Yelapa to Tenacatita
03 March 2011 | Mexican Riviera
Hello everybody!
We are now anchored in Bahia Tenacatita. South of Cabo Corrientes on the Mexican Riviera. We left Banderas Bay from the little town of Yelapa Tuesday morning around midnight. We spent two nights in Yelapa. Yelapa is a little difficult to explain. Back in the 15 or 16 hundreds the Mexican government ceded the land back to the native Indians. Yelapa is only about 15 - 20 miles from Puerto Vallarta, but because it is situated in a narrow steep canyon in a small natural bay, the village is quite isolated. They just got hooked up to the electrical grid in 2001. And even today there are no roads to the rest of the world. The only way in is by boat or horseback due to the steep jungle terrain.
We had read all this in our guide books and expected a more or less primitive native culture. What we got was quite different. As we arrived at the entrance to the bay there were two pangeros competing for our business. Each wanted to rent us a mooring buoy. The bay is so steep sided that it is very difficult to anchor. It's too deep too near to shore, and often there is a shore break due to the swells that come rolling in from the open sea. What they do is fill an old refrigerator with concrete and drop it to the bottom with a line attached and use that to moor visiting boats. The mooring we used was just 600 feet from the surf line. It was over 100' deep. When the wind was blowing, we were very comfortable with the bow facing the incoming waves. Unfortunately much of the time the wind was calm and the boat lay in the trough of the waves and rolled wildly.
There are several palapa beach restaurants very near the mooring field. And there are rocks that come down the mountain all the way to the beach separating one side of town from the other section of town. To get from one side to the other you need to either go by boat or mountain goat yourself up the narrow pedestrian "streets". It's a crazy quilt town. All straight up and down. The "roads" often turn into stair cases, all with homemade steps of varying grade. The height of the steps change all the time. But the views are spectacular. So when you get winded or your legs give out, you just look out over the bay and up the mountain until you muster the effort to go on.
There are two waterfalls. We hiked up to the little one. Near the pool at the bottom of the falls was a little palapa bar offering killer margaritas. After our hike up the steep hill we took advantage of the libations and took in the view of the falls and the surrounding jungle. The falls are about the height of the lower falls at Multnomah Falls. Not nearly the volume of water. But very pretty. Just down from the pool, there is a bridge that crosses the stream. Homemade concrete and re-bar. Stacked alongside the bridge were washbasins and buckets of laundry waiting for attention. We sipped our margaritas and watched the birds while listening to the music of the water coming down the naked rock cliff. We observed the vegetation all around the water. Trees, vines, flowers. A riot of green.
Then we walked back down into town. On the way down we took more time to look around and "get" what the place is all about. There were almost as many gringos as there were Mexicans. Lots of rentals. Rooms. Houses. Very 1960's Height/Ashbury. In one fairly large open palapa restaurant there were dozens of odd photographs. We didn't really understand what they were all about until we bumped into the flyer advertising the symposium on photographing supernatural images. Another poster was for a masseuse. Apparently she, or he, specialized in releasing your spirit energies. Another poster was for natural childbirth. The picture it carried was of a tall thin lady with a big ball for a belly. The ball was the black/white ying/yang symbol.
We really enjoyed the town and would have spent more time there except for the rolliness of the place. Ashore there was lots more to see, but back on the boat at night it got really crazy. So we decided to head out even though the weather forecast was calling for 20 knots of wind around Cabo Corrientes, the southern headland for Banderas Bay. We set the alarm for midnight, which only gave us a couple hours of sleep. We really don't like to make arrivals or departures during hours of darkness, but Yelapa is a wide open bay. We just needed to slip our mooring and avoid the other moorings. Which was a little tricky since it was a very dark night. Heavy overcast. No moon or stars. Everything went smoothly. After a few minutes of anxiety we had Yelapa in our glowing phosphorescent wake and we were on our way. We weren't sure of our destination. Either Chamela, 90 miles down the coast or Tenacatita 115 miles. We checked into the HAM net around 7AM to see if we could talk to anybody in Chamela. It has a reputation of being a rolly anchorage, and we had had enough of rolly. But we were not getting very good reception on the radio. Lots of noise. We called on the VHF radio for "any station in Chamela" when we were in range around 3 PM, but got no answer. At that time we were motor sailing, which means that we were using both the engine and the sails for speed, and we were really making good time. We had the seas and the wind astern of us and were always making over 6 knots, often more than 7, and occasionally while surfing down big seas we were doing better than 8. The wind was in the neighborhood of 20 knots, and the seas between 6 and 8 feet. Dead astern.
We finally rounded the headland of Tenacatita Bay and screamed into the anchorage just as the sun was setting. We found a spot to put the anchor down amongst a group of 15 other boats. I was wearing a headlamp to put the sail cover on. By the time we hit the rack we had put in a 20 hour day, and slept the sleep of the dead.
More later. Hope this finds you all healthy and happy.
Jeff and Janie
Adagio