Bahia Santiago

Playa La Boquita in Bahia Santiago

Mucho umbrellas!

OMG!  This is a festive place!  Just around the corner from our "remote" anchorage is this lively beach scene of Santiago. We anchor in a large shallow half moon shaped bay that is literally covered in colorful umbrellas fronting the many "ramadas" or open air restaurants as they are called here.  It must be holiday week as the beach is teaming with people swimming, vendors peddling and music blaring! But in a good and festive way...not the annoying blare of the Cabo San Lucas scene.

Capt.  Juan enjoys the beach scene!

Beach toys, anyone?

I bought a new dress from this beach vendor.

We enjoyed margaritas  and shrimp at this very colorful ramada.  I think we were the only "gringos" in this place !

We enjoy the scene by dropping into a crowded ramada for cold margaritas and watch the day go by.

We'll have the usual...rocks or blended? was a struggle for our non-english speaking waitress!

We watch the food go out as fast as the family can prepare it...also was interesting to have the waiter bring out the uncooked fish to present to the patron for inspection before cooking...only in the finest restaurants have I seen this before!

Fish presented to diner before cooking on open grill.

Oooh, smelled so good!

Food vendors preparing delicious offerings...

Fruit platter: jicama, cucumber,watermelon, mango on stick

Buried treasure?

The people are all so friendly...I spy a young girl getting her hair braided. And she wanted me to take her picture...

Sweet!

The beach scene!

A family enjoying the day!

The only hard part about this day was the dingy ride back out to the boat, timing the waves so as not to break on us and then hoisting the dingy back up on boat at night for safety, successfully accomplishing these tasks while under the influence of margaritas! What a hoot!

Next day...

I went to the Saturday flea market in Santiago with friends, Deborah and Danny on s/v Cyclades.

While they bought new silver jewelry for Deborah, I  bought a new supply of vegetables, had awesome fish tacos and enjoyed the culture...oh, and we bought fireworks for New Year's Eve...rockets!

Off today to sail over to Las Hadas resort for the New Year...

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!

South to Carrizal

Wizard anchored at Carrizal

The day after Christmas...on the road again...
Such beautiful pristine coastline...until you see the smoke stacks of Manzanillo  off in the distance... too bad, it's sight takes away from the view of beautiful hotels and villas perch on the cliffs we pass by.

We sailed...or I should say we motored from Melaque down the coast a few miles to Ensenada Carrizal, a beautiful remote anchorage, known for it's diving.  We were the only boat there except for some daily dive tours, until Shindig shows up!  It was fun to see our friends again and joined them for "happy hour"with their guest and fellow sailor, Tana visiting for the week.  We marvel at how lucky we are to be anchored in this undeveloped bay  having cocktails with ICE aboard the festive Shindig decorated in Christmas lights!  We plan a dive and the next day all headed out to the point where we snorkeled several coves, dove in a really cool cave hole with surge and lots of colorful fish.

The dingy master and co-pilot

John is always pushing my "envelope" to get me to try new things and this certainly was a first to swim in an ocean cave and let the surge  carry you back and forth into a cave...once in the cave the water  was very clear and almost calm, yet surge pushed you up and down as the volume of water gushes in and out.  Explored a blow hole, too and let the spray wash over us. Very cool.

Inside the water "cave"...you can almost see John

Next day Shindig sails off to the next bay...and in sails other cruisers on Cyclades. We meet Danny and Debbie who are 10 yr+ live aboards cruising Mexico.

Trying my "stand" at paddle boarding 

Debbie is a paddle boarder and invites me to try.  It's quite easy and we navigate the whole bay checking out the rocks and fish as we pass over. The water is so clear! But, boy the next day I was sore! The core muscles group used to hold your balance and the twist of your hips to paddle does give a great exercise and I can see why this is becoming such a popular sport!

Whose the Granny in the glasses?  Making way towards Santiago

Three days out in a remote anchorage makes us want three things:

1. -need more beer or cold margarita with ICE!
2. -need to empty the garbage
3. -need some internet (we are secret information junkies!) 

So off we sail to the next bay of Santiago.... 

Noche Buena in Bahia de Navidad

Anchored in Melaque

We are anchored is the charming tourist/fishing village of Melaque in the Bahia de Navidad.  We left Banderas Bay  Dec. 22  sailing down the coast around the famed Cabo Corrientes with 25+ knot winds all the way! We had the best sail of the whole trip with full genoa and reefed main. Both of us held watch until 9:00pm, then took turns "catnapping" throughout the night. We passed two cargo tankers during the night. Thank goodness for the AIS ship locator on our chart plotter. We would never have seen these giants until 6 miles ...that's usually the light distance on the horizon...but, these ships are traveling pretty fast and it's good to have early warning that they are in your waters. We both got a little short tempered over the course of the evening and were exhausted by the time we pulled into Bahia de Navidad at 11:00am....time for anchor down!

There are a lot of "Baha'ers" here for Christmas...so we send a "hello" out on the radio...Shindig hails back and we meet Nancy & Rob for margaritas and shrimp dinner at recommended open air palapa, Senor Froy's.

Colorful umbrellas line the beach

What a charming beach scene! This is a Mexican beach resort with a few Americans and Canadians thrown in. Colorful umbrellas line the beach in front of every palapa restaurant,  families swimming in the water, vendors selling their wares and fishing pangas towing people on"banana boat" rides and music make this a cheerful place! There's a great little town just back off the beach front.  The next day we meet up with Autumn Wind ( Brian & Elizabeth) and Aphrodite ( Barry, Peggy & Jenn) and spend a shared lunch of garlic shrimp then explore the busy town...

Almost got a picture of John...

Neat shops line the cobbled streets

Barry entertains the kids with his juggling

Ooohh...uno, dos, tres balls...

Smile! Jenn, Barry, Peggy, Elizabeth, Brian,  John's arm

Shrimp, shrimp and more shrimp...yumm!

We stop a passing fisherman who sells us a fresh lobster for 100 pesos (that's about $8.00) ! This will be our Christmas Eve dinner with organic green beans and rice..

Lobster for Christmas Eve dinner!

We discover that this day Dec 24 is the Mexican holiday, Noche Buena, which is more important to the locals than our Christmas Day, Dec 25.  The shops close early to celebrate with families, play along the beach and just relax...we watch the fireworks late into the night!

The Calvary Rescue!

s/v Fluenta stalled in the water

One story I forgot to share was the circling of boats on our passage from Jaltemba to Punta de Mita. Fluenta, Heavy Metal, Wizard and Autumn Wind all left Chacala sailing together to the next bay of Jaltemba.  We spent a short day on a not very exciting beach, a rolly night at anchor, so decided to keep going the next day...

While about to round the point, s/v Fluenta radioed that they were taking on water, and needed to slow to investigate the problem....

Heavy Metal to the rescue!

Heavy Metal, a 60 ft Aluminum boat 

 Wizard and Heavy Metal radio back that we are "standing by" for assistance... we circle the downed Fluenta like the Calvary circling the wagon train! I wish I had a video to show the "bad ass" Heavy Metal slowing circling Wizard and Fluenta in the middle of the ocean!

...turns out, no emergency... it's a leak in the engine exhaust system..they will have to limp into the next marina, Paradise Village to have repairs... 

We all "stand down" and part our ways...Wizard to La Cruz, Heavy Metal says goodbye and heads south towards Bara de Navidad. We'll all meet up again soon, I'm sure!

 Sailing in Banderas Bay, Mx

La Cruz

The Marina Riviera Nayarit at La Cruz

We are in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle or simply, La Cruz, a small town south of Punta Mita and north of Puerto Vallarta.  We decided to stay in  a marina for a few days to clean up the boat and work on a few projects. The big one was to get the outboard motor on the dingy running again...we've been dingy-less since we dunked the motor in salt water back in Chacala...now, that's a story... we had taken a dingy ride into the beach for dinner...this night the swells got bigger during the evening and on our return, we caught a big wave over the bow and swamped the dingy! 

Well.. back to the boat John thought it best to drain the dingy of water, so pulled  the bow end up... not thinking about the engine on the stern end and submersed the engine in salt water! 

(obviously, thinking was not part of this process!)  anyway, dingy motor was wet and dead!  So, we've been dingy-less..until we could use a dock to work on it.  Here in La Cruz Marina, John was able to drain the oil, dry out the carburetor and get it going.

Fishermen and pongas

Also, we've met up with our friends on s/v Silk, Dot & Larry and s/v Autumn Wind, Elizabeth & Brian. It's been fun to hang out together. We've dined at several great places, Charlie's has a great pizza, Anna Banana's had music for the "over-aged rockers"...it was fun to watch wrinkles in beach attire and crogs dancing to classic rock!...guess, that'l be me someday! and then there are little family run tacorias, where you poke your head into a doorway and ask if they are open? and then sit down and they cook for you the special of that day! So much good food! Lots of seafood.  Every evening local music is offered somewhere with happy hour to temp the locals.  It's so fun and hard to resist this lively social scene! We even had a shrimp and octopus pizza at one of the "happy hour" events. We decided it was easier and cooler not to cook on the boat and just eat out. So many choices!

Huichol Indian Art

The community of people who live here full time are mostly expatriates from the US and Canada. Some are sailors who sailed down on  previous Baha Ha Ha's and decided to stay.  The town has many philanthropic activities to help raise money to give back to the town and support kids. We visited the awesome farmer's market held every Sunday at the Marina. Many homemade goods: fresh strawberries and homemade greek yogurt, cheeses and french bread were among the special items not seen so far on our travels in Mexico.  Music, artisans and food vendors lined the seafood market to sell their wares.

Handmade cheeses

Local fried  chicken taco 

Farmer's Market along beach front

Farmer's Market food

Dot gives donation hair cut

La Cruz Marina is beautiful

Five days pass with hardly a blink! Last evening La Cruz Bash is a free social event to honor all the cruisers and local boaters- Cuban accoustic music, free samples of gourmet pizza,  tequilas and cigars!

Time to leave....we are headed up to Punta de Mita for a few days anchoring out to see some other parts!

San Blas and Jejenes

 San Blas

San Blas was a fun stop where we experienced the "real Mexico" with central plaza and mercado. We shopped for fresh produce, people watched at the plaza and ate at local restaurants. 

 Our taxi ride in from the beach was hilarious! Nancy "hitchhiked" a ride with the first car that passed by on the bumpy dirt road leading to San Blas...it was a beat-up Toyota Tercel driven by a "salty old gringo" who had relocated from the states in the "70's"..he talked just like the character "Cheech" of Cheech & Chong ...I think he was crazy!, but all six of us piled into this little car for a 50 pesos ride to San Blas.  I wish I had a picture of us all crammed into this car...don't tell my kids how dangerous this was...as he tried to pass a big dump truck !!!... 

  We enjoyed the anchorage at Matanchen, but as warned in the guide book, the "no see-ums, the tiny biting bugs called locally, jejenes, were awful!  We were cautious to douse ourselves with DEET everyday and we purposefully anchored 1/2 mile off the beach to escape these buggers...but they still found me! My legs and arms were covered in bites and I looked like I had the measles!  It took a week for the "itch" to go away!

 Jejene bites on my leg

Jungle tree roots

Signs for  the palapa restaurants

 The indoor plaza at the Le Petite Hotel

Nancy & Rob (Shindig) and Brian & Elizabeth (Autumn Wind)

 Statuary in the La Petite Hotel

Banana bread bakery... a specialty!

Old ox cart

 Community church

The Tobara Jungle tour...

Tourists for a day!

Reminded me of the "Pirates of the Caribbean"...

Old daddy crocodile

 Movie set on the jungle tour

John, Brian & Elizabeth, Nancy & Rob

 OMG...did you see that one??!!

 Swimming at Tobara Springs

The jungle tour was very interesting and our guide slows to show us many species of birds,  fish and crocodiles!  It was so exciting to see these big lizards in the wild.

We end the jungle tour at the Tobara fresh water spring swimming hole. There is a small restaurant serving the tour guests. We enjoy the peaceful setting and "cervezas frios"(cold beer).

Our last evening in Matachen, San Blas is spent playing dominos at the palapa restaurant on the beach near our anchorage, sharing more cervezas and good chat! ...and mucho jejenes!!! AAhh!!