| Left are Debbie and Drew of Black Dog. On the right are Mark and Wendy of Sol Mate with Charlie. | |
(Including Chacala and Punta Mita and Las Tres Marietas)
Saturday, January 3, 2009: We arrived at Mantanchen Bay, San Blas at 5 p.m. It took us 7.5 hours to get there from Isla Isabela. This small historical town was once a major center of Spanish domination of the west coast of the Americas. In 1882 Longfellow wrote his last poem, "The Bells of San Blas". We heard these lovely bells from the cathedral every day we were there. In October 2002 Hurricane Kenna did major damage to many of the houses and toppled many old trees.
As I mentioned on the page "Isla Isabel", there were other boats leaving the island with us at the same time due to expected high winds. We all settled in at Mantanchen Bay where we anchored out a mile from shore, far enough away from the mangrove trees and all the annoying insects that come with them. The pelican pictured below rested on our bow sprit shortly after we anchored.
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| The San Blas shrimp boat fleet |
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| Shrimp boat and lots of shrimp-eating frigate birds waiting for dinner, it appears. | This boobie followed us for a long time |
Sunday, January 4: There was no dinghy dock so Mark and Wendy of Sol Mate graciously volunteered their dinghy and shuttled the crew of Black Dog and us into shore. Mark waited patiently for the waves to clear, then sped as quickly as possible through the surf. This was our first dinghy beach landing and we were glad Mark was driving. He had done beach landings before and was familiar with San Blas and led us on a tour of the town. It is "very Mexico" according to the captain's log. The Bay is a little distance from town, so we all piled into the back of a pickup truck that took us into town. I never did ask if it was someone just volunteered to take us to town or if it was actually a taxi, but anyway we gave the driver 100 pesos and everyone was happy.
Monday, January 5: A number of boats that were anchored in the Bay decided to relocate in the harbor to be closer to town and also to avoid the rough beach landings and very wet departures. We listened to Captain Norm assisting other vessels cross the bar into the river. Captain Norm stands on the beach with a handheld VHF radio and flashes a signal light. Each boat is told to head directly toward the light to avoid going aground or snagging a pipe left over from an old dredge. When it was our turn to enter, we were instructed to "wait for the waves to subside and crank up the engine and go as fast as you can". We got hit by a wave that sent us sideways for a moment, but quickly recovered and made it through the bar without incident. We continued up the river and settled in at Marina San Blas next to Sol Mate, Black Dog and Tamarra. Anchored in the river were several other boats that had been at Isla Isabela, one of whom reported seeing a crocodile crossing the river.
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Sharon and Charlie at the old mid-1800's customs house in San Blas. It is currently undergoing restoration. |
Tuesday, January 6: "You can't go to San Blas without taking the jungle tour". That is what we heard numerous times from other cruisers who'd taken the tour. We also had been advised to take the first boat in the morning. We saw many varieties of birds, iguanas and crocodiles and it was well worth getting there by 7 in the morning for the two hour trip up San Christoval Creek by panga boat.
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On Wednesday we got together with the crew of Black Dog, Tamarra and Sol Mate and caught a bus to Tepic, the capital of Nayarit. We were told by Jan Goldie (Captain Norm's wife) that the one and a half hour ride over the mountain by bus would be well worth the trip, not only to see this beautiful city but to enjoy the spectacular scenery along the way. We were not disappointed. Jan mapped out various museums and art shops displaying the intricate bead art of the Huichol Indians. (prounced weech-ol) The darling little Huichol Indian girl on the right was so shy and wouldn't sit still and consequently, she is blurred in the picture. |
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 The
food displays were lovely to look at and were exceptionally well cared
for. |
 This
little woman stole our hearts. She was wearing a San Francisco
49er cap. She loved seeing her picture in my camera.
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 At
Marina San Blas are Black Dog, Sol Mate, CaST Away and Tamara.
Puggles and Pudge loved the lush coolness of the grass. |
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Chacala
Sunday, January 11, 2009: It was nice to be on our way again. We left Marina San Blas at 8 a.m. and it was a short trip to Chacala, about 20 miles which took us 5 hours underway. For such a tiny town, it sure had a lot of gringos, both American and Canadian. We anchored in the small bay and went ashore by dinghy to a well protected beach with no surf to deal with. As usual, the beach was lined with palapa restaurants with coconut palm roofs and the sandy beach for floors. As in San Blas, in 2002 hurricane Kenna devastated this town.
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| We caught up with Bamboo again in Chacala. We have been travelling the same route since we left our homeport in Coos Bay for the Baja Ha-Ha. Pictured above are Michelle, Tim and Bentley. Bentley's name suits his well. Bamboo is from Seattle. | Downtown Chacala |
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The Rotary Club is responsible for erecting and funding the school and
Learning Center project. It appears to be an ongoing project.
The upper floor of this building houses the many donated computers and
offers internet service to locals and cruisers for a small donation. |
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| The anchorage at Chacala | The rules and regulations of the beach. Gotta love the blue sign on the left! |
WHALE OF A "TAIL"
We had just left Chacala when we noticed a whale off our starboard beam. Not too far from the whale was a small fishing boat about 30'. It soon became obvious that the whale was in pursuit of this boat. We can only speculate that something got this whale terribly irritated and caused it to go after the boat. Just fifteen minutes earlier a whale came right up along side our boat and spouted twice before disappearing. We were very happy our whale was friendly and not the one in the pictures below! It launched itself at the fishing boat at least eight times before the boat turned around and sped away heading back to Chacala.
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Punta Mita
January 14, 2009: We arrived at Punta Mita seven hours after weighing anchor at Chacala. The weather was mild with no wind, but the 4' swells made the ride rollie. Punta Mita is at the tip of the northern entrance to Bandaras Bay and approximately 17 miles from Puerto Vallarta. We settled in for the day and enjoyed the 10-15 kts of wind that came up keeping the insects away.
The next day we launched the dinghy and headed for town seeking an internet connection. In San Blas I had been having trouble with connecting to the internet and spent several hours, with the help of Mark on SolMate, trying to remedy the problem. We landed the dinghy and asked a young man on the beach where we could find an internet cafe. He directed us to Debo's Cafe. I turned on the computer and attempted to connect to the internet and the same error message came up. It was our lucky day, however, because Debo's ex-husband was visiting from Texas, and as it turned out he was a former employee of Dell Computers. Not only did he fix my computer but he got Charlie's little 8" Asus computer up and running as well.
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| At the end of the street in this tiny little village we got our computers fixed. | Charlie at Debo's and his little computer. |
Las Tres Marietas (The three Small Marias)
Sunday, January 17, 2009: By 8:30 a.m. we had the anchor up and were off to the Tres Marietas Islands just a short hop away. In less than an hour and a half we had our anchor set and looking forward to launching the kayak and going ashore. Black Dog had gotten there ahead of us and we were the only two boats. It was a lovely, peaceful setting and we looked forward to visiting this National Ecological Park. Another sailboat came in and tied up to a mooring ball close to shore.
Did I say "peaceful"? . . . . . . . . The peacefulness didn't last very long. Before we could get the kayak into the water, a tour boat from Puerto Vallarto loaded with at least 100 passengers latched itself to another mooring ball, and before we knew it, loud panga boats arrived to deliver passengers to the beaches while others began snorkeling around the tour boat. Oh well, they had just as much right to be there as us so we took the kayak over to Black Dog to say "hello" and get some advice on what to see. We paddled through openings in the rocks and around and through the snorkelers before heading to the small beach area that had already filled up with tourists. It was just too crowded so we decided to retreat to the boat for some refreshments and paddled back to Black Dog on the way. Before we knew it, the tour boat was all loaded up and heading back to P.V. By this time we figured we'd probably seen enough and decided to go that direction ourselves. So, by 1:30 p.m. we had our anchor up and was on our way to La Cruz about 3 hours away.
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| Black Dog | Paddling back to CaST Away. Picture courtesy of Drew and Deb on Black Dog. |
| Next stop is La Cruz de Huanacaxtle | |
