Exploring La Cruz

We've been here a week now and I know I owe a post or two but I haven't really been in the mood...but I can think of at least two people waiting on me to do this, so here goes...

Scott, Teri and Jake at a local restaurant.

Our friends from Ulalena arrived a few days after us and we've had a very happy reunion as we haven't seen them since early fall.  We've gone out to eat with them a few times and are finding the food here very good.  Jake has really enjoyed meeting back up with Mr. Scott and Mrs. Teri and is looking forward to spending our Christmas with them as well.

We attempted to go to the Wild Animal reserve at one of the really swanky marinas here but that proved to be an unsuccessful trip for a number of reasons I won't go into.  We're going to try again after Christmas.

Yesterday we went sailing with Scott and Teri on another friend's catamaran (Catana 40), Puddytat.  Sylvie and David were wonderful hosts and we actually saw a few humpbacks out in the bay.  It was a beautiful day for sailing.

Andy and David.

Scott trying to convince himself he doesn't want a catamaran :)

Teri and Sylvie

One of many humpbacks we saw on our trip.

Sylvie is a wonderful artist that does various different things (fabric design, jewelry, painting) but one of the things she does that I enjoy the most is painting on fabric.  She dyes the fabric herself and then she creates stencils that she paints onto the fabric.  It's a very intensive process and take a lot of her time. She sells these pieces to others to use as they like.  I took a picture of one of the pillows she made with her seahorse square.  If anyone is interested she has both a blog where she talks about her work (Sylvies Designs) as well as an etsy site where she sells it (SylviesDesigns - Etsy).

Veggie stand at Wednesday's market in La Cruz.

There are a few markets around here.  We stumbled upon a more traditional market here on Wednesday...fruit and veggies, clothes, dollar store type toys, flip flops.  Today, there was a very different type of market on the local plaza.  It was more of the California style farmers markets that we used to go to in San Diego...small vendors with various types of art, bread, cheeses, premade food (humus, dips, etc) and an extraordinary vegetable stand (at least I thought so).  Unfortunately, I didn't need any vegetables.  But we did buy some fresh mint, squash blossoms and some sort of green heirloom tomatoes.  All of which I've never seen here in Mexico.

Jake jumping in the trampoline they had available for the kids at Sunday's market.

Lady weaving a basket at the market.

Tomorrow we move into the marina to begin our "Christmas vacation."  Instead of buying each other gifts, we decided to treat ourselves to the marina for two weeks.  This is a huge place for cruisers so there are more than enough activities going on to keep us busy.  It doesn't really feel like Christmas, but we're trying.  We put up our tree and lights, we've written our letter to Santa and practiced making cookies for him.  We even saw a Christmas parade in town the other night.  I'm making my last trip to Walmart tomorrow to finish up the shopping for Jake.  We'll be attending a huge potluck at the local restaurant here for Christmas day, but doing the traditional (at least for our families) Christmas Eve dinner on the boat with just us and a few gifts.  We hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate)!