Chacala to Tenacatita
Life seems to have slowed down to a pleasant crawl and with boat projects, snorkeling and swimming little time has been spent on the computer so I have been reminded to update the blog—we have not sunk into the deep blue and are alive and well.
We finally left Chacala (still one of our favorite places) and had a good sail to Punta Mita spending a couple of days there. The weather is warm and the water is too. Punta Mita is a small town where condos are being built all along the beach and everyone is trying to hustle you to buy a time share. There are very few people on the beach so I would be a little hesitant to invest in that area. There is a huge push on development here but one would be a little suspicious that perhaps it is being overbuilt. We have by the way discovered why everything in Mexico is a work in progress, it is because taxes on unfinished houses are way less than finished so there is always a wall which is not quite finished.
We went out to Isla Mariettas for a day where we anchored and had some great snorkeling, lots of fish swimming around. A nice island to hike and we came across some more of my favorite blue boobys. There is a great cave system on the island so we enjoyed exploring. We then headed to La Cruz which is the closest place to anchor to Puerta Vallarta without tying up and paying for moorage. It is a nice little Mexican town which has a large cruiser base. Philo’s has a couple of open mike nights where there is a huge talent base to draw from and great dancing to be had. A highlight was a one man band where the musician used a washboard, he was amazing.
The bus takes 40 minutes to Puerta Vallarta so we had a couple of days in PV. It is a pretty town with a renewed malecon (the boardwalk along the beach) which has sculptures erected all along. The galleries have some wonderful art and crafts and it was hard neither feeling I could spend the money or have anywhere to keep it if I did so passed on some lovely pieces. The old town has been well kept and is picturesque with white buildings and roads made of cobblestones. Great supermarkets again, they seem to be well placed down the coast so as your favorite US items run out you are able to replenish, so far the gin and tonics have not run dry and I am managing to eke out my tea and hopefully will meet up with Judy soon with my replenishments. They are, as I write this now in PV but are awaiting autohelm parts so I hope they don’t take too long!!!
We had met Roger from Kimberley who is down her for the winter who had offered to drive us around to see the area so we took advantage of the invitation and he picked us up and took us to Sayulita for the day. This is the Mexican version of Ganges, lots of artsy crafty stores, fruit shakes everywhere, hippies and surfies (from North America). Very cutesy, he has bought land down there as have many youthful retirees so it is a very active anglo saxon community. We had a great walk along the coast which is lovely. Came across a work crew building a cobblestone road, very common here and they last forever so makes sense but was blown away by the work required.
“Warren Peace” another boat we had spent time with took us and a few others back out to Isla Mariettas for the day where it was a lot calmer than had been on our previous visit so we had a good dive. There are a lot of fish to be seen but the visibility is not as clear as in the Caribbean.
The next major area to be careful of is Cape Corrientes which can have wicked winds and currents but a weather window was forecast so we headed over to Yelapa for the day and would head around the Cape in the evening. Yelapa is gorgeous, lush and tropical with a very cutesy Mexican town set sprawling up the hill on a pretty bay. The anchorage was pretty scary where we ended up setting the anchor in 60 feet of water and when we backed up on the anchor appeared to be 20 feet from shore. Ken was not comfortable leaving the boat so swam to shore and took a walk to the town and up to the waterfall at the top of the valley. It was lovely, we would have liked to spend more time there but weren’t prepared to stay the night so headed around to Chamela. Had an uneventful sail there but were surprised at the dryness of the hills as back in the PV side it had been quite lush.
It has a lovely long white sandy beach with the obligatory campsite which is, as they all seem to be, frequented by a huge number of Canadian (mostly BC) campers. The little store in town carried Canada dry ginger ale which I have not often seen and other Canadian delicacies.
We had a couple of days there but were anxious to get to Tenacatita where the man whom we had bought our water maker from was camping as our high pressure pump was leaking and we wanted to give him time to resolve our problem. We arrived with a leak in the prop shaft, 2 heads which were refilling, a single sideband on which we couldn’t transmit on and the leak in the water pump so came in feeling a little as though perhaps this whole idea of sailing was not a good one!!
Tenacatita turned out to be “cruisers summer camp”. Up to 45 boats at any one time right now, some going North and some going South. Every day they have activities, a swim to the beach at 1 30pm followed by a walk along the beach. The men then play Bocce ball and the women play a dominos game they call Mexican train in the palapa onshore and around 4pm everyone heads back to their respective boats to get ready for happy hour with another boat or two and then maybe supper or a movie night. Friday nights everyone dingys in to raft up with all of the other dingys, books are exchanged appetizers are passed around and each boat has to introduce themselves and reveal a little of their plans. It is a good way to get everyone to meet each other. We met up with a number of people we had cruised with previously and had movie nights on our boat a few times. One night we were invited by one of our favorite families who we are honorary Nana and Poppa to their bonfire on the beach with a huge marshmallow roast.
We took a dingy trip up the jungle ride and ended up at “the aquarium” which is great snorkeling area with huge numbers of all kinds of fish.
We took 17 other cruisers on our boat over to La Manzanillo, across the other side of the bay and had a lovely day with one of the best lunches at Martines we have had in Mexico, our lunch was $30 with tip, included drinks, main course, desert and cappuccinos. Went and viewed the huge crocs which are in the river there—hopefully not in the ocean!!
Did a lot of kayaking, swimming and generally regrouped.
During this time Ken fixed the heads, I did some sewing projects which had been put off, one of the other cruisers helped Ken change the prop shaft seal which we had thought we would have had to have the boat hauled out of the water to repair—not an easy thing with a catamaran and another boat spent many hours helping Ken up and down the mast trying to resolve the single side band issue. It is still not resolved but we are ruling out many solutions so are getting closer to the answer—well we hope!! The watermaker man was located and agreed that it was a faulty clutch which is still under warranty