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Well, finally, here's an update of our travels in Mexico. It's been a while since the last one from Mazatlan, so it proves the aphorism that time really does fly when you are having fun. I'll try to make it not too long and boring, but no guarantees. A few days after Patricia returned from her trip to Seattle, our friends Cathy and Rich joined us in Mazatlan for Carnaval. There are ongoing events for months beforehand, but the culmination is the week preceding Ash Wednesday. The activities are primarily for Mexican people, but of course tourists are welcome. About a mile of the boulevard, called the Malecon, that runs along the beach in the old town of Mazatlan is cordoned off. There are all kinds of food, shows, games, gambling and stages. Each stage has a band playing it's loudest and there is dancing in the streets, fireworks and laser shows. We think it all goes on 24 hours a day, but we never stayed long enough to find out. Two parades with decorated floats are held on the Sunday and Tuesday on another part of the same boulevard. The floats are very fancy and there are many beautiful young ladies on each of them. Many of the tourists reserve a hotel room or restaurant overlooking the parade route and some were horrified that we would be mingling with the people on the street or going to the other area with the bands, etc., much too risky and dangerous. However the four of us had a great time and talked, as best we could with our limited Spanish, with many of the locals. Like everywhere we have been in Mexico, there are lots of families with children, parents, grandparents all enjoying themselves. Everyone is happy and friendly. Cathy and Rich brought fancy multicolored feather masks for us all and they were a big hit with the locals. After Carnaval we said goodbye to our fellow cruisers who were headed to the Sea of Cortez. We set off with Cathy and Rich for Puerto Vallarta, starting with an overnight to San Blas. All went smoothly and we anchored in the bay. The town is up in an estuary a little and we got there either by dingy to the beach and bus or hitch to town, or by taking the dingy about three miles around. We could have anchored in the estuary, but there are many mosquitoes and no-see-ums at dawn and dusk, so we elected to stay in the bay. We had our first experiences with landing the dingy in big (well quite big) surf. It didn't always go smoothly, but the worst that happened was we got wet. One day when we dingied around we tied the dingy to the quay behind the Mexican Navy boats. When we got back, the tide was out and the dingy was about twelve feet below us. I asked one of the navy seamen if he had a ladder and he produced this old rope ladder, stiff and chafed. He then tried to tie it to a bit on the quay but couldn't tie a bowline. After about five tries, I finally showed him how to do it. One of the officers was watching us from the ship and was most amused. So that's my story of how I taught the Mexican Navy to tie a bowline. On another day we took the dingy about three miles up into the estuary though the jungle and saw many wild birds. We continued down the coast, anchoring in some beautiful bays. Our favorite was Chacala, a little fishing village in a lovely bay ringed with golden sand and palm trees. Then on to Puerto Vallarta, which used to be a fishing village but is now a large tourist town. We stayed at the marina there. Puerto Vallarta became popular after the movie "The Night of the Iguana" was filmed there. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor bought two houses there, one across the street from the other, and joined them with a bridge. The houses are now a small hotel and are for sale for $1.3 million. We enjoyed our tour of the place. It is a little tired now, but is full of memorabilia and original furnishings. We had a great time with Cathy and Rich and look forward to seeing them again later in our wanderings. A few days after they left, Patricia's daughter Cara flew in to spend a little more than a week with us, another very nice visit. After Cara left we headed for Zihuatanejo, again anchoring for one to six days after a one day sail in one beautiful place after another. Our longest stop was at Las Hadas, a few miles around the bay from the commercial port of Manzanillo. Las Hadas was built in the seventies as an exclusive resort and the movie "Ten" was filmed there. For $6 a day, we could anchor in the bay and use all the resort facilities. We had a good time there and enjoyed the contrast with the town, where there were very few tourists. The town is pretty because it is set on a hill beside the water and the houses are painted all the colors of the rainbow. We did a day, night and another day passage from Manzanillo to Zihuatanejo, or Z-town, an interesting town with a good mixture of locals and tourists. We arrived for the week of Semana Santa, Holy week, which is when many, many Mexicans go on vacation. It was interesting that most of the tourists were Mexicans and not gringos. There is a huge tourist resort at Ixtapa, six miles north of Z-town. Nobody lives there, it's all big hotels and a marina. We took a bus and it is quite spectacular, but at 16 pesos for a beer instead of 8 pesos, they can keep it. The name Zihuatanejo derives from pre-Hispanic times and means "The place of the dirty women". The story is that a king who lived far from here kept a harem at the south end of the bay. He forbade the women to bathe when he wasn't here so that they would be unattractive to other men. He sent an emissary ahead to tell them to clean up for him before his arrival. Patricia's other daughter, Carmen came to Z-town via Acapulco last week with her husband, R.P. and son, Austin. They are stayed in a very nice hotel that we found for them. Their room overlooked the swimming pool, the beach and the bay where we are anchored. We took the dingy ashore to spend the day with them returning late in the evening. One day we took the boat to Isla Grande, a truly beautiful island with magnificent beaches. No one lives there, there are only a few beach restaurants. It is very busy during tourist season with hordes of people being ferried out from Ixtapa, but now that the season is over, it was very quiet when we visited. On the way back we caught a 15lb amber jack, a tuna like fish that has firm dark red meat. R.P. had a good time playing it and getting it into the boat where it was summarily dispatched. We had a great dinner the next day with enough for another meal. Carmen and her family left today, Friday, for Acapulco and then on to Seattle. It was very nice to see them, but the time went by very quickly. Our plans now are to leave Zihuatanejo by the end of April and head the 400 nautical miles back up to Puerto Vallarta, where we will leave the boat for the hurricane season. Since it gets really hot, humid and sometimes very wet on the coast in the summer, we will go to Guadalajara at the beginning of June. We will spend a month there in an intensive language school. We will live with a Mexican family, go to school five mornings a week and on cultural excursions afternoons and weekends. Hopefully, after that our Spanish will be a little better than now. We then will travel by bus to other mountain cities, towns and villages, returning to the boat by the end of September. Since we haven't been able to stick to any of our previous long term plans, we won't guess at what we will do when hurricane season is over, but we are talking to each other about the options. That's all for now. We didn't have much luck connecting with e-mail between P.V. and here, so we may be out of touch for about four weeks as we work our way back up. As always, we enjoy hearing from you and what is going on in your lives through your e-mails to us. Colin & Patricia Shannon-Garvey |
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