We were startled to come around the point toward La Cruz and see no less than 60 boats anchored. Ayy! And all we could see of this “sleepy, Real Mexican Town” was a shoreful of fancy condos and private mansions. Ayyyyy!! Always looking on the bright side, we anchored as close as we could to the freshly painted mustard and teal condos figuring they were good for the free wireless. Which they were. Email checked and website updated, we ventured ashore to check out the scene.

Let it be noted that good flour tortillas are a thing of the past at this point. All tortillarias make corn tortillas but not flour. You can still find them in tiendas but they are pre-packaged and of questionable age as well as taste, and none have fewer than ten ingredients. My street food pursuits therefore have shifted dramatically: tortas; no more tacos for me. Happily, La Cruz has a good torta stand located on the corner at the traffic circle (you can’t miss it since La Cruz is like four square blocks). We were about starving after spending a day in Puerto Vallarta and when we found the Torta Lady; she was in the process of filling an order of 30 some tortas and we ordered whatever it was she was making, which was “cubana,” shredded pork (pierna) with a sliced hot dog. Weird, but it was good. We went back the next night for just pierna and it was just as good. We also chatted with an ex-pat from Michigan who lived in PV, had a Mexican girlfriend, an irrational fear of the cold, and said “Ay Chihuahua!” a lot.

There is limited tienda veggie selection in town; however, there is a street mercado with a wider selection of veggies as well as cookwear/tools/underwear/shoes on Wednesdays and possibly Mondays. Also, naturally, Puerto Vallarta is a restocking haven with all the massive mega-chains like Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club. We stopped at the Mega on our way home from PV and were beside ourselves with glee to find actual Swiss cheese from Switzerland and actual Manchego from Spain!! Not Nestle brand which resembles Manchego only in that it is wedge shaped and or Swiss in that it is whitish in color. Makes you hate Nestle on a more personal level. Still we have seen no Parmesan in Mexico (stuff in cans doesn’t count as cheese). There was a big Spanish wine selection too but we were a little suspicious that the majority of the Crianzas were from 1999-2001; I seem to remember the Crianzas normally being 2 years old at most when we bought them in Spain. It would be like having a 2001 Beaujolais Nouveau. Um, bleargh.

In other news, Joshua caught a needlefish (a first!) and as he holding it around the middle, attempting to extricate it from the hook, it bent around and bit him right across the arm! Drew blood even. Luckily, this needlefish was only 18 inches or so long and the mouth was a skinny little thing filled with wee wee teeth. So basically no harm done that a little bactine couldn’t fix. We let him go.

We took the bus to Puerto Vallarta for the day to just see what it was all about. It’s about mayhem, pretty much. We were so impressed with the city that we came home with about ten photographs. **Note that “Time Share” is now called “Point System.”

Along the PV malecon, there are a lot of cool bronze statues. Amongst the wistful mermaids and seahorse-boys is a cluster of five different alien-sea-creature-many-footed/tentacled-chair-things; they were totally awesome and this is one of them.

Metal shops RULE!

This obviously reminded me of that old Far Side cartoon.

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.