We feared being stuck in La Cruz forever once we started to listen to weather reports again; Don kept going on about this gnarly norther raging down the Sea of Cortez making big old nasty waves around the cape, not to mention 30-knot winds and yuck. “The wind? It will be HONKIN’” We spent the day moping around the boat but then decided to just go and hopefully time it right (winds are lighter at night and so the seas are the mildest early morning). (Cabo Corrientes is special because it is a high fat projecting corner of land that sticks out into the prevailing winds [NW] and has the effect of intensifying them, and it does something very curious with any currents that might be running around. “Washing machine” describes what it looked like when we went around. Luckily we were heading south and so our ride was comparatively smooth.)

We left at midnight and crept towards the cape in very light winds. We arrived at the point around 6am in around 20-knot winds and eight-foot seas. All was well since the wind was right behind us and we had enough to keep up a good pace. As we approached and rounded the cape, the seas became more confused and choppy. We’d be sitting in a nice smooth spot and then two randoms would come together out of nowhere and form a pointy mountain right next to us. It was pretty uncomfortable but the winds had increased a bit, making it faster for us and keeping the sails in better control (in choppy seas, the wind tends to get knocked out of the sails as the boat lurches). We ended up taking the main down entirely after rounding the cape (winds increasing more) and running on only the jib but then the winds slacked a bit and pretty much died. We had 14 or so miles to go to get to Punta Ipala (the first protected anchorage south of the cape) and the GPS declared our ETA at twelve hours, up a bit from a former two hours. Drat!

We flopped a bit before the wind came back, this time from the south (NOT the prevailing wind direction) and so we had to tack all the way to Ipala. It wasn’t bad at all and we managed to catch three bonitos en route (kept one). We got there around noon right as the south wind died. Anchored outside of all the fishing nets and oyster beds in the little cove and just got settled down when the wind came around again and started blasting from the northwest. We measured sustained 20-25 with gusts up to 35 by sticking out little wind meter up out of a hatch. We took off the next morning early at around 6am in light wind and headed south.

We had little to no wind all morning (motored) and large voluminous swells. We saw a pod of gray whales (8+), one of which surfaced and blew its blower not 50 feet from us. We also saw two sea turtles and a lot of jellyfish. At around noon again, the wind picked up and our ETA went from 14 hours to three. We also caught a dorado!! It was two feet long and green. Joshua was casually looking back at our lure and actually saw it strike. Reeling it in while underway at nine knots was interesting. I had to get all sails down in order to keep the fish on the line. As we got her (it was a she) closer, we thought that we were going to score a few other lures—she had bright blue things sticking out around her head area; however, we discovered that they were electric blue pectoral fins. Winds were again 25-30 and honkin’; we came skidding around the corner of Chamela bay in no time.

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 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.