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| View from the Grand Bay Resort of the marina and lagoon. There were as many as 65 boats in the lagoon this season, but the number has dwindled to about 30. |
We arrived in Barra da Navidad and promptly grounded the boat when we missed finding the entrance to the narrow channel that leads to the anchorage in the lagoon. There are 2 bouys near the entrance that we thought, and so have many before and after us, mark the beginning of the channel. They actually mark where not to go. Luckily, our friends on Windsong were close by and gave us a hand getting the boat unstuck and heading in the right direction. It seems most boats go aground or a least bump when entering the lagoon and even some that ground when trying to leave, there's plenty of water in the channel, you just have to know where to go. Coming in at low tide helps you see where the sand bars are.
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| One of the best things about Barra is the French Baker, he comes by every morning with his fresh baked baguettes, croissants, pastries and pies. Can become an expensive habit if you're not careful. |
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| Sunset in the Lagoon |
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| Elegant Terns. These guys are fun to watch, the males puff themselves up, strut around with their heads held high and erecting the black feathers on top of their head showing the females who has the biggest crown. |
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| One of the canals that lead up into the Gringo Bario |
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| Sunrise in the lagoon |
Jim put a nice 3" gash in the inflatable dinghy while heading into the Sands at low tide, he thinks he might of hit a panga anchor. Anyway, he found one of the panga guys, Luis, to help get him and the dinghy back to the boat. We invited Luis aboard and he and Jim drank all the beer we had. Luis came back the next day with his 2 boys so they could check out our boat and were really impressed with el gato grande, Zero is a lot bigger than most the cats you see here. The following day was Sunday, Luis brought his wife and daughters over to visit and then told us he had to go to work and he would be back 'mas tarde' and left them on our boat. We were finally able to gather from Rosa that she had some friends who were having a party on the beach and that we should all go over there. We loaded everyone up in the dinghy and slowly made our way over there, where we met a bunch more locals. They were cooking up a feast as they do every Sunday and the beer was flowing. We drank until we thought we couldn't drink anymore, but the beer kept coming. As soon as you got near the end of the 1st beer another was being opened and passed your way, even the small children notice when your beer is nearly empty and they go you another one. They didn't seem to know the meaning of 'no mas!'. We finally could see the bottom of the cooler and thought good, they are finally out of beer, maybe we will be able to make it out of here after all, and then here comes a delivery guy on a motorcycle with 2 more coolers full of beer on ice. This has become our Sunday ritual, good food, too much beer and good friends. It's been good for us to be around people who don't speak much English, makes us practice and learn more Spanish and we help them with the English, it's all good.
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| Dinghy dock at the Sands Hotel. They allow cruisers use of the hotel grounds, pool and most importantly, internet. |
The boat grounding clued us in to the fact that our feathering prop was having trouble going into reverse, so Jim decided that the best way to get a good look at the prop, figure out what was wrong with it and possibly change out the blades would be to beach the boat. the lagoon is a good place to do it, nice soft sand and no wave action. We just had to wait for the full moon and a good tide.
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| Beached the boat on a sandbar so we could get a good look at the prop |
We were hoping that the boat would remain upright, sitting on it's keel, but the wind shifted and over we went. No big deal really, just had to live sideways for a few hours while the tide came back in a refloated us.Everyone in the lagoon was wondering what we were up to, but interesting as it was, not one person came over to see what we were up to.
Bad news was that the propeller blades weren't the problem, but the reverse pins had sheared off which prevented the blades from setting correctly and so no reverse. Called up Kiwi prop in New Zealand and they promptly DHLed us out replacement pins at no charge. Jim in the meantime decided that he would rather change back to a fixed blade prop which resulted in his having to make a trip up to the states to get the parts and while he was up there pick up some other stuff we needed and of course while he was at it, those things you can't get in Mexico like good dark chocolate, horseradish, decent beer and clayless cat litter so Zero won't leave little white paw prints all over the boat anymore, wet paws and cat litter made of clay is not a good combination.
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| One of the largest plantations in the world is right near Barra, coconut palms, banana and mango trees for as far as you can see. |
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| Zero helping out with the sail repair. Zero's been enjoying his stay here, he's caught 2 rats that picked the wrong boat to swim out to and several unlucky birds. |
We had another tear in the main sail right below the lst reef point, first tear was right below the 2nd reef point, so I got out the sewing machine to try and do the repair. Our sewing machine just isn't up to sewing sails, it's great when working with sunbrella and other less demanding projects, I got really frustrated with it and almost threw it overboard. I decided it would probably be better off with a new home and so gave it Luis's daughter, Christian. She had taken sewing lessons in school and so was really excited to have it. I ended up doing the repair by hand which was not fun at all and took many hours, a proper sewing machine is on my wish now.
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| One of the many taco stands, we've never eaten at this one, eye, brain, tripe and tongue tacos don't seem all that appetizing to me. |
We've had some of the best tacos here, they make a pollo and championes (chicken and mushrooms) in a cream sauce that is one of our favorites, for 10 pesos each. Breakfast or lunch for the 2 of us with drinks is usually less than $5.
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| Poster for the event said it started at 7pm, us gringos were the only ones who showed up on time, you can see the little group of us on the right, the bands and the bull riding didn't actually start until 9:30 |
We went to a Bull Ride in Cihuatlan, a guy said it should be a lot of fun, and so quite a few of us cruisers all decided to go. The poster said it was to start at 7pm and we got there about 7:30, no one else was there yet expect for the other cruisers. Jim, Uncle Tom and I decided to go get a bite to eat and come back later, found an excellent taco stand, Jim ordered a beer, they didn't serve beer but they went and got him one, got to love this country. So back to the bull ring and band started playing as loud as they could, guy on a horse came out and ran around the ring for awhile and finally around 9:30 the 1st bull rider was released from the gate. The bull bucked twice, stopped and just stood there. Rider got off, they tried to rope the bull so they could take the straps off and the bull decided to lay down and then refused to get up. The next bulls were a little more energetic and there were a couple good rides, one guy actually did get thrown and mowed over by the bull. Mexican bull riding is a little different in that instead of holding on with one hand, they go no hands and try to hold on with only their legs. Didn't take long before we had enough of the loud music, which the locals all seem to enjoy and lots of couples were dancing to, and decided to leave. We heard later that the next band that came on stage, an all girl brass band, was even louder and actually much worse.
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| Some of the bulls weren't all that enthusiastic, bucked a couple times and then just stood there. |
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| Church at Cihuatlan |
While Jim went to Phoenix, I hoped on a bus and went down to Santiago Bay to hang with our friends on Midnight Sun, who were in the process of heading back north after sailing down to Zihuatanejo, where we were supposed to be going when we found out the prop needed to be repaired or replaced. I spent 3 days with them, just long enough for all my bug bites to heal, I have new ones now. We sailed to Carrizal, a secluded anchorage only a couple miles from Santiago but with only one other boat at the most in the anchorage. We built a nice bonfire on the beach, did some snorkeling, even tried a night snorkel for the 1st time, which was kinda scary and probably would of been more enjoyable had the visibility been better, but something I might try again. They say that you see things at night you'd never see during the day, but all I saw were a couple puffer fish.Then we sailed the boat back to the Barra Lagoon. Len and Wilma hung around to wait for Jim to get back and hang around with him for a couple days before leaving and are now heading north again.
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Santiago Bay
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So Jim is back from the trip north, he rented a car, drove up with a guy who needed to go the same place he was going so they split the costs. They were detained at the boarded, Jim was hand cuffed by a not so friendly boarder guard, the car was searched, which was made even more interesting by the fact that Jim's passenger has OCD and a habit of collecting plastic baggies, took the boarder guards a good hour to go through and check each one of the 200+ plastic bags the guy had in his luggage. They finally released them when they couldn't find anything.
Jim was able to get the important stuff he went up there for, most we had ordered and shipped so it would all be in one place when he got there. Other stuff that I had put on the list, he didn't have much luck with, he says stores in the states are just not stocking and caring the variety of products that they used to. He made it back in one piece, the car didn't. The cars air conditioner broke, as did the headlights, tail lights, blinkers and then the rear tire fell off. He had to call a tow truck and then sat around in a hotel room for 6 hours waiting for the rental car place to bring him a replacement only to find out that they didn't intend to bring a replacement that they wanted him to have the car fixed.
They did take the hotel, tow and repair off the bill, it only came to $120. The thing that the lady at the rental place did do that wasn't so ethical is that she quoted us one price in US dollars that was quite a bit less than what we were charged, she was using an exchange rate that was about 15% higher than the current rate. Had we been able to whip out US dollars to pay the bill, it would of been a good deal.
We are currently working on getting the prop changed out, the old one is off and Jim is in Manzanillo right now getting some parts made at the machine shop. Should have the new prop on and be ready to leave in a couple days. Don't know where we will go next, it's still pretty cold here and only going to be colder up north, so maybe head south to Santiago Bay and Manzanillo since it's so close before heading north again. Who knows, only thing I know is that we've been here too long and I'm tired of mosquito bites.
