Banderas Bay and the Gold Coast

Week in Review

We anchored out at La Cruz de Huanacaxtle for three days, enjoying the little town and taking a day trip into Puerto Vallarta. La Cruz had a number of good restaurants (we had the best omelettes of our lives at La Glorieta, see below), and we met a few cruisers there, most who had spent the summer in PV and that area. Chris found a pretty nice wave there as well, although his board also sustained its first major ding on the nose from the rocks that are just below the surface (yikes).

Getting to Puerto Vallarta was easy on a cheap bus, but we had major traffic both ways (traffic, something I reaalllly don’t miss). Puerto Vallarta has a beautiful malecon, which is the walking area along the water, with great statues, lots of stores and restaurants. We did a little shopping and walked along the Rio Cuale, along which there are lots of shops selling things like t-shirts that say “I’m Shy, but I’ve Got a Big Dick.” So yeah, nothing was bought along there, but there is also a museum that has some cool Mesoamerican stone art, tools and pottery.

After La Cruz, we headed south across the bay to Yelapa. It’s a pretty little village with cobblestone streets on the southeast side and a long steep beach with palapa restaurants to the north. We had a great dinner at Pollo Rollo in the village, and explored the towns’ two waterfalls. The bigger one is at the end of an hour’s hike up the river. It was great to get out and stretch the legs – cardio fitness goes straight out the door on the boat! We passed a lot of houses along the trail with burros in the yard, chickens and dogs everywhere as well. Apparently there is no road to Yelapa (everything comes by boat), so the “street” along the river is little more than a trail. We got to the waterfall after a missed turn or two, and the water felt great, although the pool at the bottom wasn’t quite deep enough to actually swim. But best of all as we were sitting on the rocky edge of the river, I looked up and saw two birds with really long tails flying overhead. They turned back over the river and we could see that they were green and a little blue – wild PARROTS!!! Totally sweet wildlife sighting. Also impressive, but it a somewhat more freaky way were the multitudes of giant spiders we saw. I mean, palm-of-your-hand big. I’m not really scared of spiders, but it does bring an interesting thought into my head, which is that I have no idea what is poisonous, dangerous or otherwise harmful to encounter out here. Not that I’m going around chewing on wild leaves or licking frogs (I leave that up to Chris when the opportunity presents itself) but still, it would be nice to know.

After Yelapa, we hit up Chamela Bay, anchoring out between three little islands in the center. We found a sweet little beach that we had to share most of the day with a group of teenagers who wouldn’t look at us directly and ran away when we tried to greet them (seriously, it was a little weird). There was a big palapa shelter there from which I got to hang a hammock and read – ahhhhh. Sweetness. We left there in the middle of the night to head to Tenacatita Bay, where we spent the last few days.

Ten Bay is apparently a major cruising ground in the winter, but we are early birds, so we were one of only three boats there. We met Roger and Sue on Neos, a big catamaran. They’ve been cruising for five years, in the Carribbean and the Pacific, so it was great to talk to them about the “road ahead,” so to speak. Most of the people that we’ve met up to this point have only cruised Mexico. They gave us a ton of good information and assuages my recently arisen fears of the Panama Canal transit.

Also in Ten Bay, we did a dinghy trip up a mangrove-bordered jungle river. We made a little video, so we’ll post that soon. Sailing to Barra Navidad today to fuel up and provision for our next long leg to Zihuatenejo.