Strangers in Paradise

No discharge sign in Chacala

12-31-2010 in La Cruz

Wow, what an adventure!!..Alex and Kaitlyn arrived Dec.29th as planned. But NO RONELLE!!!..Seems she had a passport meltdown and required 3 trips to LAX to finally board the plane Dec. 30th. She IS persistant!! I had moved the boat to Marina Vallarta a few days prior so as to be close the airport.


After we picked up Ronelle at the airport we went shopping at Wal-Mart. Yep, this is the best place to provision. The girls went wild in the produce section while Alex and I exchanged knowing glances. A taxi full of groceries and back to the boat we went. After a fantasic Italian dinner overlooking the marina we all crashed.


The next morning, New Years Eve, we motored the five miles north to La Cruz where I got us a slip for the day/night so we could go into the small town there for some celebration. We had dinner at a local joint called Philo's. The owner is an Ex-pat that sailed into town one day and never left. La Cruz is very rustic, with cobble stone streets, friendly locals and sever nice restaurants. Philo also plays in the house band and Alex was interested in one of the players banging on a washboard. Complete with cymbols and cow bells. I expect he'll have one of his own soon enough. Philo's was packed with Ex-Pats that made even me feel young. We stayed till about 10-30 then walked back to the boat. We stayed up long enough to do the Happy New Year thing, then hit the sack so we could leave the next morning for Chacala.


Chacala is a small village about 60 miles north of Puerto Vallarta. It's name means " where there are Shrimp" in Nahuatl. In the 1980's Dr. Laura del Valle,  a Zen Buddhist,  built a lodge for medical
students to come and stay while helping the poor. It retains the rustic flavor, with cobblestone streets and open markets. We were there during the holidays, so it was packed with Mexican tourists. We explored the town a bit and Ronelle made an appointment at a spa for a massage at a place we had seen from the boat. Alex found some interesting photo opportunities (see pix).


Ronelle and Kaitlyn, being the more adventerous ones went snorkling several times. The water was a bit murky, about 73 F and calm for the most part. Alex threw iron at the local fish and caught a nice Bonita, which I quickly turned into Ceveche'.MMMMM!!!

Iguanas in love....

Crocs

Paradise Village Pool

Underwater grotto

Girls in the hot tub

After 3 beautiful days in Chacala we un-glued the anchor from the bottom and headed back south for Puerto Vallarta. As we had been to two different marinas already, I took the crew to Paradise Village. This place has everything a fine resport shoold have. Fine marina, shopping malls, hotels, pool and a beautiful beach. If you were taken there blindfolded, you might not even know you were in Mexico. We did, however, have time to take a long dingy ride up the estuary up from the Marina, on a jungle cruise. It goes on for a few miles. We were looking for crocadilles. As we can around one sharp bend, we saw two sitting on a bank. As we neared them, they both were spooked and took off into the water, straight at us!!!   Everybody screamed for a second till we realized they were more afraid of us than we were of them. Ronelle, ever the perpared one, caught it all on video.  We also saw many giant iguanas of different colors. Even two that we caught doing the wild thing, LOL

Everybody had a great time taking pictures poolside ( and underwater, thanks to Ronelle), walking on the beach, having our last supper at sunset, beachside. All quite serene and romantic. We all seemed to avoid talking about time running out.........

And then , suddenly it seemed, they were gone.................

Al Fresco... Part Deaux......

After 4 weeks in a Marina I finally tired of the yacht club, starbux, the mall and feeling like I was back in Encino. Plus the expense was getting to me!

Earlier this week I pulled the plug, lit off the engines and headed 5 miles north in the bay to La Cruz de Huanacaxtle ( try saying THAT fast!). There is a very nice marina there, but also an anchorage that is really popular with the cruising crowd, of which I feel more comfortable. 34 saiboats and me, the lone powerboater. When I got here there was a sailboat named Buena Vista anchored next to me, crewed by a couple from Ventura. Don and Debbie Robertson. He's an Aussie, she a local gal.  They are heading to Barra de Navidad and I hope to meet up with them if I get that far south. Sometime next year they plan on going to the South Pacific. They invited me along but I declined, LOL

Living "on the hook" is totally different than being tied to a dock.  But thats what I came here for, so i am getting used to it. The anchorage is right outside the marina and for a small fee I can use their dingy dock to get into the town of La Cruz. It's about half rustic Mexican town with great charm and half condo development. The old part is really quiant, where everybody's front door is open and people are outside most always. Very friendly. This would be a cool place to have a 2nd home, as many Norte Americanos do.

An interesting thing is that Puerto Vallarta is in a different state than La Cruz, therefore a different time zone. My ship's clock is set to P.V. time, but my cell phone can;t make up it's mind where it is. So, someitmes I wake up not sure what time it really is. Not that it matters, but it seems I've spent so much of my life on a time schedule it has been a bit confusing.

Another interesting change in Mexico since I was last here is the appearance of the "Big Box Store". In P.V. there is a Costco, Home Depot, Wal-Mart and  a Sam's Club. Bucerias has their own version called Mega. Less English is spoken, but what a differnce in prices!!. I had been shopping at the Mall market. In some cases, prices were half.

The weather here has gotten a bit cooler. HIgh 70's during the day. low 60's at nite. Perfect!. No wonder there are soooo many Canadians here.

In any event, family will be here in 10 days. We'l be heading for Chacala for a few days, probibly exlore more of P.V. proper and just relax. And celebrate the new year!!!

Living Al Fresco...six weeks on my own. Part 1

Canadian chilli sux!!

 After the departure of my delivery crew I had a lot of time on my hands. I was still at Paradise village and several projects aboard were calling my name. Fisrt was finding a new propeller for the dingy motor. The origional one had given up the ghost after we arrived in Puerto Vallarta. My dingy is my car, so it's an essential piece of equipment.

Let me interject here to share that my boat ran perfectly on the trip down. The only issue we had was a generator waterpump impeller that went out a few days before we arrived in PV.  My bad, as that was the only one that I had forgotten to bring a spare for. We had TWO overnighted to Brian (Tom's friend) in New York and he brought it with him. Now I have a spare.

Other than the prop. everything else was cosmetic, so it was easy to procrastinate. Which I did!!!

My typical day begins with coffee on the bridge, an hour of Jerry and then some more coffee. Breakfast around 10am. Then is a bit of cleaning. Sometimes I'll walk to the mall and do a bit of shopping. Afternoons, I'll hit the beach/pool and read for a bit and admire the quivering , young flesh. This place does'nt feel like Mexico at all. In order to get to Puerto Vallarta proper, it requires a taxi or bus ride. There was a bridge washed out last summer that is still under repairs. During peak traffic, it can take up to an extra hour t get into town. I've only ventured into town twice since I got here.

There are a lot of Xpats here, especially Canadians (EH?) I've met a few and this is a very friendly community. Most live in the condo developments around Nuevo Vallarta during the winter. From what I hear, it get so hot and humid here in the summer, it becomes a ghost town.

Canadians at play...Chilli cook-off in Bucerias

Alex, Kaitlyn and Ronelle are going to be arriving Dec. 29th , staying thru New Years, so I'm really looking forward to the company.

Exploring Banderas Bay

We arrived in Banderas Bay on Nov. 3 and after the long passage from Cabo San Lucas we went straight to Paradise Village Marina in Nuevo Vallarta. This is a beautiful place, luxury hotels, beach, cable tv, and WiFi. We rested, washed the boat and had breakfast at the Paradise Yacht Club.

The next day we moved to the municipal marina near the airport as Tom had a friend from New York (Brian) flying in on the 5th. This made it a lot closer to pick him up and gave us another chance to do some marina shopping. We found Marina Vallarta to be a bit run down and alive with locals trying to sell us anything one can imagine. This was definately not the place for serenity. The docks were also a bit run-down. While we were there my inverter/charger kept blowing their breakers. I got out my volt meter to investigate and found 137 volts. YIKES!!

Next morning I woke to find a multi-colored diesel sheen on the water. That was enough for me. As soon as the crew roused themselves from a night of shore-leave, we departed for Marina La Cruz. Even though it's only a few miles north, it was a totally different world. This is where a lot of cruisers hang out while in Banderas Bay. Very quiet. This was more of what I was looking for. While there I found my friends from Channel Islands Harbor, Rick and Karen aboard Eyes of the World and fellow powerboat cruisers Larry and Lena aboard Hobo.

Behind the Marina is a little town called La Cruz de Huanacaxtle (try pronouncing THAT one!) It's a really quaint little town where many X-pats reside along with the locals. What a great place! We had dinner at Filo's , which is the local hot spot with a gringo band.

Next moring we left Marina La Cruz to explore more. Banderas Bay is appx 20 mies wide by 15 miles deep. There are a lot of places to see. Near the north end are a small group of islands called the Las Tres Marietas. Care must be taken when approaching as all the isands are surrounded by rocks and reefs. What a beautiful spot. Tour boats from the mainland where there with boatloads of eco-tourists, but we found a good place to anchor for the day. Tom and Tucker went snorkling while Brian and I swam of the stern of the boat.

After a day of sun and fishing we cruised north to the far end of Banderas Bay and anchored up at Punta de Mita. We dingy'd ashore to the small town and resort there. There are a zillion waterfront palapa restaurants there. A bit pricey but the food was great and the views priceless.

As the time for my crew to be in PV was winding down, I gave them the option of where to spend their final days aboard. It was unanimous, Paradise Village was the favorite, although mine was La Cruz.
The last three days were spent at the beach, volleyball court and getting to know new friends from the U.S. Friday morning things were a bit quiet abord as everyone packed for their re-entry back to reality.

Everyone, that is, except ME!!!

Delayed departure and the trip south

We had origionally planned to leave Oct. 25th, but the weather gods had other plans in the form of a small craft warning. We waited till the 26th, but the flaggs we're still flying. Carefully studying the forcast we could see that there would be a weather window opening all the way south for us if we left on the 26th. So we did.

The crew at the start was myself, of course, Tom Morton, Bob Taylor and Tucker ( a friend of Tom's from Oregon) Everybody seemed to get along really well and we soon fell into a rythum with watches being 3 hours on, and 9 hours off. This is a great luxury enableing one to sleep, shower, watch TV etc.

It was a bit rough out at 6 am on the 26th when we left, but it was pretty much on the stern. We yawed around for the first 20 miles, then settled into a large following sea with almost no wind. We were FINALLY going south!!! 24 hours later we arrived in Ensenada. AS it turned out it was the perfect time to leave.

We spent the day in Ensenada clearing into Mexico doing paper work, cleaning the boat a bit and getting some last minute provisioning. We left ensenada at 9 PM that night to an absolutely flat sea. We could the the reflection of the stars in the water. We had this condition all the way to Turtle Bay which we arrived at on the 29th after a 36 hour run. The Baja HaHa sailboat race was in Turtle Bay when we got there , so it was packed with sailboats. We refueled, got more beer for the crew and were back underway in 90 minutes flat.

The weather south of Turtle Bay was a bit more windy with a large following sea once again. Not a bad ride, but we were glad we to not be going north. We had started fishing at dawn the first day out but didn't get a bite till we were south of Turtle Bay....Then WHAM!, two Wahoo in a short time. Fresh sashimi!!! Then a Yellowtail to round out the menu.

Along the way we stopped in Bahia Santa Maria, about 180 miles north of Cabo San Lucas for some rest and relaxation. Tom and Tucker went ashore to explore, and we spent the night there. The next day the wind was blowing in Bahia Santa Maria and we we're conntemplating staying another nite there. Weather reports said conditions would only get worse so we left at 10 am. Once outside we found the wind mostly died and away we went again to medium choppy seas on the stern. Not a bad ride at all.

23 hours later we rounded Cabo Falso and viola!!!, Lands End.

Cabo San Lucas is expensive. I paid $164.00 US for a slip for one night!. Bob left us there to visit his Mom who has a homoe there and it was nice to meet her and her sister.
We changed oil in the main engines, installed new fuel filters and departed Cabo on November 2 at 3:30 am for the 300 mile run to Puerto Vallarta. We had origionally thought of crossing to Mazataln (180 Miles), and then heading further south to PV, but this would have made the trip a hundred miles further overall, and added another day to our trip. As it turned out, going directly to Puerto Vallarta was the right choice. It was smooth seas all the way accross.......The weather gods had smiled upon us the entire trip down.

We arrived Nov. 3rd at 4 PM in Puerto Vallarta for a total of 1150 nautical miles.....