01-17 to 01-23 Banderas Bay

01-17, Tues. through 01-23, Sun. -- We are here in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Banderas Bay, enjoying the nice warmer weather in this region. It is in the low 80’s every day with a nice breeze that comes up in the afternoon. Below is a list of things we’ve done this week:



- We explored the darling town of La Cruz, which we absolutely LOVE! It is a small town with several streets, cobblestone, brick or dirt roads, very friendly people, lots and lots of good restaurants and LOTS of music. They play music in at least one of the restaurants every night and usually more than one! There is everything from rock and roll, jazz to country music being played. The more popular places in town are Philo’s, Café Huanacaxtle, Ana Bananas, The Britannia, The Octopusses Garden and The Black Forest. There are MANY more though. You could spend a year just trying to eat your way through this tiny town. (This does not count the small nighttime taco places that sprout up on the streets at night – D)

- We spent most of this week just walking the streets of town, eating our way around town, listening to music and visiting with a lot of fellow cruisers we haven’t seen in a while.

- We also took a side trip on a bus on Saturday for the day to Old PV. It is about an hour ride on the bus to Old PV as it is the southern-most part of PV (the ride was in a unair-conditioned bus with a suspension that died years ago, but it was cheap – 15 pesos for a one hour bus trip – D) . We were dropped off in a non-tourist part of the old town but with a map and some help from very friendly locals we soon found our way to the beach. We had lunch at a beach-side restaurant. They were launching people on a parasail from the beach right in front of us. I much prefer the kind that launch you from the back of the boat on a platform, than a beach take-off. It was fun to watch though. We were surprised that the prices in the restaurant were not any more expensive than in La Cruz, which are cheap. We then walked further south on the beach and walked the Malecon to the heart of old tourist PV, checking out the shops, clubs and restaurants. It was a lovely day and will be fun to spend more time in that portion of town.

- When we returned from Old PV, we were rapidly informed that “Journey” had pulled anchor while we were gone and a bunch of people had boarded her and reset our anchor!! WOW! Scary! Thank goodness we leave the key in the ignition, and someone was able to locate our windlass motor switch in the V berth. We had not locked the boat, or they would have had to break the door to get in. It seems to be a very safe area. No one locks their dinghy to the boat or the dinghy dock either. However, we now know that we need to pull and reset the anchor every few days, as we turn around and around on the anchor the chain gets wrapped around the anchor and will pull it. In this instance it had actually gotten wrapped around one of the flukes of the claw. Thank goodness we are surrounded by folks who knew just what to do and took care of it. One man started the engine, the other found the windlass switch and a few dinghy’s were in the water trying to keep her from drifting down on anyone while they were doing all this. Whew!!!!! We owe some folks big time. Thank goodness no one and nothing was injured or damaged.

- We watched the 49er game at Philo’s in town on Sunday. Sad we didn’t win the Championship, but a good game was played. We are very proud of their performance this year.

This coming week we are going to check into a land trip to Guadalajara with a group of people. We will be going to a meeting this evening regarding this possible trip and will keep y’all posted. We will also be doing more exploring of the Banderas Bay area. Our friends on “Nirvana” arrived in Nuevo Vallarta and we will be visiting them. They are in the Paradise Village Marina, for which we won a free week stay. So, we want to check it out. It has a five-star resort associated to it and you can avail yourselves of all the amenities when you stay in the marina. Woo Hoo!