09:30 Got on the HF radio and talked to Bill on Margorie Grace and Simon on Amobel; we had arranged a schedule on channel 6 Charley (6521.9) while in La Paz. Margorie Grace is running for Isla Isabella this morning and Amobel is sitting at anchor in Mazatlan. Simon says that they have dense fog in Mazatlan, something we haven't seen in a long, long time. A little later we monitored two U.S. Navy ships, the Shasta and the Roark, discussing the fog. The Roark planned to enter the port but was delayed because of it.
16:00 We pass from page 17A to page 18A in the Chartguide for Mexico West. That's the kind of trip it's been, pretty uneventful. The swell, which was early on our beam, has now stablized at about 120 degrees, directly down the Sea of Cortez. That puts it on our port quarter so the ride, though a bit wallowy, isn't bad. We are making good time, about 7 knots even with the flopper-stoppers in the water - 100 miles to go.
17:00 We've been running for twelve hours now and the ammeter is still showing a charge of 35 amps. I go below to check the batteries and, sure enough, they are hot and being overcharged. Our miserable voltage regulator isn't cutting back. It won't be light much longer and I don't want to take any chance on having an electrical problem in the night, so I decide to disconnect the generator wire to the 24 volt bus. To do that we have to come back to an idle. The whole thing is done in five minutes and we're off and running again; but Lois, who has been taking the trip amazingly well so far, is all of a sudden in a cold sweat. She has a basic distrust of things mechanical, believing even more than Murphy, that they are just waiting for a chance to do us in.
22:30 Dark now, no moon, nothing to see but the stars. The wind has died completely and the seas have laid down - just a gentle swell remaining. Off our port we see faint lights which don't look like running lights. I search in vain to find something on the radar and they soon disappear astern. One of those little mysteries which will never be explained.
04:30 We hear Debbie on Marjorie Grace talking to Marsha on Peregrina about the strange light she sees. It turns out to be the rising moon, a faint, orange colored sliver on the horizon.
05:30 The first light of dawn shows clouds or fog ahead of us. We may have to wait if it's as thick as it was yesterday.
08:30 First land shows on the radar. Before long I think I can see shapes through the haze.
09:30 Almost there now. We see the rocky peaks around Mazatlan and some of the high rise buildings. The ferry is coming hard on our stern so we get out of his way and let him lead us in. He makes the trip in 14 hours which has taken us 27.
10:10 Anchored in Mazatlan harbor. This is sure a pretty setting. The harbor, at least as it is today, has been formed by joining several small, rocky islands with breakwater causeways thus creating a completely protected, deepwater harbor, the largest between San Diego and Panama. A lighthouse is on the highest of the islands (512') and is visible from many miles away, even in the daylight.
Simon greeted us on the radio as we anchored and, after we had rested for the afternoon, he and Penny came over for a drink and to give us the lowdown on Mazatlan. They've been here for a week so are old hands. He also brought his SWR meter and checked our VHF radio, which he said was sounding weak. Sure enough, it's putting out almost no power. Our little handheld 5 watt unit puts out a lot more than our 25 watt unit. Another thing to get fixed!
We started out walking toward town and the check-in offices. All along our corner of the harbor are sport fishing "fleets", maybe a dozen, the boats from which had gone roaring by us at about 6:30 this morning. One operator we talked to from the Perla Fleet wanted $180.00 per day for a boat. When we came back in the afternoon they were unloading and seemed to have done pretty well. We saw several marlin, sailfish, dorado, and a few good sized thresher sharks.
As we walked along the waterfront toward town we saw dozens of tour taxis, cutdown Volkswagen vehicles with canopies and open bench seats. We could hardly walk a block without one stopping to see if we wanted a ride. Transportation is not a problem here. The Burmuda Star, a huge cruise ship, had come in this morning and there was a big bazaar set up in the port near where she was docked. Lots of tourists were wandering through the stalls and Lois did her first bit of shopping here. I talked her out of paying 9,000 pesos for a hat which we later cost us 11,000 downtown. I'm a really good negotiator!
The first office you go to on check-in is that of the Port Director. With the help of a crude map given us by Penny we found it upstairs, across from one of the port gates. There a very nice lady who spoke pretty good English typed seven copies of a paper which showed the port tax charge. It was about 50% more than we'd paid at other ports and, when I asked her why, she was surprized. Then, after looking at our other receipts, she concluded that the other ports were charging us the passenger ship rate, 320 pesos per ton, rather than the cargo ship rate, 430 pesos per ton, charged here. Why they classify yachts as cargo ships in Mazatlan she didn't understand, but her chief said that's the way it is.
After the Port Director comes the Port Services office, inside the port gate which has a big sign on it, "No Visitors!". The armed guard opened the gate for us we walked a few hundred yards to that office where a very pretty, but very incompetent, lady of about 25 fumbled her way through seven copies of the standard Hacienda port tax reciept. If she hadn't been so pretty I'd have been more impatient. As we left that office I spotted the USS Roark at the dock, so we walked over to where a young swabbie in a spotless white uniform was guarding the gangplank. He told us that the ship, an anti-submarine Frigate, had been working very hard all over the Pacific, so the Captain brought it in here as a holiday for the crew. There are lots of handsome young sailors wandering around this town.
Two out of three hurdles passed, we walked the length of Aleman Avenue, skirting the south end of the business district to the west side waterfront where we met Penny out getting data for the map she is making to give all the yachties. With her we walked the two miles along the beautiful west beach to the Port Captain's office. It's a pleasent walk on a wide brick paved sidewalk which winds along the shoreline passing sand beaches and rocky tide lands. It's a waterfront rivaling in beauty anything we've yet seen.
At the Port Captain's office a young man didn't stamp anything or sign anything. He merely took two copies of our crew list and wished us a good morning. We then headed back to the city center, this time walking along 5 de Mayo, the main bus route. Along the way we found a huge flower mart at Plaza Nelson where a dozen or so stands are displaying mums, carnations, gladiolas, and hundreds of other flowers in a grand mass of color. In the center of town is the public market with fresh fish, meats, fruits, and vegetables better than any we'd seen on the Baja. After a good lunch at the Comida Bony's we went back to the market, bought a pork loin, a kilo of shrimp, and all the other stuff I could get in my pack, then got on the Playa Sur bus which took us right to the Club Nautico for the grand price of 200 pesos each, nine cents that is.
Back at the boat I tore into the voltage regulator which was overcharging our batteries. I checked the bleed resistor which is OK, then adjusted the voltage relay until it wouldn't charge at all, about three turns counterclockwize. I then ran it in one and one half turns. We'll have to wait until we run again before we know whether it now works.
Norm and Pam from the Timshel came over for drinks and a dinner of shrimp. They ran a restaurant in La Conner for several years and are on their first long cruising adventure. Fun comparing notes with them. All in all, a very nice day!
We'd planned on going to town together but about 10:30 Penny called and said that a local Mexican lady, a former boater, had volunteered to teach the ladies how to make tamales; so, Lois took off with the group while I packed up all the mail and headed for the post office. Over on the beach I decided that the sport fishing outfits probably knew where a VHF repair facility was so I stopped at the first one I came to -- and had my first stroke of good luck. The repair man, Bard Larsen is his name, was there at the time fixing the radar on the Compromise so I went down to the boat and talked with him. He immediately recognized the radio and, from my description of the symptoms, came up with the same diognosis of the problem as had Simon, a bad output or driver transistor. He called his office on his handheld to confirm he had the parts, then said to bring the radio over and he'd have it fixed within a couple of days. I whipped back to the boat, put the radio back together (I had all the covers off), and took it back to him. He's a neat guy. He speaks English with a fairly strong Scandinavian accent but is also very fluent in Spanish.
That done, I jumped on the bus and took my 200 peso ride to the post office in the center of town. After putting 2000 peso stamps on all of our envelopes I entrusted them to the Mexican mail system and headed off on a walking tour of downtown Mazatlan. Our impressions of yesterday were confirmed - it's a delightful city, much more sophisticated and busy than La Paz. The streets are paved and clean, the shops are inviting, and the smells delicious. I wandered around for a couple of hours, bought some parts to make up a 12 volt cable for our little hand held radio (more on that later), and sampled tacos from three different stands before catching the bus back to the harbor.
Lois wasn't home yet when I got back to the boat, so I went to work on my power cable. I planned to hook up the hand held radio to the boat's 12 volt power until our big radio was fixed. I took great care to make sure that the center conductor was positive voltage as I got out my soldering iron and made up the connector. The only thing I failed to do was to make absolutely sure that the radio wanted the center conductor to be positive. The manual is silent on the subject and I didn't take the trouble to study the circuit diagram or check the wall charger polarity. As a result I zapped our hand held! @###@@%&&&*$#%^*(^$@@!!!!!! Now we have no radio!
I was still fuming when Simon showed up, saying that all the Yachties, including Lois, were up at Lidia's house making tamales and that I should come and join them for dinner. I wasn't really in the mood right then but, after cooling down for a few minutes, I did just that, and it saved the day again for me. Lidia and her husband Gus, who is off in the U.S. this week, live in a house on one of the rocky hills nearby which commands a beautiful view of the city and harbor. They are former boaters who sold their boat a few years ago and moved here to be near Lidia's mother. Lidia is a very aggressive and talented lady with a super sense of humor. She rolls her eyes and gestures as she tells stories of their boating experiences in excellent but heavily accented English. She managed to keep everybody laughing while told her tales, played tapes of past parties, and sang religious songs in Spanish, all while supervising the making of the tamales. The tomales the ladies made were delicious! I'm not much of a tamale eater but these were different than those we normally get; they had less cornmeal and lots more, and tastier filling. She also made the best refried beans I've ever tasted. It was a great meal!
I didn't catch all the names of the people at the party but all those from sailboats in the harbor were there: Simon & Penny from Amobel of course; Norm, Pam, and Dee (a visiting friend) from Timshel; Tom & Kris from Silhouette; Harry and San from Pyawacket; and Gary and Charlotte from Tekijek; plus us from that boat with the funny little sail that stays up all the time. It was a fun evening!
We road the bus down to the post office again, the grabbed a taxi for the ride out to Bard's shop. He's a long way out to the Northwest in an industrial park near the basin where the commercial fishing fleet anchors. For the record the address is:
Mazatlan Electro-Mar
Ave. Topolobampo #6
Mini Bodegas & Bique Bonfil
(You turn right off of Via Puerto on Pto Veracruz)
The taxi out and back to Club Nautico cost us 15,000 pesos.
He wasn't there when we got there but his assistant called him on the radio (He always carries a handheld and monitors Channel 07)and was instructed to give us the Polaris. We also left the zapped Sitex handheld which he said he'd attempt to fix, although that may not be possible.
Back at the boat I installed the Polaris and we have communications again. The rain had stopped by then and it cleared up to about four tenths cloud coverage, but there remained a brisk east wind. Breakers on the breakwater and a low swell inside said things haven't calmed down yet outside.
When it got light enough to see around in the harbor we were surprized to see the Spring Moon anchored behind us. The last we had heard they were in Muertos, and heading for Isla Isabella. Later we heard on the radio that two other boats, the Shibumi (Don & Phyllis) and the Moon Dancer (Richard & Dee), had had a tough night and were about fifty miles out heading for Mazatlan. They had had 50 knot winds and 15 foot seas. I guess we picked the right time for crossing.
The rain stopped again by about ten o'clock but it was still cloudy and cool, so we decided it would be a good day for bus touring. We caught the Playa Sur/Plaza Fiesta blue bus in front of Club Nautico and for 200 pesos rode through the city center and far out on the west side to a modern shopping mall called Plaza Fiesta. Once we had cleared the downtown area and headed out the divided Boulevard, Juan Carrasco, the only hint as to where we were was the Spanish language signs. Other than that we might have been in Tacoma or San Diego. We passed automobile row where Ford, Chevrolet, Toyota, and other new and used car agencies lined both sides of the street. We passed fast food joints which had different names but which looked the same as U.S. franchises - here McDonald's is El Pollo Loco.
At the Plaza the main attraction is a store called Commercial Mexicano which looks for all the world like one of the Super Safeways. There, in one monstrous store, they sell everything from lime juice to furniture. It's twice as big as the CCC in La Paz and looks even more "Americanized".
After looking the plaza over, we walked a half mile toward the shoreline to the "Golden Zone", a several mile long stretch of highrise hotels, condos, and shops lining the waterfront. There we had a lunch of Quesadillas and Margaritas, then poked around in a couple of the high class shops before climbing on another bus. This time we caught the Richardo bus which took us back to the city center by way of the beach front drive, Avenida del Mar. Lois picked the next one, the Villa Galexia, a delapidated looking vehicle on the outside, but with sturdy seats. It took us to a completely different part of the city, far out to the northwest to a largely residential area although, except in the most modern areas, that is a distinction which is hard to make. Thoughout the city, shops and residences mix in grand confusion. The further we went, the smaller the buildings, and the narrower and rougher the streets became. In the back areas the rain of the last couple of days made rivers of mud of the streets, but everywhere the people were well dressed, clean, and busily doing what there was to be done. At the end of the line, presumably Villa Galaxia although there was no sign to say so, we walked a few blocks, then caught another bus which took us back to the Golden Zone, this time to the far western end. There are some spectacular clubs and condos out there, one huge one called Camino Real with manicured grounds which was built on a rock overlooking the sea.
It was 4:00 PM now, so we decided to head back. Two more buses, one to downtown, another to the harbor, took us home. There we found Al and Beth on the Spring Moon just coming to life; they had had a rough couple of nights. We invited them over for a drink and a dinner of tacos where they told us how they were blown north by the storm, ending up in Mazatlan rather than at Isla Isabella. They'd lost their head sail in 60 knot winds and their engine was overheating so much of the time they were making good not more than 1 1/2 knots.
We had planned on taking the harbor tour on a boat called the Yate Fiesta this morning but when we arrived there with Harry and San from Pyawacket we found that it left at 11:00, rather than 10:00 as they told me yesterday. Rather than wait around for an hour, we took off for the Aquarium. The convenience of the Mazatlan bus system continues to amaze me! Taking the first Playa Sur bus that came along, we rode clear across town and out to within a block of the aquarium. Mazatlan's Aquarium is no Sea World and is small in comparison to the ones we've seen in Seattle and Monterey, but it has nice displays of many of the fish we have seen on the reefs in the Sea of Cortez and a large collection of tropical fresh water fish.
After the Aquarium, we walked through the Botanical Gardens - again small but nice -, took a bus out to the Zona Dorado for lunch, and then went to the big bus depot to check out schedules to Copala, a nearby town where Harry says there is an old siver mine and a super good restaurant. We found that buses go there every two hours, so transportation shouldn't be a problem. Harry has a cold and Lois is still a little under the weather from hers, so we then headed back to the harbor. Spent the rest of the day napping and reading.
Walking to town with Lydia and two small children she was baby sitting, she pointed out many points of interest, including Doney's restaurant, the library, some magnificent statues, and a shop where they sell embroidered shirts for half of what is charged in the tourist traps. We went to the post office and then the Cathedral where in the surrounding courtyard we found dozens of little boys and girls dressed in traditional Indian costumes as a part of the celebration of this day. They each wore either a dress or shirt and pants made of what appeared to me to be a rough, white linen, simply embroidered. The girls then wore a bright scarf on their head (Some with false pigtails), bright beads around their necks, and a decorative belt. The boys usually sported a painted mustache, a brightly colored belt, and a straw hat. All wore harachas, of course, and all had a miniature replica of some type of carrier (complete with a tiny bundle of hay, fruit, or even a chicken) strapped on their back. The wearing of this type of costume appeared to be limited to the very young children - I doubt if we saw any over the age of four - but there was much picture taking, laughing, and dancing. We walked over to the market where Lois couldn't resist buying a hat and a tiny chicken coop for granddaughter Giuli.
Since the banks were closed we decided to go out to the Golden Zone and do some shopping where our plastic is recognized. Our limited experience suggests that, unless you really have some special knowledge such as Lydia gave us this morning, you are just as likely to get a good price in the tourist shops as in the downtown stores. So we hopped on the Sabalo bus and soon found ourselves at the "Mazatlan Arts & Craft Center". It's really just a bunch of shops which serve as distribution points for things made all over Mexico, but there are a few craftsmen actually working there - one glassworker and a couple of carvers - no sign of the people who do the marvelous silver and leather work. We bought a few things there, then worked our way back down the row of shops to the Designer's Bazaar where we saw so many nice things the other day. Spent a lot of money and didn't get back to the boat until 5:00 o'clock.
After a bit of a rest we hopped in the Metz again, ran back to the beach, and walked most of the way to Doney's before we found a taxi. What a good dinner we had! Lois had shrimp and I Asada Doney; both were perfectly prepared by a master chef. It was by far the best we've had in Mexico!
The next project was to get some money. After our experience in La Paz, we decided to go to the bank for cash. The process there is complicated and was made longer by the fact that this was the day after a holiday so the place was crowded. It took more than an hour to wait for one girl to check our Visa account by telephone, stand in line at one window to get a withdrawal slip, and then in the very long line at the only Caja de Cambio line to get our cash. But it worked, we got 2270 pesos for our dollar and had to pay no discount.
From the bank we took a bus part way to the Port Captain's office, walked down the beachfront past the pangas selling fish the rest of the way, and checked out with him (He stamped and signed our crew list this time). From there we took a bus out to the Golden Zone again where we bought Lois a gold twenty peso coin on a chain for Christmas and spent a bit more money on some of the neat things in the shops there; went to the Commercial Mexicano for beer, pop, and groceries; then took a taxi back to the harbor.
I've mentioned the efficiency of the Mazatlan bus system several times and, in spite of the unexplained anomoly this morning, we had another demonstration today. We were able to move around the city cheaply and easily, never waiting for a bus more than five or ten minutes. After several days of close observation I believe I have discerned the key to how they manage to provide such fine service - they don't waste money on unessential maintenance! We had that fact brought home to us on our way out to the Golden Zone this morning. As the bus pulled to a stop to let a passenger off there was a crash and bang as something hit the street. We weren't sitting where it was easy to see what had happened and were wondering what we'd hit until the driver, with sort of a resigned smile on his face, got off and, with the help of a passenger, carried one of the hydraulicly operated doors back onto the bus and laid it in the aisle. When he gets a chance he will probably reinstall it using a piece of raw hide.
I called Bard Larsen on the radio and found that, although his technician was making some encouraging progess, our handheld isn't fixed yet; so, I left some money with the Starfleet office and Tekijek to pay him and bring the radio to PV when it's finished. Then, after everything was set, we found that Lydia has agreed to go along with the group on Thursday to Copala and also to stop in the village where she was raised. We can't pass that up so we'll stay another couple of days. If somebody asks why we're still here, we'll tell them we have engine trouble and went to Copala for parts.
We got back down just in time to catch the Yate Fiesta Mazatlan, the tour boat we've been watching go in and out of the harbor; so, for the grand sum of 24,000 pesos, we took a two and one half hour tour of the harbor, a good part of it in the fog. Actually, the fog helped us get a better tour of the harbor itself than we'd have gotten without it; the fog was mostly on the outside along the long Golden Zone shore so, by common agreement from the many shivering passengers, we spent quite a bit of time in the clear sunshine along the big ship and fishing vessel docks. The harbor is bigger than I had imagined, running for several miles to the north. There's still a lot of Mazatlan we haven't seen!
The most interesting event of the trip was getting lost in the fog - honest, El Capitan was flat lost! We were approaching the small boat anchorage where the Yate Fiesta is also moored when dense fog suddenly enveloped the boat. I guess the captain wasn't paying complete attention and lost his bearings because there was never any question in my mind about where we were. We had a channel buoy in sight and weren't more than a hundred yards from the Sea Raven; but the skipper stopped the boat, slammed open the windows and doors to the wheelhouse, and peered around looking for some reference point. He evidently doesn't have a compass or anything else to provide a steering reference. Fortunately, the fog lifted just enough to see one of the peaks at the harbor entrance telling him where he was. He turned ninety degrees right and headed for the dock.
We spent the rest of the afternoon on the boat with me nursing my cold, hoping I'll feel half way decent for the trip tomorrow.
The ride to Copala was interesting. Once we cleared the city, the road led through agricultural country and then into the foothills of the Sierra Madres. We passed fields of corn, orchards of papaya, cattle feed lots, and several chicken farms that looked much like those I remember seeing as a kid instead of the chicken condos we use today. This is evidently mango country; huge orchards of mango trees lined the road much of the way. As we climbed into the foothills, the vegetation became lush and dense. We could have been driving on the Olympic penninsula except for the difference in the species of plants. It's a far cry from the desert of the Baja.
The bus dropped us at a small store where a sign at the side of a dirt, but obviously well traveled road declared,"Copala 1 Kilometer". This we hiked, down into a valley and up onto the next hill where we found a tourist trap, a nice one, and quaint, but very much the beginning of a Knott's Berry Farm here in the wilderness. We'd had some hints; the guide we met on the harbor tour knew of the place and said that tours went there, and Harry, who had visited here in 1974, remembered a good restaurant. The restaurant is still good and is run by the same guy, a gringo named Daniel, but has grown many times it's 1974 size. Copala claims 1596 as a founding date and for a long time was a silver mining town; now it is mining the U.S. dollar. While we were there two tour buses and a couple of dozen cars navigated the road from the highway to town. Dozens of children, the town's "Banditos" Daniel calls them, hawk trinkets in the streets and offer tourists donkey rides. Daniel said his grandparents lived there and that he had visited them when he was nine. We met another gringo, Tony, who said he had moved here 29 years ago after a heart attack; he's 70 and feeling great.
They are doing a good quality, gringo style restoration of the town. I doubt if the cobblestone streets were ever as well paved, or the houses so well finished, but the feeling is one which fits the image of old Mexico. Daniel told us that he and his waiters built his restaurant, a beautiful, multilevel brick and timber building with tile floors and arched windows. We had a good lunch for about what you might pay in the States and, at 2:00 o'clock after the Mexican President finished his State-of-the-country address, a super Margarita. Daniel then negotiated a ride back to Mazatlan for us on one of the tour buses.
Lidia provided the entertainment on the way back; she started off by wanting to tell us a joke then, at my suggestion, took the tour guides mike and told it to the whole bus. Then she sang, leading off with a lovely solo on Mazatlan then leading all in a sing-along. The tour people, including the guide, loved it. She has such a bubbly personality that it would be hard to be offended no matter what she did. A few of our group stayed on the bus to Mazatlan but the rest of us decided to stick with Lidia for a side trip to her home village. We got off the bus at Concordia where, clutching my camera, I also remembered too late my blue backpack just as the bus pulled away. Oh well, the trip was worth it.
Lidia walked us a quarter mile to town to see the church (She's a very devout catholic lady), then she negotiated a ride in a pickup to her village where we saw a real Mexican town. Mesillas is about five miles off the nearest highway and probably saw more tourists today than it's seen in years. Lydia knows everyone in town. She took us to her sister's house, a very well built adobe with concrete floors which were clean and well swept in spite of the chickens and pigs wandering through the house. Lidia's sister Marciana, a very plain and quiet woman with eleven children, drug heavy straight backed wooden chairs out until all of us were seated, then offered us water in tiny plastic cups.
We then toured a couple of furniture factories, seemingly a major industry of Mesillas, visited her aunt's house where we saw a brick oven and a kitchen of the old style. We bought fresh limes from her trees and peanuts from her roasters. We met and talked with a group of old men playing dominoes on a card table in the street, and saw the house where Lydia was born where an ancient woman, I'd guess 100, greeted us. I didn't get exactly who she was but I think she was possibly a Godmother.
We caught the 5:00 PM bus from downtown Mesillas to downtown Mazatlan, then the Zarragoza bus to Lidia's hill, then walked back to the harbor. It was a tired but happy crew that fell into bed on the boats.
11:00 Fish on! I go back and haul in a nice Bonito - fresh fish for dinner tonight.
11:10 Fog; not heavy but we're glad to have the radar. The Mexican navy is running around in these waters.
14:00 Lois says she thought she heard someone calling her on the radio. I'd been in the engine room so didn't here it, so assumed there was a boat named Lois out there somewhere, but a few minutes later I heard it and answered. It was Lidia calling on the radio in the Club Nautico office; she had worked all morning running down the tour bus and had found my backpack! What a lady! The Moon Dancer will bring it to us.
17:15 Anchored in the south anchorage at Isabella - quite a challenge. In a small cove about 1/4 mile across there are ten yachts, twenty-one pangas, and maybe 10,000 frigatebirds. The pangas were all anchored or drifting across a "fishing hole", the fishermen shouting, laughing, and singing as they pulled in quantities of a rather small fish about six inches long. We anchored near the outer edge of the hole and were entertained until well after dark. There must be a community of at least a hundred people on the beach. We'll check that out tomorrow.
Once we got our picture of Isla Isabella properly adjusted it's not a bad place at all. It sure isn't the sleepy little nature cove that we had expected; it's a very busy place. With Christmas about here, we're told that many of the fishermen have brought their families to the island so that the beach camp population is swollen with women and children. The people are friendly and we have yet to have a panga come by begging booze, or even selling fish; all are very busily working at their business of fishing. Tonight at about dusk we had another fishing party at the hole with lots of laughing, shouting, and singing. Wherever we've gone in Mexico we've heard singing, and many very good voices. It's hard to imagine a U.S. fisherman or brick layer singing in a voice loud enough to be heard a half mile away. Maybe the mass of professional entertainment available to us intimidates us.
I don't know quite how it happened but one of the pangas dropped an outboard motor in the anchorage this afternoon. Within minutes there were five or six pangas on site to help. A couple of fishermen with masks and fins dove but weren't having much success - they were in about fifty feet of water. I was trying to decide whether to risk loaning them scuba gear (I doubt if anyone was a certified diver and even fifty feet can be a problem if you make a mistake, and with my cold I didn't want to go down myself.) when the skipper of the Northern Lights came to the rescue. With Scuba, he had a line tied to the motor in about five minutes. The fishermen were ecstatic! They would have buried his deck with fish had he not protested.
Ashore we found that our impression of much activity was very much correct. At the beach camp there must be two hundred people, almost every one busily at some kind of work. There are a number of half completed (or half fallen down) concrete buildings, dozens of lean-to sheds, and a few tents. In many of them the women were cooking - we saw lots of tortillas being made. The fishermen were emptying nets, slaughtering fish, repairing equipment. All seemed friendly and had a, "Buenos tardes!", for us as we walked the narrow path between the beach and the camp.
Behind the camp we found another kind of activity; there, in a small forest of low trees is the nesting ground of the Magnificent Frigatebird which we have so much admired. Thousands of them, many of the males with their bright red pouches fully expanded, sat in the brush and watched us as we wound our way along the trail. They seemed quite accustomed to visitors and didn't move, even when we came within arms reach. From that distance they look quite formidable and the long hooked beak with which they snatch fish from the water on the fly (They never land on the water or dive as do other birds) looks like it could also take off an ear if the occasion warrented.
The path led through the frigatebird grove and then up a ridge overlooking the pacific to the west. There in the dry grass, high above the surf, we found another nesting ground - that of the Brown Booby. Again, they hardly moved as we picked our way carefully between the nesting hens. They nest on the open ground - if you can call a slight depression in the grass a nest - and near every female there seems to be a male. The chicks must take a long time to develop; one we saw was so big that it's mother was unable to cover it and yet it was completely naked. It looked for all the world like the Rock Cornish Game Hens you buy in the market.
A ways farther up the path we saw our first iguana out sunning itself on a rock. This is truly a unique island, at least in our experience. I'm glad we didn't pass it up.
Back on the boat after a rather wet ride in the Metz we decided that the time had come to retire it. The floor has completely gone - air leaks out almost as fast as I can pump it in and in places which aren't patchable. Although the tubes are still holding fairly well and we could probably get a few more months out of it with a piece of plywood for a floor, we don't have the plywood; so, we got down the new one, inflated, and assembled it. Tomorrow we'll put it in the water and dry and stow the old one for use in an emergency.
For the first time at this place, one of the pangas approached and offered us a big lobster. When I asked what they wanted in return the young man holding the still kicking shellfish indicated a hat, so I gave him my last cap, the W.T. Fugarwe Lodge one from Alaska. He was delighted. I took his picture in it later up at the beach camp, to the sound of whoops from his friends. We ate the lobster for dinner. Great!
09:50 A pair of humpback whales surface and blow off our port bow, the first we've seen since last spring.
11:45 Hookup! Nice Bonito.
13:45 Another whale, this time putting on a spectacular display of breeching - the longest we've ever seen. For fifteen minutes we watched one which would sometimes leap completely out of the water, roll in the air, and come down with a grand splash. At other times it would lift its massive tail out of the water and then pound it down again and again. What a show!
14:00 Two more Bonito, one right after the other, then a fish, I think a Dorado, which shook itself loose after some wild leaps. All took a green and yellow plastic squid from which I had removed the lead head so that it skips along the top of the water. Dorado forage on flying fish, so a fast lure on the surface is what you use.
15:00 Anchored at Chacala. I don't think I've ever seen a prettier place. It's our first look at a tropical paradise and we're both happy that we decided to come here rather than to San Blas. How to describe it?
Take a rocky coastline backed by mountains rising four to five thousand feet within ten miles, cover both with a dense forest of palms and hardwood trees. Now, scrape out some nice beaches along the shore and, for one of them, make a mile deep cove to protect from the prevailing northerly wind and ease the pounding of the Pacific swell. Build a small pueblo of three or four hundred people by scattering houses under the towering trees along a finely built cobblestone road which winds along the beach and out past the Port Captain's tiny office to a stone pier where the ubiquitous pangas tie. Then, along the beach, under a plantation of hundred foot high coconut palms, build a dozen or so palapas where vacationers willing to brave the two mile cobblestone road from the highway can relax and enjoy.
We got down the Metz, ran over to the pier where a friendly fisherman helped us land, and took our paperwork up to the Port Captain's office just above the pier (a very unusual location) where we were welcomed by a young assistant and the old Capitan himself, both full of smiles and assurances of, "No problemas!". As we walked the cobblestone over the hill through the pueblo we were much impressed with the cleanliness of the area. Although pigs and goats on tethers and lots of chickens seemed to be in every yard, the yards were swept clean and were free of trash. We walked a ways down the road behind the palapas and then back along the beach where a few Mexican families were playing in the low surf. At the moment we seem to be the only gringos here.
Back on the boat, we put out a stern anchor to keep our stem into the swell, put the mosquito netting on the hatches as a few of those little critters started to appear in the gathering dusk, and drank our evening martini feeling very satisfied with our day. We're told there is a good restaurant in one of the palapas. We'll have to check that out tomorrow.
We walked up a road marked "Chacalalilla" which wound through the forest and across the point, wondering all the way over the many unfamiliar plants, birds, and butterflys. We saw a flight of chattering chartreuse colored birds which moved like a green cloud through the trees. There are many of a particular species of butterfly which has glowing red spots and yellow stripes on its dark brown wings, one of the brightest colored I've ever seen. On the far side we came out on a clearing over the ocean where we could sit under towering palms and watch a couple of divers working the rocks below, probably looking for lobster. There, on a big rock, were many broken hulls of a thick-shelled nut which, the remains of a fire told us, had been roasted before cracking. It didn't take long to determine that the nuts, which looked like king sized dates but which were obviously not, had come from the palm trees. Walking farther along, we met a road crew taking a break from prying rocks out of the hard clay so we asked them about the nuts. They said they were coco nuts from which coco oil is made and that they are good to eat when dry. One man demonstrated by going off in the forest, returning with a dry nut, and cracking it for us. It was good. The half inch diameter meat looked and tasted very much like fresh coconut and was quite oily.
Following the road to its end, we found that Chacalalilla is another, smaller and, if anything, prettier beach than that at Chacala. Open directly to the Pacific Swell, it has a better surf and a cleaner sand. As at Chacala, camp sites, which were being raked clean by a couple of young hands, were set under the palms of a coconut plantation. One palapa restaurant and another couple of permanent buildings provided shelter and restrooms for the visiting vacationers. Maybe a dozen hardy Mexican families had braved the bumpy, slippery, rockstrewn road to get here and were swimming and sunning on the beach. When I asked about the busy season (They seem to now be just getting ready for the crowd to come) a man told me that it came in March, after the air and water start to warm up.
Back at Chacala, we looked for a place to have a beer and something to eat and stumbled on to the Restaurant Doris, a nice clean little palapa on the beach where a group of gringos from a van were having lunch. We learned that they were three generations of a family from Canada and that Odette Whitehead, their leader and a very go-go lady, lived six months out of the year at Las Gaviotas Bungalows in Rincon de Guayabitos, a resort about ten miles south of here. She recommended the garlic shrimp which turned out to be excellent! The cook, Donna, was also a very nice friendly lady who, in very careful, slowly spoken Spanish, explained that she had four sons in Los Angeles and had visited there several times. We had a nice chat.
After lunch we continued our exploration tour along the road to the east and soon encountered another first, at least in my memory, a banana palm with real bananas on it. All along the road there are banana, papaya, and mango orchards; and, from the boat we can see that they extend far up into the hills. I'm sure that they were here long before the road was built and, together with the coconut plantations, are the reason for the stone pier which was undoubtedly used for loading ships. We had to terminate our walk a little earlier than I would have liked because Lois, who like myself has yet to develop the proper barefoot reflexes, had kicked the stair this morning and has a rather sore toe. It's nice to go barefoot, but we've got to learn to protect our pinkies. I thought I'd broken mine last week!
In the morning sun we walked down to where the long curving beach joins a rocky shore and a stone house is perched on a little hill overlooking the whole bay. The place is called Mar de Jade and looks to be what was once the headquarters of the surrounding plantations. In addition to the main house built of brick and stone, there are four or five palapas of various shapes set among the trees on what must be fifty acres of grounds. The grounds themselves are a manicured version of this Chacala paradise. A little stream of clear water flows through thousands of flowering plants, fruit trees, and towering coconut palms before cutting a little gully across the sand beach to the sea. There were men working in the gardens and orchards and a family having breakfast on the patio as we approached so we didn't intrude, but later on the beach at the restaurante Doris we met two ladies who live in the house. They told us some interesting things about the area. At some time quite a while ago, they weren't sure just when, the big plantations we see were taken over by the Mexican government. They are now operated by the "people" of Chacala who care for the orchards and receive the benefit of the produce. Only the area immediately around the Mar de Jade house is privately owned. This may explain the contrast between the orchards we walked through yesterday which looked semi-abandoned and those around the house which obviously receive a lot of TLC.
Another interesting thing we saw along the beach was one of the finest tree houses I've ever seen. It is built about fifty feet up, in the crotch of a gigantic tree, the name of which I have no idea but which sports a crown of red blossoms. The house is as big as many of the palapas on the beach and looks to be more sturdily built. There is a long rope ladder at one end for ascent, and a "fire escape" rope hung from the other. There was no one there and we couldn't tell for sure whether it was solely a childrens playhouse or something more. It would have been fun to climb.
As I said, we'd thought about leaving in the afternoon but instead decided to put on our bathing suits and go to the beach. We were pretty well prepared to go swimming and it was a good thing, because I blew the timing, a little breaker caught the boat, it broached and Lois went over backward into the surf. I was horrified! We were in only two feet of water, but Lois is very leary of the surf and I've been trying to work her up to it gently - now I had blown it. Amazingly, she came up wet but laughing! It is hard to feel bad about falling in this water; it's probably pushing 90 degrees although I haven't measured the temperature, and the sun is so warm, and the surf so gentle. We pulled the Metz up the beach, opened the cocks to let it drain, then lay in the sun while things dried out. Later I went for a swim in the surf, the first time, I think, since I left Southern California back in college days. It wasn't big enough here today to ride, but it brought back memories.
09:00 Made a swing through Jalatembra, an anchorage only about ten miles south of Chacala. There we saw lots of gringo fishermen in aluminum boats and one sailboat anchored near the hotel. This is where Odetta, the Canadian lady we met the other day, spends the winter. It's on the highway so is easily accessable, and must have a boat launching ramp somewhere. It sure looks to me to be too open to the swell to be a comfortable ancorage though.
09:30 Started hooking Bonito. Caught seven of them in the next couple of hours and finally pulled in the lines. I was hoping to get a Dorado but no luck; just Bonito, all between six and eight pounds. They sure aren't bad eating although the meat is dark. Lois smoked some which makes good nibbling, and she cooked some with onions and tomatoes which was good hot and also made super fish tacos.
13:00 Rounded Punta de Mita. Scary! I hate it when the official Sailing Directions and all the other navigation guides say, "Caution - An underwater rock has been reported to lie between Punta de Mita and Las Tres Marietas." Now that is a passage about four miles wide through which hundreds of boats pass each day going to and from the fishing grounds. You'd think that, if there were a rock close enough to the surface to be a hazard, it would be marked. We turned on the depth recorder, tried to follow the same path as did the big shrimp boat we saw coming through, and held our breath every time the bottom started coming up.
14:30 It's now 15:30; we're on Central Standard Time. Anchored in La Cruz de Huanacaxtla, a nice little breakwater protected anchorage on the north side of Bahia de Banderas about ten miles from Puerto Vallarta. Our original thought was to stop here, then go into Nuevo Vallarta, the best anchorage near Puerto Vallarta, at high tide in the morning. After talking to others on the radio it sounds like we could get in alright, the channel is said to have a five foot depth at zero tide and tomorrow morning there will be a four foot high giving us a foot and a half to spare; but, if we stayed more than a day, we might not get out until the high tides of next month. I think we'll settle for the more crowded anchorage in the "pond" at Puerto Vallarta proper.
I spent the next couple of hours getting a high seas call through to Nan to check on our mail (I've just about given up on the Mexican public telephone system), and cleaning my fish. We never did get off the boat. There's a lot of commercial activity here; sport fishing boats plus several palapas and other buildings on the beach from which come the sounds of music and revelry. There are also several houses in the process of being built along the shore. It might even look kind of nice if we hadn't just come from Chacala.
The PV harbor entrance is guarded by high rises with many more in the construction process. The most prominent feature from a distance were the huge building cranes hovering over the new buildings. It reminds me of the Seattle skyline at the highth of the building boom there. Yesterday we had talked on the radio with the Flying Cloud, the friends we helped out last spring after they lost their fresh water. They have been here in PV for several months and are tied to a dock at a big condo complex called Isla Iguana; so, as we approached the entrance we gave them a call and Jerry steered us into our very own private anchorage, a little breakwater protected pond destined to become a site for more condo docks in the future, but for now a perfect place for one boat. Just across the way is the big "pond" in front of the Marina Puerto Vallarta where forty or so boats are vying for a spot to anchor.
We'd hardly gotten the hook down when Jerry, Carol, and a young lady named Ann who is helping them were over in their ding to welcome us to PV. They look tanned and healthy and say they've been having a ball, and making some money, the last several months taking rich tourists for day sails on Banderas Bay. Ann is a disillusioned young marine biologist with a masters degree and a hankering to go around the world. She's having trouble finding a skipper who wants a woman crew member who is not also a bed partner. They invited us to share Christmas dinner with them.
At five o'clock on one of the empty docks in front of the new Marina Hotel, a Christmas Eve potluck was held by all of the Yachties here at PV. Lois cooked up one of her super-enchilada casseroles for which she, as usual, received many compliments. There were probably close to one hundred people milling around on the dock and, after all had eaten, much singing and general good feeling. One man, whose name I don't remember, was a one man band, playing the guitar, harmonica, and cymbals simultaneously. I was impressed with the general youth of the people. Far from being a bunch of retirees, most of these folks are in their prime. The average age must be near 35, or perhaps less if all the children were included. In talking to them about the secret for being able to cruise while still young (It's obvious that these are not rich young waywards), it seems to be a willingness to work a while then drop everything and go cruising for a few years until the money runs out, then go back to work until you can afford to cruise again. That kind of life is one which requires a sublime faith in the future which most people of my generation and acquaintance haven't had. It seems, at least from our position of detachment, to be good for the kids. They all seem to be extremely capable and self assured, and we have yet to meet an obnoxious one. I guess any kid stuck on a thirty foot boat with others has to learn to get along if he isn't to become shark bait.
After dinner, about four o'clock, everybody went off for a siesta and Lois and I took the Metz for a tour of the harbor. I was surprized at how small it is. Yesterday coming in I was concentrating on following Jerry's instructions and not doing a lot of looking around, but today we realized that the whole of Puerto Vallarto harbor is no bigger than that at Friday Harbor. There is a ferry/cruise ship dock, a small deep area where a couple of fairly large vessels can anchor, a small anchorage where maybe a dozen boats can anchor with lines run to shore, a small boat yard and modern fuel dock, a dock with about fifty slips for sportfish boats, and two areas connected with big condominium complexes each with what I'd guess to be seventy-five to eighty slips for larger boats. Condominiums there are, lots of them, modern buildings ranging from three to six stories high, the finished ones beautifully landscaped, many fronting on concrete docks. And more are under construction and planned. By the time they are completed, the entire harbor shore will be lined with them.
In the evening the whole crew came over to the Sea Raven for another piece of pie and some home movies. All in all a very nice day even though we miss being with family on this Natividad.
I ran over to the Port Captain's office in the Metz this morning, tieing it to a huge tire fender behind the cruise ship Burmuda Star and threading my way upstream to the big round Port Operations building through a flood of tourists heading in the opposite direction to the tour bus. Here they had me fill out an "Arrival Report" and, as in Mazatlan, charged us as a cargo vessel, 490 pesos per ton. Here, however, we could pay in the same building. On the way back I stopped at the new fuel docks, went in and talked to the manager who is just in the process of stocking his shelves. They plan on building a full marine supply inventory here - it, he says, will be the only one in Mexico. They are charging 445 pesos per gallon ($0.75) for diesel, the standard PEMEX price and cheap compared to the $1.00 we paid in La Paz. We might want to fill again here.
Back at the boat I gathered up Lois and, leaving the Metz on the Isla Iguana dock in care of the Flying Cloud, we set off for the big city. The buses here are, if anything, a little more dilapidated than those of Mazatlan, and they charge the same as the first class buses there, 250 pesos. I imagine they have a bit more of a maintenance problem here because, not just one or two, but all of the main streets in the several mile long downtown area are paved with cobblestones. Shocks probably give our in a big hurry, so they just don't bother to replace them. Downtown is maybe five miles south of the harbor, built beteen a long, curving beach and the hills rising sharply to the east. That five miles is packed with hotels, condos, shopping centers, and automobile dealers businesses. Downtown's two main streets, plus the Malacon, a long walkway along the beach, are lined with shops, restaurants, and other tourist service businesses. There's a lot of money pouring into PV.
Following Carol's instructions, we got off the bus at a restaurant called La Paloma, walked two blocks to the east, and checked in at Migracion. Now we're legal. Across the street we found a Banamex bank and, since we were there and it wasn't busy, we bought a million pesos with our Visa Card. The girl said we'd get a 2330 exchange rate but I'm a little skeptical; the going rate has been 2260 or 70. We won't know for sure until the Visa statement catches up with us in a couple of month. Anyway, we are millionairs again for a little while. After that we just wandered, looking through the shops, walking along the Malacon. They have a lot of very nice shops here. There's all the junk that you see in Tijuana, but there is also a wide selection of very good quality craftmanship. Judging from what we saw, this city is probably one of Mexico's finest retail outlets. And, at least at this time, they sure have a bunch of customers; there were crowds everywhere we went.
After we wore ourselves down we stopped at the Conasupo for a few groceries, then caught a bus headed north which turned out not to be going all the way to the harbor. No problema! We hadn't stood at the bus stop for five minutes when along came a gringo in a pickup truck and offered us a ride for the last half mile to Isla Iguana. Friendly bunch!
Getting back to my first question, what makes Puerto Vallarta run? It isn't apparent from our one day's look. Sure, the eighty degree temperatures in December are nice, and there's fishing and sailing on Banderas Bay, but those are things available in many places. Even in the tourist information folders we picked up there's no real hint as to why this place is snowballing. Maybe that is the answer; big luxurious hotels and lots of tourist shops bring money, and with the money come more big luxurious hotels and shops. All you have to do is get it started. For whatever the reason, PV is growing and growing fast!
Well, I got the impeller replaced, we fooled around on the boat for a while while Lois did a load of laundry, and then we set off again to see a bity more of PV. We found a big, modern super market at a brand new shopping mall called the Marina being built just down the road a piece. So far it's the only store open in the mall but it's a good one. Then we caught a bus and this time riding a bit farther than we did yesterday, found ourselves in the "old town" part of the city. I guess it was here that the movie Night of the Iguana was filmed, the event which, at least some of the guide books say, set off the tourist boom in PV. It is picturesque, and looks a lot more like a Mexican town than the newer area even though the gringos are still in the shops and the tour buses on the streets. We drifted along a stone walk on a little island in the river running through the south end of town which is lined with vendor stands, restaurants, and little shops. It's sort of a combination park and tourist trap, but very pleasent. One shop in particular I've got to go back to with the camera. It's called the Mask Gallery, and has some magnificent Mexican masks including a cucuracha mask that I'd love to have if I had a place for it. Most are old, and probably very expensive, but very beautiful. We also stumbled into another gallery exhibiting the painting of a couple of contemporary Mexican artists which was very nice.
As with yesterday, we did a lot of walking and looking but not much buying, and again we couldn't really see the big attraction of PV. Maybe Tom on the Silhouette is close to the answer; he thinks that the fortunate combination of good winter weather, a good jet airport providing easy access, a good port for the cruise ships, and nice hotels make it what he calls the ideal "Poor man's winter vacation spot." In a restaurant in the little island park we talked with a couple from Des Moines, a suburb of Seattle, who are taking a one week cruise on the Star Dancer, the cruise ship here today. In that week they have about twelve hours each in Cabo San Lucas, here, and Mazatlan. During the summer the same ships rotate between Ketchikan, Juneau, and Sitka. You can have a nice week that way, or by flying down and staying in a condo, for under $1000. It's true that we don't see signs of great gobs of money here. From what we hear, the rich go to Manzanillo.
We went to dinner at Las Palomas, the restaurant in the Marina Vallarta, and had a very nice meal for a very reasonable price. The marina hotel is very nicely done; several five story buildings are laid out around a huge green central park in which are tennis courts and a big swimming pool with a bar on an island in it's middle. The first floor is devoted to shops, restaurants, and administration, and the upper four floors to the rooms, each with one large balcony overlooking the central area and another over either the beach or the "pond" where all the boats are moored. You could spend a nice vacation here without ever leaving the hotel.
Jerry and Carol had recommended that we ride the bus over to Guadalajara so that we could see some of the countryside, and then fly back; so we next headed downtown in search of the bus depot. On the way we took a bit of a side trip to the Evinrude agency where, wonder of wonders, we were able to buy an impeller for our little Johnson 6 horse outboard. It's still running beautifully, but at idle it's getting no cooling water. Lois also bought a watch for me because I managed to crack the crystal on the one she gave me two years ago, and it leaks. We went back to Carlos O'Brian's for a Margarita and Quesadilla for lunch, then sat on the Malacon and watched the boats towing people off the beach in parachutes for a while. That seems to be a pretty popular thing to do here; I counted eight of the parachutes in the air at once along about two miles of beach. They are pretty slick at it. A group af about six young men hold the chute and tie the victim in, then they signal the driver and run, holding the rider off the sand until the chute lifts. When it comes back the "boss" gives steering orders with a whistle to the rider and four or five guys catch him, or her, as he touches down. Less than a minute later they've got somebody else strapped in and on their way.
Next, still not knowing where the intercity buses were, we took the first bus coming along the Malecon and just rode it 'till it reached the end of the line, a little park on the beach not far from old town. We watched the surfers there for a while before we finally got around to asking a bus driver where the Tres Estellas de Oro depot was. Turned out to be only four blocks away so we headed there. On the way we met a young man named Awelio Rico from one of the time-share condo agencies who spoke pretty good English, who's home is in Guadalajara, and who says he is going there on the 31st. He gave us his phone number (2-43-39) and invited us to call him for some guidance when we got there. We might just do that. At the depot we found that there are buses about every two hours, that it is a six hour ride, and that the fare is 13,800 pesos, $6.00.
On the way home we stopped at another giant super market, the Gigantia, and bought a few things. By the time we got back to the boat we were pooped. We've sure managed to do a lot of walking and bus riding the last few days.
After that Lois and Carol went shopping and I went into town with the idea of getting reserved seats on the bus to Guadalajara. Didn't work out! It seems they only reserve seats on the 11:00 A.M. and it is full for the next couple of days. The guy in the ticket office said that if we were there when they open at 8:00 A.M. we'd have a good chance of getting the seats we want, so we'll try that. If we don't make one bus we'll try for the next. They run every two hours.
Had dinner again at the marina Las Palomas, this time with Jerry and Carol. More good food at reasonable prices, and it's so easy to get to; we just run the Metz to the front door. Don't know if we'll ever manage to make one of the downtown restaurants in the evening.
We're glad we decided to take the bus even though it took 6 and 1/2 hours. It's almost like it was going from Seattle to Spokane before the freeways were built. The road runs north along the coast to just above our little village of Chacala, then turns east and climbs rapidly into the mountains. The change in vegetation is striking. As we climbed out of the marine layer along the coast, the palm trees disappeared and the dense jungle gave way to a more open forest. On top pines become the most numerous trees, and much of the land is under cultivation. Between Las Varas and Chapalilla, where our road joined highway 15 from Nogales to Guadalajara, we crossed several ridges and were often able to look down a thousand feet or more at the road winding below us to a village on the green valley floor. Once we reached Highway 15 the villages became more frequent and most of the land was being farmed. Much of it was planted in corn but, as we went south, we saw acre after acre planted in a bluegreen cactuslike plant. It wasn't until we passed through a village called Tequilla that we realized that it was agave from which the Mexican national drink is made. Near that town it seemed that every hill and valley was covered with the stuff.
The bus depot in Guadalajara is on the far side of town as we came in, so we got a glimpse of that city of 4.5 million on the way. If it weren't for the signs, it would be hard to tell that you weren't in San Diego or some other Southern California city. The streets are wide, well paved, and teaming with traffic; the buildings and landscaping could be anywhere in the southwest U.S. The bus depot though, is much different than those of the north; clean and laid out much like an airline terminal. We "debused", bought a taxi ticket for 4000 pesos, and were soon checked in at the Hotel Fenix, recommended by the driver. It is right downtown in the central area so, before we called it quits for the day, we walked to the magnificent cathedral and strolled through several of the plazas around it. Dinner at the hotel was barely passable but the room was clean and the bed comfortable.
A tourist center it might be, but Tlaquepaque also has the largest display of really fine craftwork I have ever seen anywhere. I can't begin to describe the array of glass, copper, leather, pottery, sculpture, and painting displayed by dozens of shops, many of which are located in magnificent old stone and brick houses of many rooms surrounding a beautiful courtyard. We spent most of the day there and didn't half cover it before our feet and legs gave out. We'll be back to Guadaljara if for no other reason than this. We had an interesting lunch at a restaurant called El Patio where I helped the waiters pick a bunch of bananas from a tree in the patio - I was able to jump higher. As a reward they gave us six of the bananas. We'd never tasted tree ripened bananas before; they're quite different, quite sweet with a hint of a peach flavor.
It wasn't until we had gone back to the hotel for a rest and I got to studying a guidebook in the room that we discovered that the big open air market which we were looking for this morning is only a few blocks from the hotel and is called the Mercado Indepencia. So, for our New Year's Eve adventure, we went to see it. Wow! What we saw this morning is tiny in comparison. I can't guess how many acres of booths there are but each aisle must be a quarter of a mile long, and there are dozens of aisles on three levels. Needless to say, we didn't anywhere near see it all; we were already pooped. We finished off the year by listening for a while to a band in the plaza, then going back to the hotel and watching an HBO movie, the first TV we've seen in months. Great day, and a great year! More?