2006-03-12 16:04:16

Hello Friends and Family, I guess I had better sit down and get off a note to all of you to let you know both Lois and I are alive and well in our Mexican paradise. I checked my past emails and realize two months have passed since we sent out an update. Boy, time flies when you are having fun. Ironically, the past two months have seen us visiting the same ports as I wrote about on our last update. Only this time we have been in the company of friends who just returned from the states on the boat Traveler. Dennis and Joan go back to their home in Santa Rosa to work for the summer months and return during the winter to cruise. This is a pretty common practice of many cruisers we know here. Summer can get pretty warm, and if you are from Toronto or Seattle can be quite challenging. We’re presently in Santiago Bay, at Manzanillo, precisely where we were on the10th of January. But since that time, we had returned to Barra de Navidad, where we spent about a month to really get to know the town. It is a wonderful little beach side resort community that has many fun restaurants and pubs. Wanting to encourage cruisers to stay, there is a hotel called The Sands that is on the water and has a dinghy landing where we can leave our dinghies when we come in off the boat. They also encourage us to use their swimming pool and palapa pool side bar and restaurant. It makes the town real handy for us. There is a local French bakery whose owner comes out into the lagoon, where we anchor, and into the marina by boat to deliver his fresh baked baguettes, pies, muffins and whatever on a daily early morning run. Boy, one could gain weight real fast enjoying all those treats. A woman by the name of Maria, of course, owns a tienda that caters to the cruisers as well. It seems to be stocked with all the things us gringo’s want to eat and drink. She also provides boat side service for the delivery of these grocery items as well as propane, ice, bottled water and whatever you order from her. She makes a run up to Guadalajara to where is located a Price Club, and can get many of the items that are sold in the states. Pretty convenient for us. Besides all that, she is a very sweet lady and simply works herself 7 days a week to keep us happy. She does this on her own as her husband has landed a good job here in Mexico, building a marina in the fishing community of San Blas, a few hundred miles from here and only comes home once or twice a month to visit with his wife and children. This three year project will keep him employed with a good firm to provide for his family. So, overall, it became pretty darned easy to slip in to staying in Barra for a month. While there both Lois and I saw a doctor to take care of a problem with Lois and also do a check up with some blood work for cholesterol. Now that was a delight, expense wise. The doctor visit for two appointments for both Lois and I was $25.00. The blood work at the lab was $8.00 for each of us, give the blood in the AM and pick up the results in the PM. Boy, do we like the medical community here. No insurance to deal with, no primary care physicians, no co-pay, simply good, inexpensive care. We were in Barra for the Super Bowl so about 80 of us found a restaurant that was going to show it on their televisions, so we more or less took the place over for the day. We ate, drank, (ran them out of Corona’s) yelled for our favorite team (we were among the few, 10, for the Stealer’s) and had a great time with our cruising community of friends. The next big holiday in Mexico is St. Patrick’s Day and we will be in the town of Melaque, where St. Patrick is the patron saint of the town so the celebration has already started and peaking on the 17th with a variety of events including parades, fireworks, bullfighting and not one of favorites, cock fighting. Anyway, there seems to be something for everyone to participate in the celebration. We’d best get moving and get up there. It’s only about 26 miles up the coast from here…..it’s just hard to leave this great anchorage here in Santiago Bay. But leave we must! We have charted out our voyage back north and have allocated about 35 days to go the 450 miles up the Mexican Riviera to Mazatlan to arrive there about the 15 th of April. Now if we had a motor home in the states, that would be nearly five weeks to get from L.A. to San Francisco at a fuel cost, even in these high gas price days of about $175.00. Now I’ll bet most of you spend that monthly just doing you regular running around to work, play and shop. We’ll put TEXAN into the marina there while we make a short trip up to So California to visit with my Mom and other family and friends. We’ll be “buddy boating” with our friends Dennis and Joan on Traveler, as they have the same itinerary in mind. That will be fun. On the way back north…..which is necessary for us to do because of the approaching hurricane season…..we will stop at some of the anchorages we bypassed along the way down and also make a quick stop in Puerto Vallarta to have a follow up with the eye surgeon who did my eyes last summer. We’ll also be able to pick up some sausage and smoked brisket at a favorite meat market near there. Have to keep eating well, you know. Upon returning from California we will sail back across the Sea of Cortez to the Baja Peninsula and haul the boat out in La Paz to do a bottom painting job. It is quite necessary every couple of years to paint on fresh anti-fouling paint to keep the critters from attaching to the bottom of TEXAN and develop their own new eco-system and community. It really can slow down the boat if that happens. Hence, the monthly diving of the bottom to clean off the things that still decide to live there. When we splash back in after a week, we will then be in the midst of our summer destination of again cruising the islands of the Sea of Cortez from La Paz north. We haven’t done that since the summer of 2003and are looking forward to the abundant diving, snorkeling and hunting of sea life. We just hope not to experience a similar hurricane experience as we did in 2003. Anyway, we’re looking forward to returning. Well, that about catches us up on what we have been up to. I suppose I could goon about our daily experiences with the sea life around the boat, the breaching whales, the various birds that like to visit and even the occasional bats that fly through the cockpit at sunset….but I believe I may begin to sound redundant as these experiences are our daily part of life on TEXAN. Everyone please take care and we sure hope 2006 is treating you and your families with kindness and love. Fair winds and smooth seas,
Gary and Lois
S/V TEXAN
Lying: Santiago Bay, Manzanillo, Mexico