Barra to Z-Town

We sailed into Barra de Navidad (19 11.5/104 40.5) at mid-afternoon (Monday, Nov 10) after a slow, relaxing sail from Tenacatita Bay (20 miles). Barra has a huge lagoon behind its beach, and this is a well protected anchorage which is what attracts the cruising sailors. Once again we are well ahead of the cruising season here, and we had an anchorage that might accommodate over 50 boats with only 3 other cruising boats for the night. Ashore we explored a town full of happy hour bars and a variety of restaurants and shops. We had beers watching the sunset and we had dinner overlooking the water. The town is small and clean and hosts tourists by land as well as by sea.(Maggie Larcher said she vacationed here over 20 years ago, must have been a teenager, and recommended several sunset bars. I think I found her picture in one of them.)

There is a mega resort and marina at the lagoon entrance, and we were able to pick up their wireless signal so we were able to send the previous e-mail with a log of our travels from La Cruz to Tenacatita, and receive notes from all. We also picked up our first newspaper in several weeks and read some election news and sports for the first time in a long while. We did stick our heads into the marina at the Wyndham Resort long enough to see that (1) it is very, very nice and (2) it was way out of our price range, so it was back to the lagoon for us.

Barra de Navidad provided several entertaining items in addition to the sunset bars. We saw a tree with pelicans roosting in its branches. If you think the large Brown Pelicans are ungainly as they hit the water you should see them landing in a tree. First they weigh an awful lot for a bird. Also they have webbed feet, not the best for branch hanging. And of course they are the aforementioned “ungainly” birds. Imagine one of these landing in a tree. They hit the top branches and then try to grab just about anything while they are falling. This particular tree must have had about 50 of the big birds perched precariously throughout its branches staring dumbly as one bird after another landed, fell and then hung on.

We also managed to see the circus in Barra de Navidad. Throughout Mexico we have seen the small traveling circuses that set up in town for a one or two night performance, and we finally decided to see one, $2 admission fee for adults. This one was particularly small with no rides and just a single ring, but the entertainment was priceless. First the animals came out and were led around the ring. No lions and tigers for this venue. We had 3 goats, a llama, a Shetland pony and a monkey, and around and around they went. One of the handlers had some greasepaint on his face (he was the lone clown in the circus, (or should I say “lonely”) while the other two were just teenagers in jeans and t-shirts. They had a slack wire performer and a high wire performer (same guy, different tacky costumes) and a juggler, and then back came the animals with the goats running under the llama, the pony jumping over the goats, and the monkey jumping over everything else. Cheap entertainment at twice the price.

Two nights in the lagoon was plenty so we set sail for Manzanillo at mid-morning. Again we got a beautiful sail in calm seas. We may be early in the season, but we are getting the best possible weather for sailing. We anchored first in Santiago (19 06.3/104 23.8) which was a long beach with very nice homes along the waterfront. The next day we proceeded to an anchorage outside the Las Hadas marina (19 06.0/104 20.7). We had heard nothing about this anchorage and only decided to stop because it was described as “well protected”. Las Hadas turned out to be the prettiest place we have visited in Mexico. The anchorage is surrounded by steep hills with white buildings, palms trees, and lots of bougainvillea. The marina is small and all of the boats are Med moored (stern in with only an anchor off the bow, no side docks). The marina dockside is a wide, red brick sidewalk encircling the harbor. With small shops and cafes (Frida’s was our favorite stop) the entire place made you feel as if you were in some Mediterranean seaport. The Las Hadas Resort is next to the marina and we were able to use the pools at the resort. We spent four nights anchored at Las Hadas, met other cruisers, drank beer’s at Frida’s, took a bus ride into the city of Manzanillo, swam in the pools, and all the while we kept looking at each other and saying how beautiful the whole place was and how unexpectedly pleasant.

We stayed at Las Hadas long enough to catch up on the NFL scores using the wireless connection at Frida’s and on Monday morning (Nov 17) we set off on the 190 mile trip south to Ixtapa and Zihuatenejo. Even though we have a fast (as boats go) sailboat we plan our passages at 5 miles per hour. The boat will sail faster (regularly reaching 8 mph) and we can motor at over 6 mph, but when all the zig-zagging and slow sailing and motoring into the wind are taken into account we still only cover about 5 miles per hour so this trip was going to be a 36 hour passage. We left at dawn so that we could make the trip with only one overnight leg and two daylight legs and still arrive before dark. The boat sailed great and Andrea kept revising our arrival time from 6 PM to early afternoon to mid morning to… No matter, despite fast sailing early in the trip we still entered the anchorage at Isla Ixtapa (17 40.8/101 39.4) at 6 PM. We quickly anchored, ate and fell promptly to sleep.

The next morning we were greeted with a peaceful little beach with sparkling clear waters. The island is about 10 miles from Ixtapa, but only a short panga ride from a large resort hotel so there are small boats bringing tourists to the island for snorkeling and fishing. The boats that had gone out fishing early in the day also brought their passengers to the beach where the palapa restaurants were ready to cook the fresh catch. Our entire day consisted of snorkeling and a trip to the beach to drink beer in the shade (yes it’s still hot). At dusk all of the pangas left, all of the palapas closed, and the island, which has no electricity, was black and deserted. This made for a very dark but peaceful night on the hook.

After two calm nights at Isla Ixtapa we were ready to move on so today we motored the last few miles to Zihuatenejo (17 38.0/101 33.3). We are anchored off the beach and thinking about heading to shore to explore. More later.