We just arrived about an hour ago and found the FREE INTERNET! I’m in heaven and it will be hours before I emerge from the aft cabin, surely. We went around Punta Mita last night right at sunset and anchored just in the lee of the point for the evening, then headed inside Banderas Bay (that’s where Puerto Vallarta is) to La Crux. As we pulled into the anchorage here, trying not to freak out because there are no less than 10 gerzillion boats anchored in a very small area, we were yelled at by several other tris and now that we’ve gotten our senses back, we realize that they all know the boat from its humble beginnings in Rio Vista, up the Sacramento river delta. Three cheers for Rio Vista! The boat’s fame evidently precedes us. We anchored inside all the other boats (multihulls have low drafts) with all the other tris and it turns out that the boat directly behind us we know from the marina in Rio Vista, and two others right around us know the boat (if not us). Wild and crazy, I tell ya.

We attempted to send posts to the site via satellite phone but it didn’t work. Gotta figure that out. I’ll post them following this. I know you all were clamoring for the boobie photos.

One other thing of note: there is an excellent radio station here: 104.3 University of Guadalajara radio station. We found them last night when they were playing a show that might have been called “All Tarantino, All The Time.” This morning when I turned it on, they were playing only French rock. I hope we get this station all the way to Costa Rica.

We pulled into the little cove at Chacala just after sunset and were surprised to see, not only fancy homes lining the point, but a fat RV park glistening in the dusky air in all its green-tinted windowness. Charlie’s Charts (we must have an outdated version) had us thinking we were pulling into a sleepy fishing village with a few palapas on the beach where you might be able to scare up a cold beer or inquire about water or something. Rather, there are a lot of resorty-looking homes and new agey hotels (the one at the end of the beach features a Zen master behind the bar and yoga workshops), of course the RV park and campground, several palapas, and a streetful of souvenir shops and mini-supers. So basically, you can get pretty much everything you need here, travel-wise: veggies, water jugs (garafones), beer, ice (block as well as purified cubes), sarongs from Bali, lacquered seashell plaques that spell out “Chacala,” and the luxury of having others cook for you while you sit on the beach with your beer. We had a fish cooked for us for lunch today and it was excellent. It was a snapper cooked “sarandeado,” which means they split open the fish (hard to describe) and place it between two wire griller things, then slowly cook it for ~25 minutes in a smoky fire. It is tender and crispy with a great smoky flavor and they put a tasty barbecue sauce over it. Very good. It seems to be the thing here because we saw a couple of the restaurants cooking fish in this manner or advertising ‘pescado sarandeado.’

Despite the tourist mania in Chacala, we like it and give it a thumbs up. It is a really nice cove, has a calm clean beach perfect for swimming, and the food (at least what we tried) from the beachside palapas is reasonably priced and very good. All supplies are right on the beach so you can get groceries/garafones/ice and not have to lug it across town. There are no jejenes to speak of here either.

We anchored in the bay in order to not have to deal with confusion in the San Blas harbor (tides, possible crowding, other unimaginables) but if we do it again, we’ll anchor up the river in town instead. The town of San Blas is a really long walk from Bahia Mantanchen. And Bahia Mantanchen is rife with no-see-ums (jejenes), which are evil, evil little bastards. I can’t imagine how the flimsy little shits make it all the way out a half-mile to your anchored boat in order to bite you on the ass but they manage. And in considerable numbers. I have no idea if they are less prevalent at the anchorage in San Blas harbor. One would hope. Other than that major irritation, the bay is pretty and shallow and it’s easy to land one’s dinghy. There are palapa bars (a lot of them) lining the bay on the west and north edges. We talked to an old woman who sold us gasoline in Mantanchen (the village up the road from the bay) and she said that all those palapas will be full of people come Semana Santa, and also Christmas.

Notable in Mantanchen is the large Ikea-blue beer warehouse; it’s visible from the Bay and I nearly fell off the boat when we pulled in. Ikea San Blas??! I can get some measuring cups! But no, it appears to be some sort of beer distribution center, and it has a mini storefront where you can buy their wares. Also, Mantanchen is full of banana bread bakers whose signs all say things like “The ORIGINAL Banana Bread” or “Accept no substitute!” or “Beware of PIRATE banana bread!” We of course bought banana bread from a couple of different places and it was fine; I’ve had better.

So we set out the first day to walk to San Blas. After a kilometer or two, a pickup stopped and asked us if we didn’t maybe want a ride there since San Blas was muy lejos. That was a scary ride; we haven’t gone much faster than 8 knots in a while and being in the back of a pickup going 80 k/h had me white knuckled. We spent the day wandering around and getting lunch. This generally takes a zillion years; we have to see every single eating establishment in town and scrutinize carefully the clientele (does it look like a popular place? Are they tourists or locals?) and try to figure out what they are serving. Obviously this is an exhausting task and generally ends up with both of us traumatized by the myriad of choices so that we finally pick at random the closest one to wherever we are at the moment because we’re so hungry that we don’t care anymore. We did this in San Blas and found ourselves at a tiny cocina casera (home cooking) place run by a woman named Patricia. She was serving a dish of dorado roe and that’s what we had for lunch. It was really good; she cooked it with garlic, bay, oregano, onion, chilis, and tomato. The roe is very tiny, smaller than tobiko, and a pale yellow color when cooked (when raw, they are more translucent and orangey). Patricia was very friendly: she gave us a tour of her kitchen—all 50 square feet of it—and explained at great length exactly how she prepared the roe dish. There were maybe four tables in the dining area and during our lunch, we got to practice our Spanish on everyone who came in; I guess Patricia doesn’t get too many foreigners and everyone seemed very interested in us and where we were from. There are a couple of sit-down restaurants in town (aside from hotel restaurants) that obviously catered to tourists and had folksy decorations on the walls, quaint matching tablecloths, and pizza on the menu, but we prefer to eat at places where you get to see the people preparing your food; at least where you can see the kitchen. One other place that looked interesting was a cocktail bar (we saw actual shaker inside behind the bar) that seemed to cater to ex-pats if not entirely run by an ex-pat. (We didn’t stop for drinks though.) It was randomly decorated with hand-me-down looking bar furniture, full of old men drinking beer (not Mexicans), and had a chalkboard that listed a few classic movies that they showed sometimes in the evenings.

We walked to the beach near the entry of the San Blas harbor and walked the entire length of the beach thinking we’d walk back around the point to where the boat was anchored. But no! Not possible because there is yet another river, one that is not mentioned at all in Charlie’s Charts or on his map, curiously. We had to turn around and walk all the way back to San Blas where we managed to catch the last bus going out Mantanchen way. The jejenes ambushed us when we arrived back at the dinghy and we got eaten alive before we could untie our kayak and paddle like fiends away from the shore. I have probably over a hundred angry red bites that itch excruciatingly. Each welt from each single bite looks like it could house 20 or 30 jejenes just fine. It’s hard to believe.

We stopped at Isla Isabella en route from Mazatlan to San Blas. Isabella is a bird sanctuary chock full of blue-footed boobies, brown boobies, and frigate birds. And some other cackling gull whose name I can’t remember (sorry!). We lucked out in that all three birds happened to be breeding when we visited; only the brown boobies breed year round.

The island is very small and there are paths all over it where you can walk through brown/blue booby breeding areas (they just nest on the ground), then through the trees where the frigate birds nest. You end up walking very close to the birds (it’s unavoidable) and it’s pretty amazing. They are not afraid of mammals and just regard you with irritation when you wander around; they don’t fly away when you approach them. We took a lot of photos.

Blue-footed booby. The feet really are blue.

Blue-footed booby family unit. Awwwww cute babies!!! These guys are pretty tiny; they grow nearly full-sized before the fluff starts to be replaced by mature feathers. The female booby makes a bleating sound that sounds like a cross between a toy trumpet and a kazoo and the male makes a hoarse cry that sounds like he’s been ‘debarked.’ They bleat/gasp at you when you get within 5-10 feet of the nest. Which is sometimes in the middle of the trail. Sheesh!

I think it’s pretty obvious what’s going on here. That’s the male sticking his arse in the air (he makes a hoarse exhale/cry when he does this). We spoke with one of the ornithologists on the island and he called it “sky-pointing;” it is a mating display, among other things. The female is regarding him with some indifference.

Awwww! Booby love. This happened right after the mating display above. We sat around for a bit thinking we might get to observe some booby action but this is about as far as things went.

Male brown booby. They have chartreuse-colored feet and are really cute. All the boobies have great expressions but my favorites were the brown boobies.

Female brown booby. Cute! Cute!

Close up of a male brown booby. Interestingly, the brown boobies lay two eggs and when they hatch, the dominant baby kills the weaker baby. So the brown boobies end up raising only one baby. The blue-footed booby babies also do this but only if resources are scarce. I think we saw most blue-footed nests with both babies. However, even with two babies, one remains the dominant baby and probably gets the majority of the snacks.

Marine iguanas. When you walk through the trees, they tend to stay very still until you get to within a certain distance, whereupon they can’t stand it anymore and explode off into the brush.

Many circling frigate birds. They make very primeval clicking and shrieking sounds. It was kind of creepy winding through the trees, which form a sort of short canopy and the path is more like a tunnel. There are zillions of frigate birds above you at all times.

Frigate baby! Frigate birds have only one egg at a time.

The male frigate has a red sack that he blows up. They just hang around with all their necks ballooned out like this too. Looks pretty goofy.

We arrived in Mazatlan on the second day of Carnival, which is supposed to be the biggest party outside of Rio. Lucky us. Approaching in the wee hours, we were actually able to hear Mazatlan before we were able to really see it. The streets were filled with scaffolding and temporary party structures and stages. Daylight hours were spent checking the massive sound systems with whatever nightmarish pop the sound dude had on hand, restocking the thousands of cases of Modelo Especial, and clearing the debris from the night before. As evening approached, the streets along the Malecon were blocked off, souvenir stands set up along the streets lining the free side of the party and sold random crap like kewpie dolls or cowpunk hats, and by around midnight, half that Modelo had been consumed and the town pretty much went apeshit. Food stands sold gorditas (weird fat little pancake/patty/biscuit things), salted nuts, and hot dogs. We were hard pressed to find tacos and this was a shock after La Paz.

We spent a couple of days wandering all over old town Mazatlan and got near the Carnival party when after it was blocked off but didn’t really feel like entering. The crowds on the outside were enough and I was not feeling all that optimistic about the selection of live music on the inside based on the crowds of drunk and tarted up teenagers. I guess I’m officially old now.

Here are some photos we took.

We visited Mazatlan once before in 1996. After a long bus ride from Tijuana, we arrived during a torrential downpour; we waded across the street to the nearest hotel (possibly this hotel was called “The Moldy Cockroach”) and promptly passed out for several hours. When we came to, it was still pouring but we felt like we should see something of the place so we got our rain gear on and started walking. The wrong way. We ended up in an area called ‘dorado beach’ or something like that; it’s the developed tourist section of town and a long way from the main center of Mazatlan. By the time we got there, we were hungry and there was nowhere to eat except freakish mega-resort restaurants and American fast food chains. We were thoroughly traumatized by the experience and left Mazatlan the next day. We’ve held the opinion that Mazatlan is a total dive ever since but then we had no idea that we were never really in Mazatlan.

Um, the point of all that was: Behold The Quaint!! Building in Old Town.

As it turns out, downtown Mazatlan is really very nice. The market is large and functional (actually has normal market fare and not just shot glasses and sombreros) and in a cool art nouveau-ish building. Buildings around town were varied and interesting with a lot of colonial, neo-classical, and art deco facades.

There was some cool graffiti in Mazatlan.

There were also a lot of abandonadas, many of them being consumed by their own gardens.