The family visits!

Apologies for the lengthy time between posts but we’ve been pretty busy.  Andy’s parents came to visit for a week and since they’ve left we’ve been running all over town looking for last minute parts and trying to find decent internet connection to take care of some of the administrative details of crossing the pacific (more on that later).

We had a wonderful time with Mac and Merle.  We showed them around LaCruz the first few days and then we took them over to Yelapa, a small town across the bay.  Here’s what our guide book says about it…

“Yelapa is part of the Indigenous Community of Chacala, in which land was legally deeded to the indigenous people who have lived there for centuries.  King Philip II of Spain granted the property rights of this territory to the indigenous people of the governing town of Chacala and its neighboring villages… Land here is owned by the community collectively, and no one person or family privately ‘owns’ the piece of land they live on.”

Enjoying the beautiful sail we had going over.

Before we even arrived in the small bay, we were met by a panga trying to sell us a mooring.  The depth in this anchorage is well over 100 feet so we opted for the mooring for $20/night.  Kind of steep in my book, but they know our options are limited so who can fault them for capitalizing on that?

The water taxi came to pick us up the next morning at 9:00 as we had planned the day before.  After a dicey landing we had breakfast at one of the many restaurants lining the beach.  This is the kind of place where you go to pay for your bill and they tell you not to worry about it, come back when you’re finished sightseeing and you can pay for your whole day all at one time.  This is a pretty ingenious marketing strategy if you ask me.  They know you can’t get back to your boat without them (i.e. you won’t skip on the bill) and now they ensure you come back to their restaurant and no one else’s when you decide to have lunch/snack/drinks.  And that’s exactly what we did. 

Jake bombing one of his sand castles.

Mac and Merle doing some serious bargaining with one of the vendors.

We met a French couple and their kids doing some traveling of
their own.

A lady carrying a pie on her head while trying to cross at low tide.
(She made it!  We bought a piece later in the day)

One of many para-gliders landing on the beach.

It’s a strange, but pleasant, little walk up to the local waterfall.  A little bit of beach, stairs, town, mules, hills, trees and then there you are.  It wasn’t the most magnificent waterfall we’ve ever seen but if you put the whole experience together, it was well worth the effort.  One of the mules decided to relieve themselves right in front of Andy and Jake…. The look on their face alone was worth the time.

We spent two nights in Yelapa and just as we got out of the anchorage Merle called “WHALE!”  Wouldn’t you know it, right next to where we were anchored a humpback whale was breeching!  So we turned around and headed back for a closer look.  We spent a good 20 minutes watching the whales – there were two – and then headed back to La Cruz.

We wanted Mac and Merle to enjoy the bus experience we have grown so fond of (truly we didn’t think a trip would be complete without it) so later in the week we took them to Bucerias.  Luckily, we got on one of the newer buses both there and back so it didn’t beat everyone to death.  As I’ve mentioned before, Bucerias is a small little town with restaurants lining the beach.  It’s a little more touristy than some towns we’ve been to as was evident with the many vendors stopping by our table throughout the day.  I’m not quite sure how any of us had the discipline to pass up the onyx pigs they were selling  (Colby, you can thank Merle for not having one of your very own) or the tatoos and hair braids (really, wouldn’t Mac look cute with braids in his beard?).

You can never fit everything in that you want to do in one week, but we’re thankful we got that week with them.  Now it’s back to preparing to leave for the South Pacific.  Our VHF Antenna is broke and we still don’t have all the parts to get our email up and running on our SSB (yes, it’s been a  year now).  Our head seems to be leaking (for all of you non boaters out there, that’s our toilet – yep and that’s  gross).  We’ve eaten a good portion of the food we bought at Costco so of course there will be at least one more run. The list goes on and on, but the days don’t!  We have less than 3 weeks until the big voyage…  I’ll try to be better about posts but bear with me if the content is scattered as that’s how my brain is these days.