Moondancerx's BIG adventure

Last note on Zehuatanejo – Check the pictures of the live wild animals in Webshots. We set out walking to find a large supermarket we were told about – a Costco type of store, which do seem to exist in most of the big towns we have been in. We like to walk, by doing so we see more of what it is like to live here in Mexico, plus it takes us away from being seen as the gringos who get off the massive cruise ships/marks to sell to. So off we went with a vague idea where it was. We do ask for directions – i.e. quando es commercial/mexicana supermercado?, the question is easy - understanding the answer is not. After forty five minutes of walking in brain boiling heat and asking directions twice from very helpful locals we hadn’t got there yet. By this time we had refused about 10 invitations to ride buses from the boys who jump out of the bus in front of you to tell you where they are going, and about 20 invitations from cabs which only cost 20 pesos ($2). Oh no, we want the true Mexican ex...

Tenacatita – Here we met other cruisers – Ultima, a steel hull who are back from world cruising where they had become friends with Hans and Roos from The Wind Cries, a boat we met in Sausalito earlier this year. There were a couple of other seasoned cruisers aswell – a couple of men cruising on a power boat, Mike and Tom . Tom had a pretty gruff manner, but a lot of useful information to impart, whether you wanted to hear it or not. Plus a couple of other boats who had also cruised Mexico quite extensively. When we tell people where we are going, we usually get odd looks and the question, why would you want to leave Mexico? I must admit that the question crosses my mind quite often too – and I suppose if we happen across a place that we love as much as the home we have in Canada and it happens to be in Mexico then maybe we’ll become one of the many gringos who stay. It hasn’t happened yet. Tenacatita Bay has a lot to offer a cruiser who wants to stay a week or two – we had a couple of ...

It took us about 5 hours to motor around from Yelapa to Punta Ipala - this being the start of many very craggy rocky premontories. We anchored in about 40 feet in rock and were quite dismayed to see that the water was literally filled with small jelly fish. There were actually 3 distinct species - a round clear jelly fish about 1 1/2" diameter which look pretty benign, then a long very thin stringy one with little dots all along it, these sting - I've met them before, and then a tiny little dot/prism thing which reflected all colors. Well we had been roasting all day on the boat and needed to cool off. I have a thin suit which I wear under my dive suit which I call a luge suit so I was pretty well covered, Dick borrowed one of Tony's suits and Tony went in shorts and t-shirt - we didn't swim for long. This tiny little bay had a few large palapas on the shore with hundreds of empty chairs - in fact nobody around, but once they saw a boat in the bay - the only boat - the...

And no Bo Derek. From the time we picked up Anne and Dick in Puerto Vallarta to the time we dropped anchor outside Las Hadas Hotel where the movie '10' was filmed we heard quite alot about Bo Derek from Tony, who was looking forward to seeing her run down the beach towards him beaded braids and her most natural assets akimbo - not to be. But more about that later. We left PV on Tuesday 2nd December heading for Yelapa, a small, rolly and very quiet - while we were there - bay just before rounding Cabo Corrientes. We had hoped, having spent 2 very hot days in a marina cleaning the boat, that we would be able to swim at Yelapa, but the water was quite murky and very rolly - not very inviting. We were greeted by a panga at the bay opening and invited to use the only moorage buoy available for 200 pesos. We said that our anchor worked well enough thankyou - so he put the price down to 100 pesos, and we thought that would it would be worth paying that much not to put out the anc...

And quite a day it has been. We started out eating breakfast at a version of De Dutch Pancaoke House - fortunately they also did a pretty good Mexican style breakfast, found the Marina Office and also fortunately found out that the moorage fee was actually quite reasonable. Then a trip into old Puerto Vallarta on one of those suicide busses. As we rattled along we were serenaded by a septegenarian guitar player who somehow managed to hold himself upright as we hurtled along at what appeared to be about 80mph. Tony made friends with a really gregarious little boy with a miniature motorbiclette that he wanted Tony to guess which hand it was hidden in - over and over and over. We walked around one of the artisan markets and watched Mexican Indians doing incredible beadwork. Sometimes the beads are worked into necklaces and bracelets which we have all seen before, but others carve masks or animals shapes and then coat them in a very sticky substance then painstakingly stick tiny colored b...

November 30th – Left Mazatlan – went to Puerto Vallarta via Isla Isabela . The last thing we did in Mazatlan was to climb to the top of the hill which houses the second highest lighthouse in the world – that’s what the guide book said, and that’s how I felt when we got to the top. Of course my much younger and fitter husband politely waited for me a few times which gave him a little rest too. It was worth the climb, the view over the whole of Mazatlan was incredible, plus we marveled at the effort that had been put into building the path and stairs back in the early 1900’s aswell as the building at the top which looks like a bomb shelter but is in fact a place to buy much needed water at the summit. Then on to Isla Isabela, 1 1/2miles long x 1/2mile wide - a bird sanctuary known to be the home of only 5 species of bird, in the thousands and iguanas. The guide books say that anchoring is risky because it’s a very rocky place, but it will be worth the effort once you go ashore. It was – ...