The Food

As I'm sure you can tell from reading our blog a lot of our time is spent eating.  That has not changed.  The first thing we did when we got here was hail the French Baker who I have already written about.  However I thought I'd let you all see what delivery by panga looks like.

Anton and the French Baker in the back row with Ryan, Charlie, Kelly and Luke getting their morning croissants.  This is just about a daily occurance except for Wednesday's - French Baker is off that day.

As for dinners we've been having lots of Mexican food as you can imagine.  One of our favorites is a meal made in a Mexican Molcajete Lava Bowl.  The bowl is heated and stays hot for at least an hour after you are done.  You can get fish, shrimp, steak, chicken or a mix.  I had the steak, Phil had the shrimp and friends visiting had just about every other combination and we all loved them.

One of the other things that we decided we liked are tortas.  They are rather large sandwiches made on a large roll and stuffed with meat, chicken or fish.  I'm partial to the pork - carnitas tortas.  We especially liked them at a restaurant we found in Melaque - the town at the other end of the bay here in Barra de Navidad.

You can get the sandwiches smothered which is the best way.  You probably won't need dinner after eating this puppy.  Our favorite place to eat these is a little sidewalk restaurant in Melaque.

You can see Ryan, Kelly and me sitting at the far right table.

But the place we have visited the most here in Barra is Thrifty's ice cream. 

When we are out in anchorages it is hard to get anything with ice - especially ice cream so when we are in port we opt for eating our weight in ice cream.

Most of the time we eat our three meals a day on the boat.  Shopping in little tiendas is easy here in Barra and in the small town where the marina is - Colimilla.  The ladies in Colimilla now know Ryan and I since we do most of the shoppping.  You can always find staples in the tiendas - milk, butter, eggs, etc...  Some days the produce is better than others.  Meat is very hard to come by and I've walked to Melaque a few times to get meat at the carneteria and to shop at the Hawaiian market.  The Hawaiian market has some of those hard to find things like - bagels, tomato paste,  and kiwi. 

We've also dabbled in local "spirits."  Our favorite is Controy.  It is an orange flavored liquor that is similar to Contreau.  We use it to make margaritas.  We've also tried most of the beers.  Pacifico still seems to be the favorite.  We think Modelo is like Bud Light.  We like a dark beer that Modelo makes which is called Victoria. 

We have not gone thirsty or hungry here in Mexico.

Tsunami Survivors

Well we had a little excitement here today resulting from the 8.8 earthquake in Chile. We received a tsunami warning for the Pacific Basin so in order to be safe we set to sea at 10:00 a.m. (CST) knowing that the tsunami was predicted to hit here in Barra at 11:09 a.m. local time.

We are safely back at the dock. We felt nothing out at sea but the bouys in the channel took a beating from the large waves that came in here. One bouy is completely gone and the current running out of the marina was pretty strong even hours after the event. Thankfully no one here was hurt and we all now have a good story to tell.


This is all that is left of one of the "green" channel bouys.  It was washed into the marina by high currents.

COMPANY!

The reason we decided to stay in the marina here in Isla de Navidad as long as we have was becauase we had several friends who were willing to come down and visit us while we were here.  Our first visitors arrived on February 12th.  Fran and her two kids Caitlin and Colin were ready for fun and adventure when they got here.  The Baur family from Houston - Ron, Cindy, Jack and Kate also arrived that day.  We had lots of fun playing with them in the pool and exploring the city of Barra de Navidad. But most of all we enjoyed sharing panga rides with them...

(Ron really wanted to be in the picture with the kids)

and eating all that ice cream from our favorite "Thrifty" ice cream shop.

Cindy and Kate sitting in front of Thrifty's

The McGuinness gang showed up on the 14th and they got in on the ice cream craze.

The kids also enjoyed getting into the spirit of the ethnic traditions of the town.  Below is their rendition of "Dia des Muertos."

Check out the eyes.  I couldn't have done that again if I tried.

We also enjoyed the hospitality of Nicole's dad - "Dr. Neil" - aboard his boat SeaStar. 

Budding models

Dr. Neil even gave all the kids a spin in his dinghy.

The smiles on everyone's faces told us just how much fun everyone was having.

Our budding designer who saw beauty in the debris left behind by the trees. (Note picture two above.)

Caitlin and Colin enjoyed the pool

Kelly really like reading - in peace (Yes, that is Ryan under the towel next to her playing his DS - better to see the screen without the glare of the sun.)

He did finally come out from under the towel after he had beaten the game - sporting a smile!

Even a rainy day venture into town for shopping was a lot of fun.

We had a great time with everyone and we are soooooo happy they came to share some time with us in this great place that is Barra de Navidad!

Kelly's birthday

Kelly turned 11 on February 5th.  We decided that we had to get some dessert to celebrate the big day so we decided to enlist the help of the French Baker.  The French Baker is a French gentleman who lives here in Barra for half the year with his family.  He and his wife own a bakery in town and they make wonderful croissants in several varieties.  The best part is that he delivers his treats directly to your boat via a panga he has outfitted.  You simply have to call him on the radio.  We had been hearing people call him when we were in Tenacatita and we made it our mission to find him as soon as we got into the marina.  Needless to say he has been coming to our boat every day since we've been here.

So we thought it only fitting to have him make us something for Kelly's birthday.  Kelly settled on a Chocolate Mango Ginger Marmalade Pie - that is a mouthful.  He did a great job on the pie.  In the end she didn't "love it" but she was very happy with the what he came up with for her.

We had dinner on the boat and some of our friends stopped by to wish her happy birthday.  Anton and Rita from Royal Albatross brought her a small apple pie from the French Baker and gave her a gift.  I don't think she'll forget where she was on this birthday.

RAIN

Well we knew it couldn't last but we never thought our first encounter with rain would be the biggest storm of the century in this part of the world.  It started raining on the morning of February 2nd.  We were safely tied to our slip in the marina and we thought it would be a good chance to get ahead on school work since we couldn't really to to the pool.  We had just put up our new awning the day before.  We had never even used it until we got here but since we knew we'd be in this marina for a while we decided to put it up.  Initially it helped keep the rain out while allowing us to keep the hatches open. That did not last long.

By the middle of the day the rain was coming down pretty hard so we decided that even with the awning up we had to close our four big hatches.  This made it a little steamy down below but with the fans on it was bearable.  After dinner it really started raining hard and the wind was really starting to pick up.  At 10:00 pm Phil and I decided that we had to take the awning down or risk having it torn or worse still having something else break because we had tied the awning to it.  So in the pouring rain we went out and took it down.  We then had to shut all of our portholes because the rain was coming down so hard - and horizontally - that rain was coming in the sides of the boat.  The wind gusts were getting to be 35-40 mph by about 11:00.  That's when the show really started.

Lighting like I have never seen before began to light up the sky to the north.  It lasted until about 1:30 a.m.  The kids slept through the whole thing but the lightning combined with the torrential rain and the wind I didn't finally go to sleep til after 3:00 a.m.  We awoke to another day of POURING rain which lasted the entire day.

After it was over and done we learned  that where we were there had only been "intense" rain but that further south there had been "torrential" rain that had caused mud slides.  North of us in La Cruz - one of the anchorages we had been in only a few weeks ago - saw the worst of the storm.  One boat went aground when its anchor chain broke but the family on board was saved when a large wave washed them off the beach and they were able to start their engine.  Another ship sustained damage when one ship slipped off its anchor and dragged into their boat bending the stantions and life lines of the boat that was hit by the boat that was dragging.  In La Cruz the winds got to 70 mph.  We heard from a couple that was in the marina there that their boat was heeled over in the slip so far that they were worried they would be in the water.

Our friend's on Qualchan were in Tenacatita for the storm.  This is a picture of Qualchan taken by another boat in the same anchorage of what it looked like in Tenacatita.  There boat was not hit by the lightning but it sure did look like it was.

Ryan has been learning about erosion and boy did he get a chance to see the real thing.  Half of the hillside next to the marina came down with the rain.  It took the marina days to clean up all the dirt that washed down.  The water in the marina took longer to clear.   No one is going to forget where they were for this storm.

Getting the lay of the land in and around Barra - February 2010

After settling in and finding our where the pools were it was time to focus on the immediate needs of clean laundry and food acquisition.  I was lucky enough to be invited by Annie from Oso Blanco  to accompany her and Nicole from Ohana on a shopping expedition to Melaque, the next town over.  Annie has a car here in Colima so the short trip over the boarder back into Jalisco and the town of Melaque was a simple matter of loading ourselves into the car and making the short 20 minute trip.  I would come to find that with no car, the trip requires you to take a panga (aka water taxi) to Barra and then you can either walk up the beach to Melaque (which I did do) which takes 40 minutes or you can take a cab to Melaque from the water taxi stop in Barra (for 50 pesos ($4.25 roughly).  Then you have to get everything you buy back to the boat.  Trust me going in the car was a DREAM come true.

Laundry on the other hand required a walk into the town of Colimilla. It's not a far walk - about 1/2 mile - but it is all up hill and I do mean a "HILL."  Who knew two little kids laundry could weigh so much but when you've been out at achor for three weeks and every bath towel, sheet and dish towel is dirty I will tell you carrying those bags up hill in 85 degree heat and high humidity is not for the faint of heart.  In any event we managed to get our "chores" done in a couple of days.

The marina itself is not all that large.  Small in comparison to Nuevo Vallarta's Paradise Village.

A picture of the Marina as taken from the sixth floor of the neighboring hotel.  You can see the lagoon in the background.  This is where many of the sailboats anchor to avoid paying the pricey slip fees in the marina.

Here is a shot of Sabbatical taken from the sixth floor lobby of the hotel.

If you look across the bay a little to the north you can see the town of Barra de Navidad located in the neighboring state of Jalisco. 

That little waterway you see is the boarder between the two states.  It takes less than 3 minutes by panga to cross that bay.

As I mentioned the grounds of the marina and hotel have 3 pools.  One pool is just too hard to get to as you have to cross several bridges and take several different elevators just to get there.  I think they did this on purpose to insure that the kids stay in the slide pool and allow this pool for those truly seeking a relaxing - quiet - vacation.  The second pool is a kid friendly pool on the 1st floor which for lack of any other reason as it has to compete with the slide is just not that popular.  You'd think more families would camp out here as it has this great dolphin mosaic but the kids thought it was boring.  Kelly and our friends Caitlin and Colin Beale did at least venture to get wet in it one day.

The main attraction is the big pool which not only has two slides and a hot tub but also has what my kids loved which was a swim up bar where you could sit and have your nachos and drinks. 

From the day we arrived Ryan had his heart set on sitting at the pool bar and having lunch so when we finally obliged his wish and let him order food and sit and eat it at the swim up bar he found that it was all he could do to keep from freezing in the water while trying to eat his lunch.  His lips were blue by the time he was done but he could at least say that he had done it.

Nachos are good no matter where you eat them - or how cold you are!

Now all we have to do is wait for Kelly's birthday celebration and for our friends to arrive. 

Kelly and Ryan outside the front door of the Wyndham Hotel in Isla de Navidad.

Bye-Bye Tenacatita - Hello Barra de Navidad - January 29, 2010

Well we finally decided to make the whopping ten mile move south to Barra de Navidad.  Our last day in Tenacatita proved to be fruitful one.  We finally ran into Neil Kelley, Nicole McGuinness' dad.  He just drove up to our boat the last day on a dinghy with some of his friends and introduced himself to us.  He knew who we were by the hailing port on our ship "Hermosa Beach."   He told us he would be in Barra during the same period we were there and that he was looking forward to seeing us and his family over the course of the next month.

The other memorable event about our last night was the dolphins.  It got to be about 10:00 p.m. and Phil and I were reading when all of a sudden we heard the noise that boaters never want to hear - our anchor was dragging on the bottom.  We could not understand how this was possible since it was a calm night and we had become experts on anchoring in this bay as we had up and moved anchor no fewer than 8 times during the course of our stay for various reasons mentioned in my prior blog.  Kelly even jumped out of bed as she was sleeping right under the anchor locker and she too heard the noise.  We all ran up on deck - except Ryan - who I'm convinced could sleep on a picket fence, and what did we see in the full moon but a couple of dolhins who were using our anchor chain as a scratching post.  They spent the next hour dragging our anchor line with them as they played with each other.  From what we heard from some of our neighbors the dolphins weren't just using our anchors as jump ropes.  They were moving at least three other boats.  They finally settled down about 11:30 - as did we.

Our trip to Barra was uneventful.  Which means no one was sick and as further evidence that the kids now had their sea legs, they didn't even bother to come above decks during our transit south.  Kelly stayed below and did what she does a lot - read books and Ryan played the DS.  We arrived in Barra about 11:30 a.m. and were immediately invited to a dock party by some of the friends we had met in Puerto Vallarta.  Annie from S/V Oso Blanco happened to be on the same dock as us as did another family who were from Hollywood Riviera.    We ended up with a few kids on our dock which was enough to make Kelly and Ryan happy that they weren't alone. 

The food at the dock party was excellent and the marina itself is set in a beautiful location.  That said, this Marina has seen better days.  It reminded me of Miss Havisham's wedding dress from Great Expectations.  I'm sure that when it first opened and was shiny and new it was marvelous but this marina's time, like Miss Havisham's dress, has come and gone.  It is now old and yellowing (literally.)  The facilities are NOT well maintained and for what you pay and from initial appearances what you expect to get you will be sorely disappointed.  However, there are a few positives.  The water slide at the pool is to quote the kids "awesome."  The quick panga rides across the state line - aka the bay to Barra de Navidad (the marina is actually in Isla de Navidad - a peninsula in the next state of Colima) which go faster than some of the rides at Disneyland and the overall location make it bearable.  However the showers and mosquitos are AWFUL here.

Needless to say we were going to stay no matter what because we had lots of company coming from home and more than anything we were all looking forward to seeing familiar faces.  So, with that in mind we settled in for a month in Isla de Navidad's Marina.