La Cruz de Huanacaxtle - March 31, 2009

Banderas Bay is one of our favorite bays. The weather is fairly consistent in the high 80's with light to strong winds everyday. The ocean life is abundant. November through March is home to the migratory humpback whales. We have seen a decline in the whale watching the past few weeks.



We left Paradise Village in Puerto Vallarta 2 weeks ago to return to La Cruz. We enjoy the small town Mexican flavor of La Cruz, which is primarily a rustic fishing village. La Cruz has a population of 1,621 people. La Cruz is surrounded by many beaches and little towns which we have been visiting.


We walk to La Manzanilla beach with Angel on a daily basis. Distiladeras Beach is a short bus ride away which has long white beaches and is good for swimming. Sayulita is a small town about 20 minutes from La Cruz known for it's surfing.

In addition to exploring our surrounding areas, my friend Linda on Samantha and I have spent many days shopping at our leisure. We have found that shopping is done better without men.


Linda and I have spent time exploring the indigenous art of the Huichol people, who have lived in the Sierra Madre mountains since pre-Columbian times. Their art is very bright in colors using tiny beads and yarn. The art is a display of human shapes interspersed with animal forms and linked to the spiritual world.

We have enjoyed spending the last few days with our friends Rick and Karen on Eyes of the World (from Ventura). We have tried new restuarants, shared our cruising adventures and played a great game of Mexican dominos, which is a favorite game among cruisers. In the marina and anchorage at La Cruz we have 7 boats from the Ventura area. Most of them we did not know previously, however, we look forward to continuing our friendships in Ventura.

We leave later in the week for Mazatlan. We will spend the rest of the season in the Mazatlan area. While we had originally planned to do the Sea or Cortez during April and May we changed our plans based on Wally's back. His back is healing well but still needs more time for recovery.

The highlight of this past week is the birth of my new grandaughter, Samantha Emily, born March 26, to my daughter Carrie and her husband Mike in Colorado Springs.

Sierra Madre Adventure-March 13, 2009

We explored the southern area of Banderas Bay in the Sierra Mountain range through Vallarta Adventures. Our friends on Endless Summer, Frank and Stefanie, joined us for the day. Their home town is also Ventura.


Mexico is about Family, Tradition, and Religion. Our first stop was El Tuito a small town discovered in 1525. It means sacred place. We visited the cemetery, church, and town. The first stop was the cemetery, so different from our current cemeteries in the States. The Day of the Dead or Day of the Skeleton is celebrated Nov. 2. The Day of the Little Angels is celebrated Nov. 1. On these days the whole family comes to the cemetery bringing favorites foods of the deceased loved one. The grave sites are decorated. The mariachis play, and favorite songs of the loved ones are played. It was told to us that the party last at the cemetery for 2 days. The culture believes they are not dead, that they are going to eternal life.


The biggest holiday in Mexico is the Day of Guadalupe, Mother of Mexico. The second biggest holiday is Mother's Day. The church in the town was Our Lady of Guadalupe. 89% of the people in Mexico are Catholic.


We toured the botanical gardens, which is considered a tropical deciduous forest. 60% of the trees loose their leaves during the dry season. We learned many random things such as plants cannot produce fruit, trees can only produce fruit. The tallest grass is bamboo, the tallest plant is a palm. The fiber of banana plants makes rope, shoes, baskets. Paper is made from banana leaves. We also cut into a gum tree. We collected the sap, added water, and we had gum. It chewed like gum, however, it was tasteless. Vanilla beans are an orchid. Vanilla is the most labor intensive product made.


Our last stop was the Tequila factory. This factory had more updated equipment than what we had previously experienced in Mazatlan. We tasted the agave plant after it was baked. It tasted similar to a sweet potato or yam, very fibrous, and it was very sweet. We have enjoyed these sight seeing tours as it has given us insight into the culture we have been living in these past months.


We had a first today. Underneath our bimini were thousands of bees. Now what do you do with bees on your boat and Wally is allergic to bees? One boater suggested the fire extinguisher. So Wally got out the extinguishers and I sprayed 4 bottles on the hive. The bees went everywhere, however, they were not dead. So then we got the water hose to squirt them. Oops, I got stung. Then the marina maintenance showed up to help and they took out the fire hose. They sprayed the fire hose for over an hour along with throwing buckets of soapy water on our canvas. Now our question is, what would we do at anchorage if we were to get a bee hive on our boat?


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San Sebastian, Jalisco, Mexico-March 10, 2009

We had a wonderful experience visiting San Sebastian, a colonial town, founded in the 1600's. It has a population of 506 people, elevation of 4200 feet, and about 1 1/2 hours east of Puerto Vallarta. It's the first time we've been above sea level in 6 months. San Sebastian was noted to be a town stuck in time.

The tour was very educational about the history of Mexico. Puerto Vallarta was a small fishing village of about 2,000 people in the 1960's. Puerto Vallarta became known with the movie Night of the Iguana, after which many Hollywood movie stars came to Puerto Vallarta. In 1968 the airport was built and has since become a tourist destination. Puerto Vallarta is the third largest tourist destination in Mexico.

Mexico's name means "the bellybutton of the moon". The story is too long to explain.

One of the local MD's noted that while America's economics are having a cough, Mexico is having pneumonia. The second largest source of income to Mexico is money being sent into Mexico from outside. Of note, today the exchange rate is 15.50 pesos to $1. (First source of income is oil and the third source of income is tourism).



We visited a hacienda that continues to operate as a bed and breakfast. Of current interest is that it has no electricity. It use to be a silver mine. The oldest commodities of Mexico is silver and coffee.


We visited a operating coffee plantation that has been owned by a local family for 5 generations. It is an organic farm. They used garlic, onion and chili for it chemicals. For shade they used fruit trees and then the ripen fruit is used as fertilizer on the soil. There were 25,000 plants (they actually look like trees)of which 65,000 pounds of coffee beans are hand picked. This yields about 3,500 pounds of coffee per year.


The town buildings were very old. They were built around the Catholic church and plaza, which is normal in Mexico. The roads were all cobblestone.

Puerto Vallarta-March 8, 2009

We have spent the week exploring the area of Nuevo Vallarta of which Paradise Village Resort and Marina is part of. Paradise Village Marina has 200 slips ranging from 26' to 200' The majority of the boats are power boats and many mega yachts. Our slip is at the base of the harbor which is good since we get a great breeze every day.

This 5 star resort has all the amenities such as swimming pools, restaurants, golf course, and shopping center. While this is nice we find it very touristy. The marina is at the mouth of many canals of which there are many beautiful homes on. It is quite jungly through the canals. There are crocidiles in the canals, so I have been advised not to kayak.

We have been enjoying catching up with our friends Doug and Marcy on Charm. One of the unique features of cruising is that you see people you know all up and down the coast of Mexico. If we were home traveling up and down the coast we would not know anyone.


We had a special concession dinner last night with our friends on EagerDreamer and Suebee. We have been having a long time discussion (since San Diego) whether the crackling noise heard underneath the boat hull at night was shrimp or whether it was electrolysis. I said it was shrimp. John said it was electrolysis. After much research and much discussion among ourselves and experts John finally conceded. The result was a lobster dinner cooked by John. It was delicious. I hope I can come up with another disagreement, and be right, for another lobster dinner. While the 3 boats, Andanzas, EagerDreamer and Suebee have all been together off and on since October we are all going different courses as the season winds down. Sad.

The Gold Coast-March 3, 2009

We left Barra on 2/26 heading to Bahia Tenacatita with our friends on Suebee. This is an anchorage about 15 miles north of Barra. We had winds 12-15 knots and seas 1-2 feet. This is a favored anchorage among cruisers. It was a calm anchorage. During the days we had dolphins floating around our boat. The coast line looks like scrubby dessert with palm trees along the beaches.

One of the favorite things to do in Tenacatita is to go on the Jungle River Dingy Trip. We went in Suebee's dingy through the river. You start at the mouth of the river at the ocean and travel through many mangroves. It is very dense and in some places you have to lower you head as the growth is so much. Birds were the only wild life we saw through the jungle. While we thought we saw crocidiles, they were only logs. The river takes you to the small town of Tenacatita.

A short distance from the town was a beach called the Aquarium. It was a great place to snorkle. I saw a sting ray and other colorful fish that I have no idea what they were. It is such a neat experience having schools of fish swim around you.

Our social life at anchorage continues. We had pot lucks which taste even better than eating out at restaurants (FYI-while the food is good, eating out becomes all the same. We never thought we would say we are getting tired of Mexican food and shrimp!!) One of the nights we had a dingy raft up. This is where all the dingy's gathered in a circle. First we passed books around for exchange, and then we passed around appetizers to share. After food we all shared where we were from and what was the meaning of our boat name.

We left Tenacatita for Bahia Chamela which was about 34 miles north. We had a very comfortable ride. Most of the time we have been motor sailing as either the wind is too little or coming from the wrong direction. When we left the anchorage we went through a couple of miles of thousands and thousands of tiny jelly fish. We also saw many sea turtles. We expected to see whales, however, only saw one. It is to hard to get pictures of the whales or the turtles.

Chamela anchorage was very rolly at night. The shore had many palapa restuarants. The actual town was about 2 miles inland. We did not visit the town. The surf was rough getting on the beach. One of the difficulties we have had on this trip is we bought too heavy of a dingy for us to handle. We bought a hard bottom dingy and it weighs about 200 pounds with the engine. Even with wheels it is almost impossible to lift and pull on shore. We are trying to sell our current dingy and buy a lighter weight dingy.

We left the anchorage of Chamela heading to Puerto Vallarta around 5 p.m. We wanted to go around Cabo Correntes during the night as it is know to have high seas and high winds. We were very lucky as the winds were only 5 knots and the seas were only about 1 foot. The night was very black as the moon was only a sliver for a couple of hours. We buddy boated with Suebee to Banderas Bay. It feels much safer at night when we are buddy boating with someone ealse.

We are currently at Paradise Village Marina in Puerto Vallarta and Banderas Bay, 105 miles north of Chamela. We look forward to exploring Puerto Vallarta.