Provisioning for Fruits and Veggies...check

Last on my list is provisioning for fruits and vegetables.  Thanks to Diane on Ceilydh and all of those puddle jumpers before us, I have hit the mother load.  One of my worries has been how I was going to get vegetables that would last more than a few days.  The tiendas here always sell good veggies, but they need to be eaten within a day or two of buying them.  Where was I going to find green tomatoes? 

It turns out, there is a warehouse in town that opens its doors twice a week at 6:00 pm to supply all of the local restaurants.  It is filled with green veggies and fruits.  And I mean FILLED.

For those of you in LaCruz (or possibly doing the jump next year), as you walk to Philo’s you’ll see some red tables always set out at night for tacos.  Turn right at the road right before those tables.  On the left you’ll see some warehouse doors.  They open on Sunday night and Wednesday or Thursday night (there’s debate about that and I personally haven’t checked it out on those nights) and you can buy as much as you want.

So today was the day…  I started off my day visiting the Sunday market close to the marina here and bought up the smoked mozzarella and smoked cheddar.  I made my way to the pesto stand and bought a few containers of some of the best pesto I’ve ever eaten.  It freezes well and goes great over pasta, so I’m planning on that being one of our easier dinners within the first few days while we’re getting acclimated.

Andy took some friends to Mega (we still have our rental car) to buy their groceries while Jake and I stayed on the boat and watched movies.  He was up sick all night and I thought it was best to keep his cooties on the boat today. 

This evening, I took our neighbors who are leaving the same day as us to the warehouse to get our vegetables.  I can’t believe I didn’t take my camera.  It was so much fun to go through the bags and bags of beautiful produce.  For about $100, I got apples, oranges, limes, lemons, peppers of all kinds, watermelon, lettuce, grapes, chayote, onions, potatoes, and the list goes on and on…hopefully, enough for the next three weeks.  (Now the trick is to figure out how to store all this stuff and keep it from going bad.)  The night was going so beautifully until it was time to leave. 

“Where are the keys?” someone asked.

“I gave them to Jobie when he started loading the car” I responded

“Jobie?”

“Yes”

“Jobie?”

“Yes”

“SH#&^@” and someone took off running.

Apparently, Jobie was on his way to Sayulita to see his wife, not to return until tomorrow.

I was sitting on our neighbor’s boat using their phone to call the rental company to try to get a new key when I heard Jobie outside our boat talking to Andy.  He had gotten as far as Bucerias and reached in his pocket for change and found the key. 

No harm done.  The veggies are resting and we are heading that way ourselves.  Tomorrow is our last day to do the last minute things before checking out with the port captain on Tuesday.

2 more days…

Tsunami

We woke up this morning to the same news much of you did…Japan had been hit by a major earthquake and then a tsunami that was heading toward Hawaii and ultimately us, here in Mexico.

After a little debate, we decided to be safer than sorry (after all, we’re not exactly insured) and head out to the anchorage.  In our opinion, it was much better to be out of the marina so we don’t have to worry about big swells pushing into the docks.  Once out in the anchorage, we heard news that they actually expected a good 3-6 feet and maybe a 6 knot current.  So ultimately, we decided to head out to open water, as did a number of other boats.  I counted at least 75 boats and I’m sure I missed a few (unofficial report was 155).

But it was a beautiful day for sailing.  We had a few minutes to run in the marina with the dinghy and get some beer and ice.  We just went to Costco yesterday so we were stocked with food.  We had a little bar-b-que, drank a few beers and enjoyed our day.

The marina saw over 6 feet of surge and the channel to the marina got pretty good currents which kept all boats out the rest of the day.  So we fired up the grill and had a nice dinner with Ethan off of Eyoni while we waited it all out.  There were well over 100 boats here in the anchorage as all of the ports were closed in Banderas Bay and no one could get in or out.  We’ll spend the night out here and hope for reentry in the a.m.

Dock 11 sits right at the mouth of the channel.  It's now missing 2 of the finger piers.

Having sat through a few hurricane warnings on the east coast, I think I prefer the Tsunami.  At least we felt like there was something we could do…leave.  The safest place for a boat… 

Kind of exciting for our last few days here.  It did push our trip out a day or so as we didn’t get to continue on our marathon provisioning session and will have to keep our rental car another day.

I know I’m being rather blasé about the whole thing but those who were in real danger and had to endure the real experience, our heats and prayers are out to you and your families.

For an account on how it was in the marina, check out Diane's blog on Ceilydh...www.maiaaboard.blogspot.com

Stuff

Well, I had hoped to have the time to write a few posts about our last couple of days but time seems to be flying by.  We're about 12 days out now from our departure and I'm taking the lazy way out and just posting pictures (I know that's all most of you want anyway).

Jake's friend, Zada turned 6 last week so here are some pictures from her birthday.  Her parents ordered her a jumpy tent and invited all of the kids (boat and local) to join.  Jake had an absolute blast and Nancy, Ethan and Zada were perfect hosts, as usual.  Again, my pictures are kind of crappy...Nancy has some good ones I can hopefully add later.

Lola and Yude were able to join in the party as well.

Nancy, Zada's mom.  I made her pose for this :)
I don't think I have any other pictures of Nancy in the past 8 months I've known her.

Zada and Jake munching on cupcakes.  I think Jake had
three that day.

Yesterday, Jake and I went with some other families to a local town called Sayulita (no idea how to spell that).  We had a great time exploring the town and continuing to make our way through the bus system.

Jack, Jake, Abby, Christian enjoying their ice cream after a long day
at the beach.

Local town square

The mom's.  Me, Tammy (from SANTOSHA), Tami (from ANDIAMO)

Shopping

More shopping.

Local art gallery (My intent is to go more into this at some point in the
future.  I'm fascinated by the Huichol Indians and their art)

Our new friends!  We found them at the beach as well!

2/28/2011 - Whale Watching and New Friends

In the midst of busily preparing for our trip across the pond, we managed to take some time out and go for a nice sail around the bay on Sunday and do a little whale watching.  When we were in Yelapa we met a nice French Canadian couple with two kids and they had never been sailing on a Catamaran.  They are doing a bit of traveling of their own and made their way to LaCruz this past week so we asked them if they wanted to bring the kids and head out for the day.

They have a really neat story.  They’re from Quebec and have been traveling in Mexico for about two months.  They have varied backgrounds but the purpose of their travel (aside from getting reacquainted with their adorable family) is to make a pilot for a TV series about family travel.  They take their cameras with them everywhere and film their kids as they interact with the local folks, learning their culture, history and just making new friends.  They’re having such a great time and making such good headway on their project that they’ve decided to stay in Mexico a bit longer and finish their pilot.  You can check out their website at www.yudeetlola.com (but you need to brush up on your French J ).

Lola driving the boat.  She didn't want my help at all.

We had a great day on the bay.  The weather was questionable so we went out with low expectations, but as soon as we got out of the channel we saw a mama humpback and her baby.  We spent about 20 minutes just drifting and watching the whales.  Then the wind picked up so we were able to have a nice lazy sail for most of the afternoon.  The kids had a great time.  The youngest, Lola, took right to it and even helped me steer the boat.  Yude and Jake just enjoyed each other’s company playing legos and Hero Factory, occasionally coming outside to see what all the hubbub was about.

Yude

Sailing is really exhausting!

Lola, after seeing a whale!

We’re not the most outgoing people in the world so we’re not the best at meeting strangers.  In this case, I’m glad Patrice and Maria were there to make the first move.  This is a truly beautiful family and I hope we find some way to keep in touch and keep up on their travels and movie and become better friends.

I didn't get as many good pictures as I thought.  Patrice and Maria took some additional pictures with their camera (the professional one, as opposed to my happy snap)…hopefully I can get a few of them in the next few days and add them here.

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.