2/5/12 Barra de Navidad: Today is Super Bowl Sunday. We pulled up the hook in Cuastecomate and made the 5 mile trip back to the lagoon in Barra Terry dinghied me into town for Mass at noon. Different priest today than last week. He did quite a bit of improvising during Mass. At the end he had all the kids come up to him, and he blessed them, while they sang a song, clapping in rhythm, very cute. It’s then that I noticed the little Indian children, so poor, most with no shoes, one little guy was buck naked from the waist down. Their mothers then went up retrieve their children. They were all dressed in skirts of very bright colors, tiny little women, but again, you could see how poor they are. I had my kindle with the Spanish order of the mass, and it helped a lot. I could actually do the responses in Spanish instead of English like I’ve been doing.
In the late afternoon the panga taxi (Taxi Aquatico) activity in the lagoon increased dramatically, as all the Americans went to the Sands Hotel to watch the game between the Patriots and the Giants. Instead of going with Terry, I went over to Endeavor and spent the evening with Gina and the kids. Gina made bread pizzas and we watched the movie “Seven Pounds”, a very intense and provocative movie starring Will Smith. Very very good movie. I will watch it again. Our little Ün-Super Bowl party was a great success.
2/6/12 Barra: Today is a Mexican holiday, Constitution Day I think. Banks and many stores will be closed or closing early. We had planned to go the beach on the other side of the golf course with Endeavor, but ended up not going because getting over there involved a hotel shuttle from the resort, and it just got too complicated. Endeavor came over to Harmony and we ate the brownies I had made, chips and drinks
2//7/12 Ensenada de Carrizal: Rick, Terry and I dinghied into town to do a bit of provisioning before we head out of Barra. There is a fabulous meat market here, just a small but immaculate -and unique little shop. The owner has cleverly frozen most of the meat - chops, steaks, chicken breasts, bacon etc. He then slices it on the spot to order. I loaded up with 2 kilos of bacon because it looked so fantastic, 2 kilos of hamburger (not frozen), 2 full-sized boneless chicken breasts, and 1/2 kilo of some very fresh chorizo (not frozen). The total was 380 pesos, about $30 for about 12 lbs. of various meats, all excellent quality – not bad! It’s hard to find great meat in some of the smaller towns like Barra. There’s another meat market here, but it doesn’t look nearly as clean and well-run. In many places the ham looks completely gray and dried up, chicken is very yellow, and because of Spanish names for the cuts it’s a guessing game to figure out what is what. So when you find a place like this little market, you stock up. Buying meat that’s already frozen really saves on our power consumption too. After the meat market, we went to a little tienda to get eggs, bread, potatoes, and other veggies. In most little shops in Mexico, you gather the produce you want and take it to a separate little counter where it’s weighed and priced, then go to the main counter to pay for it and the rest of your purchases. They sell eggs by weight, and you have to bring your own egg cartons. I knew this before we came to Mexico and had bought these plastic egg boxes that protect them in the dingy ride and work for storing them too. We go through a lot of eggs, and it’s always a guessing game to make sure we have enough on board, because we have no set schedule and never know for sure when we’ll go shopping again.
We left the lagoon at around noon an headed for our favorite little anchorage – Carrizal, about 20 miles to the south. We are excited to be going back to a place where a swim or a snorkel is just a quick dive from the boat or a short row over to the rocks. We needed to make as much water as possible as well as take cockpit showers on the way down. Terry rigged up the solar shower for me in the cockpit while underway, and it was so hot, I felt like I might need to add some cold water to it. Wow, what a luxurious feeling to have a hot shower. We saw a lot of whales on the trip, and anchored with seven other boats in Carrizal: Ponderosa, Seychelles, Full and Bye, Red Witch, Wades Aweigh (Brian’s dad aboard alone, waiting to ship the boat north), Harmony, Endeavor and one other boat I don’t recognize. It’s a bit crowded, but we are just so happy to be back in this tiny gem of a cove.
February 1st was our six-month anniversary of cruising and living aboard. We left Anacortes on 8/1/11. It has gone by in a blaze of speed, yet at the same time, that day we left seems like eons ago. Do I still love it? Yes! Are there things I don’t like about it? Yes! Do I still want to be here? Yes!
2/8/12 still in Carrizal: The water here is very clear, although not as clear as we hear it is in way up in the Sea of Cortez, where you can easily see your anchor on the bottom. The smog from the coal burning plant in Manzanillo must be blowing some other direction because the air is clear too! I hate the smog so much.
My morning task was to plan Terry’s birthday meal on Saturday. I settled on Close Roasted Pork With Ancho, Cinnamon and Cocoa. I’ll marinate it with a rub that is based on Mexican mole sauce (ancho pepper, cinnamon, cocoa, dark brown sugar), and I think I can slow roast it on the BBQ so I don’t have to heat up the boat. I’ll make a salad of black beans, cucumber, tomato and avocado, a side dish maybe of cous cous or rice, and then Chocolate Cobbler for dessert. All of these are new recipes, which is what I always do for special occasions and that, in turn, always makes me anxious about a culinary disaster when you have guests. Oh well, it’s how I roll, always has been.
In the afternoon we took the dinghy over to the rocky shore and went snorkeling. We have a little anchor for the dinghy which we always make sure is set in a patch of sand so as not to tear up the coral. The coral is green, blue, brown, tan, and there are lots of colorful fish, huge angelfish, and lots of others I can’t identify. I really really wish I had a couple of books to identify the birds and fish in Mexico.
After BBQ chicken and baked potato for dinner, we watched Seven Pounds. Terry hadn’t seen it yet, and thought it was pretty good. He never wants to admit that “my” movies are fabulous
2/9/11 Carrizal: Laundry day, did a couple of “loads”(5 gal bucket). We went snorkeling again in the afternoon. More boats keep coming in here, how dare they?? There are now 12. It’s a bit crowded if you ask me, but those other boats never ask me. No one seems to know that I’m supposed to be the boss around here. It reminds me of when we were in Tenacatita and I got pretty sick and Terry had radioed for any MD who might be in the anchorage. He, as usual, identified us as Harmony. Well the next morning, Terry was ashore, and I was still on the boat sick, and this guy comes by on his dinghy, tells me he’s from the boat Harmony, and that he’s the “mayor” in the bay and that we should identify ourselves as Harmony Anacortes, because everyone in the anchorage thought his wife was the one sick when they heard us on the radio (run-on sentence, I know). I’m pretty sure he elected himself mayor, and probably stuffed the ballot box too. He made it quite clear that he was in charge, and invited us to a dinghy raft-up he hosts every Friday. I guess he holds court there, I don’t know, to each his little fiefdom, I guess.
Had steak for dinner then watched “Babel” with Brad Pitt. We couldn’t get the subtitles to work, and with most of the movie in Japanese, Afghani and Spanish, it really was babel! The Japanese part of the story was the most confusing, but we got the general idea….I think.
Got all settled in bed, almost asleep when it started pouring down rain. We had to get up and close all the hatches and ports. We took our time getting up to close everything because we didn’t think it was seriously going to rain. What a surprise. Then Terry broke the chimney on our little lantern that hangs on the wall, and I had to clean up the glass. We haven’t had any rain to speak of since November when we were in La Paz and we got drenched that night in the dinghy on the way home from Mass. It was an up-and-down night and neither of us got much sleep.
2/10/12 Santiago: Got up early pretty bleary-eyed from last night, fired up the boat and moved around the corner to Bahia de Santiago. The wind came up all of a sudden, 0-20 knots in nothing flat. It was a short trip, and we anchored in the part of the bay called Playa de Boquito. I’m cranky, can’t get my computer to print because the new laptop doesn’t have the right printer driver. Internet was available for half hour or so, then it was gone. I was getting very frustrated. So we went to town to stock up for the big b-day party tomorrow. We stopped at a little street side restaurant before we went into the grocery store (Commercial Mexicana) and the owner turns out to be a gringo (Paul) from Bellingham. He’s been running his little restaurant (The Captain’s) for 5 years. He left Bellingham on his sailboat because he’d been diagnosed with MS and wanted to cruise while he was still able. Got down here, lost 70 lbs, took up spearfishing, quit taking his meds, and is doing great! He has no symptoms except he lost some of the feeling in his feet.
2/11/12 Santiago: Spent the day getting ready for the little party we’re having on the boat for Terry. Endeavor came over and we had kamikazies, appetizers and then the pork roast, etc that I make. We were thinking of postponing a day because of the rain. It would have been crowded, hot and muggy with all 6 of us down below, but the weather improved and all went well. Endeavor gave Terry a knitted stocking cap that they got out of a half-rack of Indio beer. So we all decided that Terry’s Spanish nickname is Indio. It suits him and there’s no equivalent for Terry. He’s 60 now, so we were worried he might not want to stay awake past 7pm, but he made it!
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