As Joshua mentioned in the previous post, we arrived braced for turistic mayhem and prepared to pretty much hate the place. We entered the bay just after sunrise and could see in the morning smog a fringe of high-rise hotels lining the entire coast of the bay. We came up around to the northwest nook of the bay and proceeded to circle the anchorage for at least 45 minutes in a vain attempt to find a spot where 1) we weren’t in danger of being run down by enthusiastic banana-boaters or overzealous yachties; 2) where there wasn’t a 200-foot derelict rubbing up against a haphazard concrete mooring disc with ear-splitting abandon whenever a wake disturbed its rustful slumber; 3) where there wasn’t freakish bottom anomalies (65-65-40-35-65-34-23-35-65…wtf. I shudder to imagine what might litter the Acapulco harbor bottom); or 4) where we were vaguely out of earshot of the party barges (they will give that karaoke mike to anyone). Heady criteria indeed. We managed a spot in a somewhat alarming depth of 65 feet, a satisfying distance off of the derelict, and a neat paddle amongst the shining plastic megayachts to the elaborate Club de Yah-tays, where rumor had it that the dinghy landing fee wasn’t being enforced.

We immediately docked illegally at the Club de Yates dinghy dock and made a beeline for the flush toilets (oh heaven) and then tracked down every boating supply store in town. We were on the lookout for toilet tank chemical, a porta-potty repair kit, or a whole new toilet in general; have I mentioned that we have been having head issues lately? A complicated myriad of problems include a five-day max holding tank capacity (that 750ml issue is a killer), difficulty of finding tank chemical worth half a damn, a broken flush pump, general Cheyennian irritation at the whole situation, and let us not forget the most unfortunate phenomenon of pressure build-up. (“We’re going to have to rebuild the whole head. I said, well, do what you gotta do.”) Adding to the problem is the hair-tearing irritation that the very head we want to buy was in Puerto Vallarta at the fantastic Zaragoza (a good Mexican marine supply) at an excellent price and WE DIDN’T BUY IT WHEN WE HAD THE CHANCE. Woe. Woe and Frustration. Add a dash of Irritation and at least three cups of Foul Language. Long story short, there is no head to be had in Acapulco for less than $450 but there is toilet chemical that is strong (says ‘poison’ all over the bottle in more than one language and gives an alarming description of what must be done in case of ingestion), comes in a gallon jug, and ought to take care of at least one of our problems until we either get a proper marine head or go insane. Maybe in August. Head, not insanity. So we hope.

Business taken care of, we shifted into explorer/obtain-delicious-snack mode and laid a course for the zocalo. The road between the Club de Yates and downtown is a busy street with 12 inches of sidewalk where you are constantly honked and shouted at by taxis and busses (because nobody in their right mind walks from Caleta—suburb where the marinas are—and Acapulco proper). This would have been more annoying if the busses were not so elaborately decorated on the outside (inside too) with airbrushed masterpieces of Ren and Stimpy, or Dracula and his Seven Sexy Nymphos, or Extreme Sports Bettys (imagine Lara Croft, blond, ollying up a handrail), or Death Rocker Metal Screamer, or Stuart Little (Stuart Little??!!). Weirdness, to be sure. Not to mention that most busses have the first (top) half of the front windshield obscured by a ruffly curtain, the bottom quarter obscured by prismatic stickers with slogans like “DIOS ES MI COPILOTO” and the muddy in between taken up with dingle-balls (from the bottom of the curtain), dangling virgin statuary, woven palm frond Semana Santa crosses, firecrackers, etc.

Along the malecon, there are vendors hawking all sorts of weird beach outfits and sticky coconuty treats as well as a gang of old dudes who approach you with fishing/diving/esnorkling/beach excursions and who sport the Dress Whites as if they are the Captain Himself of some fine yacht moored just over yonder and they are inviting you personally, perhaps as a favor to the king to spice up the boring tropical days.

Once you hit the zocalo, a shady treed place with a built-in shoeshine stall ever 30 feet (we’re in flip-flop territory so the majority of the stalls were occupied only by ornery looking old ladies), you have but half a block to go to escape where any and all tourists seem to ever go. Surprising, but honestly, we did not see any western tourists outside the confines of the Club de Yates–only a few walking the malecon near downtown and a couple in near the zocalo–and then none anywhere within downtown. This is not to say we didn’t see any tourists, oh no: there were droves, mostly from Mexico City (Semana Santa is just around the corner), but they kept primarily to the malecon and beaches. Downtown is a snaggle of shoe stores, cheap clothing stores of vast selection and questionable quality, wedding announcement printing shops (yes, they deserve their own category; how such a dingy greasy black hole manages to produce cards of such whiteness and laciness is a miracle rivaling the resurrection), weird shit stores (plastic buckets, screwdriver sets, thong underwear, cake decorations), and paletas/helados/aquas shops (we promptly outfitted ourselves with a plastic bagful of pina colada agua). The streets were filled with shocking potholes, varying qualities and vintages of paving, obscure traffic signage, and berjillions of pedestrians, taxis, and painted busses, who clearly have a deeper understanding of the way Things Are Run. We ran into Cameron and Jenny from Velella en route (we have been bumping into each other as we work down the coast; they use kayaks as dinghies and have been pronounced “cool”) and spent the day wandering with them through town. Like us, they are used to spending a day in a new town traipsing aimlessly about with no particular destination and certainly no map or direction. We spent the remainder of the afternoon walking about in the sweltering heat, ducking into bookshops or anything that might be air conditioned, then headed back to the Club de Yates to scope out the shower situation.

I had to actually ask the doorman of Club de Yates where the showers were (they were well hidden) and we were ushered to a tastefully lit stairwell leading off in either direction (dames, and horse-riders). The stair was stone and cool and let up to a sparkling bathroom with toilets to one side, showers to another, and a massage parlor and towel rack splendid with fluffy navy-blue towels in between. I already felt acutely that I didn’t belong here (not having paid for the dinghy dock and all) and so I stuck with my REI space-age chamois towel; however, this did not stop me from taking advantage of the liquid soap dispenser located within the shower stall and working my bathing suit into a frothy ball, not to mention my Tevas and shorts, which I proposed to wear the following day. Water pressure was firm and fast and I was enjoying myself immensely until a crowd of several hundred children entered for their daily washing. Ayyy. Two or three at a time entered the unoccupied stalls and commenced to absorb all the tepid temperatures. I believe they were yacht club pool urchins and they possessed the strange power to control the shower temperature with voice alone; within moments my shower bliss was shattered, I was enduring icy hot sputtering blasts and my once-every-six-months-deep-conditioning moment was getting all fucked up. Their controller was a sole harried women who periodically barked commands like, “Let Jose use the water temperature controls,” “Lupita! Stop squirting soap on your sisters,” or “Only one towel per person!” Like a summer squall, they were gone within minutes and I was left alone with one hand testily on the temperature control, my heart pounding, and St. Ives facial scrub all over the place.

Clean as two whistles, we kayaked back and forth to the boat a few times, then headed into shore to check out the night cliff divers, who chuck their very bodies from a height of 75-100 feet or so nightly in hopes of earning a living. Impressive stuff.

The next day we found out that somebody had been taking advantage of the dinghy dock and not paying and the Club de Yates did not approve; a guard had been positioned on the quay to escort any newcomers to the office where they were expected to cough up ~38 dollars for use of dock and “services.” Good god. So everyone who had been mooching off the supposed generosity of Club de Yates went down the way to Marina Acapulco, a quasi-derelict boat dock with strangely shabby/schmancy yacht clubhouse (pool on roof, palm cabanas and swim-up bar; no running water in the bathrooms, docks broken into many pieces and roped together using various bits of multi-colored and sized ropes). They were very friendly and helped us tie up to one of the floating dock pieces and did not charge anything.

We spent the rest of our time in Acapulco on restocking missions: grocery store, market, Home Depot (whoa), etc. The bus ride to Home Depot was very fascinating; there is a dizzying array of commercial activity afoot in Acapulco. We left the harbor in the late afternoon and anchored for the night at the south edge of the bay, a mini-cove that is rapidly being developed into one big massive multi-level hotelmania. Ayy. The next morning we started out for the overnighter to Galeta, the next possible anchorage to the south.

We saw a lot of turtles, many of them with avian passengers.

Food Report

We didn’t eat out too terribly much while in Acapulco—we ate at a couple Comida Corrida places and had mole chicken, fried fish, that sort of thing. The road between the cliff divers around the outer edge cutting back towards the bay between Caleta and downtown Acapulco had a lot of popular restaurants and guys at tables working cutting open shellfish (like, shellfish out of pretty seashells, as well as oysters, clams, conch-like things). We did eat at a couple of roasted chicken places that were very good; the photo above is of a great place called La Fogata that is right up the side street by the Comercial Mexicana supermarket. A massive plate of barbecued chicken is 22 pesos. They have Negro Modelo.

Downtown, a group of ladies on the street had plastic buckets of a light-brown thick liquid drink (I forgot the name!) that was made of rice flour, chocolate, cinnamon, and sugar. They would dip a dipperful and pour it from a height in order to keep things well-churned (no settling) and charged 5 pesos for a cupful. One lady’s five-gallon bucket had the faded words “industrial soil plasticizer” or some such on it. Hmm.

We fully expected to hate it, but it’s actually pretty cool. The marine stores aren’t worth much though. The internet situation isn’t so great either. We hiked up a hill to get the current connection and we haven’t seen any internet cafes in the vicinity. We’re moving south later today, but hopefully Cheyenne will get a chance to fill you in on the details before we leave.

Zihuatanejo I think has suffered a bit from the tourist mania; massive cruise ships anchor out in the middle of the bay now three times per week and ferry all passengers to shore for the day to buy random trinkets at the millions of gift shops and ‘artisan markets’ lining the first four blocks parallel to the beach. As you walk along the beach on the first tier of restaurants/gift stores, everyone tries to entice you inside by listing off the various specialties of the day, most often, “cold beer.” Heading inland block by block you pass bars and quaintly decorated restaurants with English menus displayed on wooden podiums outside, and of course, more trinket shops and silver shops. Despite all this, the place is very friendly and the main beach in front of town is still taken up nearly exclusively by the fishermen and their fishing market. Once you walk beyond the four-block tourist section, the town reverts abruptly into Normal Mexican Town with pharmacies, central Mercado, hardware stores, tiendas of all sorts, and ice cream/agua shops.

We ate at a couple of barbecued chicken places, which were very good (I wasn’t a huge chicken fan in general); the chicken is served with a cole slaw and rich rice (cooked with chicken broth perhaps?). The central market is pretty good, although a better bet for vegetables are the veggie stores lining the streets off the back of the market; the prices are better and you have a wider selection of quality since there are maybe twenty of the stores all in a row. A bad day to go to market is when a cruise ship is in town; I tried to buy a couple of kilos of tomatoes and limes, the guy looked me up and down and then named a shockingly high price for the stuff; I just poured the limes back into the vat and left. Highlights were the large bunches of Thai basil that everyone was selling—for cooking? Not sure. We saw that people just put the bunches in vases like flowers. We hadn’t had basil in a very long time and I made pesto with almonds and a bit of parmesan we managed to find in Manzanillo. Also, I was overjoyed to finally find decent coffee in a small shop in the hottest corner of the indoor market (that’s how you find it; wander around the edges of the market until the heat level attains a dizzying level and there will be the coffee stall). They make three different roasts: mild, medium, and strong—the strong is indeed black and oily and they will grind it for you. We bought a pound for 30 pesos (less than $3). Oaxaca cheese is also very good here; the stuff we tried further north was always pre-packaged in saran wrap and tasted primarily of saran wrap. Bleargh. This stuff was excellent and slightly sharp; we went back three times to get more before heading out of town.

The first day in town we dinghied ashore and made it about two blocks before we heard someone calling “Joshua!” And it was Sundi, Joshua’s dad’s ex-wife, who we haven’t seen in probably ten years. Small world; she said she was sitting on the beach near where we anchored and recognized the boat (and port-a-bote) from the website photos! We had a great time with her and Steve, her husband, who came out to the boat (the Baby Jade) for drinks; later we all headed to town to a restaurant they liked called Any’s, which is famous for the pozole (it was indeed mighty tasty). She said that she has been coming to Zihuatanejo for many years and it is only in the last couple of years that the tourist business took over the town.

Tourist season was actually winding down by the time we were there; Rick’s Bar, the main cruiser’s bar was closing the next week for the season. The waitress had some interesting statistics: 80% of the customers at Rick’s were Americans, and 80% of those were cruisers. When we left, there were maybe ten cruising boats left in the bay.

Some fisherman in a small rowboat collecting their nets; the frigate birds were going nuts. There is also a group of guys who dive for some sort of shellfish (we never figured out which one; we guessed clams/chocolates) in the bay; they floated small inner tubes with baskets around and dove underneath them for the shellfish. They were out every day and a small group that dove near our boat let out frequent whoops and hollers as they dove.

Papanoa

We arrived after dark to the small harbor at Papanoa, dodged the night panga fishermen, who were thankfully well lit, and anchored just inside the jetty. There were no other tourists here at all (there would be, however, come Semana Santa) and the place was pretty mellow. The town itself was very small with one road leading up around the hill; on the outer side, there was a beach with a few palapa restaurants and small funky hotels. Velella showed up the next afternoon and we kayaked with them north outside the harbor to try to surf; however, the sand was so well packed that we were unable to anchor the kayaks outside the breaks and only a Crazy Person (not me) could land through the waves. We headed back to town and hauled the boards over to the palapa restaurant side where we mostly just swam in the waves—the, um, break just wasn’t ripping and the waves were all blown out anyway (cough cough). We later ran into the one resident gringo, an retired guy named Frank Brink from Coos Bay, OR, who lived in a groovy shack at the edge of town, who had been there for over fifteen years, and who was delighted to meet someone also from Coos Bay (Cameron was from the Oregon coast and he and Jenny had lived in Charleston).

From Papanoa, we sailed overnight to Acapulco. The entire trip I had what fragments of Love Boat theme I could remember (not much) stuck in my head. Woe. Exciting and New Woe.

I can’t tell you how proud I am to report that the words, “trailer of the podling being drained,” typed into Google, bring up sv-timemachine.net as the THIRD OPTION.

(Whilst browsing our website statistics, we discovered that someone out there in the world found and linked to the blog using these search parameters. It also seems that there are many, many people out there who have also mistakingly spelled Virgin of Guadalupe as ‘Gudalupe.’ Ahem.)

Howdy everyone. We executed the night landing in Zihuatanejo around 1am, anchored at the edge of the pack, and promptly sacked out. Pretty much everyone is on the move lately and the typically popular anchorage has only twelve boats. Lots of space! We’ll take advantage and move the boat three or four times in our attempt to find the most advantageous internet position. (We’re on move number two and it’s coming in fairly well, thanks.) Currently we are getting buzzed by the parasailers; it’s a small bay.

Our little overnighter from Manzanillo turned into a two and a halfer due to some whacked wind (if there was wind) coming out of the direction we wanted to go coupled with opposing swell.

Yesterday, things got interesting when a juvenile brown booby landed on deck. We were maybe 15 miles offshore and perhaps 40 miles from Zihuatanejo. He (we actually don’t know if it was a male or female—the plumage on the young ones is uniformly brown) was predominantly unconcerned by us and after checking us out a bit, he settled in and started a preening binge that lasted a good five hours. Nearing dusk, some packs of boobies flew by and he regarded the first group with mild interest but did not join them. Following groups were totally ignored. (Suckers!) At dark, he situated himself on the forward ama edge, tail pointed overboard, tucked his head into his wing and went to sleep. It’s really impressive how birds can sleep standing on an unstable surface. The only point where he looked in danger of falling overboard was when he raised one leg to scratch his ear and the boat lurched suddenly; he ruffled his feathers and gave us the eye as we laughed at him. During the night a group of dolphins surrounded the boat and woke the booby. He kind of flipped out a bit and stamped around flapping his wings. When he settled down he relocated to a spot solidly on deck with no parts hanging over. He barely woke up for our arrival in Zihuatanejo and only squawked with irritation when I had to shoo him out of the way to get the anchor bridle situated. The next morning he was gone. Sigh, empty nest syndrome!

Boob on deck.

In fishing news, we caught a sierra, which was promptly made into tacos; then a bit later we caught a very large fish. We were unable to identify it due to a conspicuous lack of any useful fish identifying books. It was heavy though and remained very still and made a croaking sound as we removed the hook (we let it go because we didn’t have any ice and didn’t know what it was). Then we caught another something something that was so large and feisty that it managed to strip out all the screws from the inside of the reel and get away just as we were getting it close enough to the boat that we might actually catch a glimpse. The reel is out of commission until Joshua can find some sort of diagram of the innards.