourist boats. There were no slips, no docks, only lots of small boats for the tourists and the occasional scuba diver. We're both glad we didn't try to come in here as it would have been a waste of time and fuel. Marina Chahue has been great with nice restaurants and office people. It's also the cheapest marina we've seen in years at just $23US per night.
Once we found the Capitania de Puerto's office, he wasn't in but showed up about 5 minutes later along with two other officials. The Capitania spoke enough English to get us through the process but it was almost like none of the three officials had ever seen the forms for someone checking in from a foreign country. Papers were pulled from our pouch and copies, lots of copies were made and routinely stapled together and then we started in on their forms. Forms, forms and more forms. It does slow things down when no one is really sure what goes on what line and only one of the three men "understood" English. Officer Reyes was great to work with laid back in how we filled in the paperwork. In the end, we had to pay for our "tonnage" of what our documentation says our boat weighs--33 ton gross and 30 ton net. Both of these figures are incorrect but it's what's on the form so it's "official" We ended up giving him our credit card so they could charge==$434 peros or $22.55US. It's like a port fee to come into their port. We made sure to get receipts for every peso we paid so if they ask us to see a receipt, we have them. If not, well they can charge us all over again. It took a while but we finished just about 1100 and headed back to the main road for a cab but instead hiked to "Super Che". Exercise is supposed to be good for you.?. We'd been told it was the place to go for getting our phone up and running but instead, it was next door at Koppel. Here's the process. Look at what they offer(it's never what you want). Decide. Go to the cashier to buy the Simm card. Take the receipt back to the phone kiosk and then choose the plan again. As expected, the sales person, as cute as she could be, didn't understand nor speak any English so we had to wait for a translator. Once we snagged the man, all went smoothly. We'd chosen a plan for four gigs and unlimited calls inside Mexico and the United States and free Facebook(not that I care about that last one). Cost was $500 pesos, about $26.00US. Hand the money to the sales girl who rushes off for the cashier as we speak to the English speaking sales person. She returns with our new Simm card which gets installed and checked. OOPS, it doesn't work with our phone(shades of AT&T in the US Virgins). In the end, after swapping out a Simm card or two, they got it all set up and running and we were off again back to Super Che. Once we entered, we headed for the cafeteria near the back and had a quick lunch--Two pieces of chicken for me while Tracy had a slice of pepperoni pizza and two cokes. Cost, just over $3.50US! Now that our tummies were full, we lost that urge to splurge on buying more and more food to take back. That urge that comes with an empty stomach to buy buy buy what ever you see wether you need it or not but only because the box it comes in looks so inviting. I urge everyone to go grocery shopping this way--eat first, shop second. Did we buy a lot? Not really but we covered our bases and now we are better supplied. With us planning on taking a taxi back to the marina, we got lots of the heavy stuff--case of UHT milk for an example.
We're back and all unloaded with everything stowed so we don't look to bad. There is another "super" market if we head east and we may try it tomorrow. Heck, we haven't even washed the salt off poor Zephyr from the trip here, but after three days of working with assorted officials, we are at least finally checked into MEXICO!!!