Our location - Kyle and I
flew to New Mexico in May via Salt Lake City while Ken stayed a few more days in La Cruz to make sure everything was safely tied down and put away on Sea
Biscuit. Banderas Bay is a known “hurricane hole” where Sea Biscuit will hopefully
be safe from hurricanes this summer. Although Hurricane Bud recently traveled through that part of Mexico, the hot water necessary for the hurricanes to gain strength doesn't typically happen until September and October.
Before leaving, we (well, Ken mostly) carefully went over our checklists to make sure everything was in ship shape.
Boat Preparation for Tropical Summer Conditions
Hurricane Contingency Plan
We’ll get back on the boat later this summer/fall and be back to sailing in November when the hurricane season is over. In the meantime, Merle and Allison McAssey from Anclar Marine are watching Sea Biscuit while we are away. The boat is in good hands.
Kyle and I flew standby from Puerto Vallarta to Salt Lake where we met up with my dad and his friend, Lorie. We stayed at Lorie's, where Kyle had fun jumping on the trampoline and playing with the dog. Kyle and my dad made it out the next day, Saturday, flying standby and I made it out on Sunday. Thank you Lorie for all the hospitality, thank you Dad for setting up the flights, and thank you Will for the standby-buddy passes.
Instead of flying, Ken took a bus to San Carlos to pick up our truck and drive to New Mexico. His bus ride was not the first class
experience Kyle and I had going from Mazatlan to Puerto Vallarta. The bus was
packed and Ken was squished by a large fellow who flowed over into Ken’s seat
and also had nervous leg syndrome, he twitched every few minutes.
Since arriving in New Mexico, we
have been staying with my mom in Albuquerque. She has kindly offered to let us stay with her while I wait to have
bunion surgery. As seems to be the custom, I will have to wait more than a
month to have the surgery done, but at least I found a good doctor and it is scheduled. So as to not wear out our welcome and
to take advantage of a chance to visit friends in Santa Fe and in Nambé, Ken, Kyle and I
house sat for our friend, Liz, in Santa Fe for a few days this last week. My favorite part of Liz's house is her backyard.
Liz's house
The koi pond where my pet fish from work now lives.
Agave
Terraced gardens of cactus
Liz's dogs - the escape artists!
The day we arrived in New Mexico, out of the blue, I got an email saying "According to Seamus, Kyle has been in ABQ since the weekend! Sea's
B-day is this Saturday. We'd love to see you guys." Seamus, Kyle's best friend from his school days at Desert Montessori, seems to have an uncanny ability to keep track of Kyle. So the
first event for us in Santa Fe was the birthday party, Le Gran Prix du Seamus. When we arrived at their house, Kyle went straight in and gave Seamus a big hug. We all enjoyed the birthday party.
Making a wish.
Ruza - Grand Prix racer extraordinaire
Grand Prix competitors
Kyle coming around the corner.
Trying out Seamus' new Green Machine.
Christina on the Green Machine
Francis, Quinn's mom,taking the Green Machine for a spin.
Later on in the weekend we
went up to Nambé to visit our neighbors and checked on all the stuff in the
shed. We had a nice lunch with Lee and Candie and went home with a bag full of fresh salad fixings from their garden. Thanks!
I also got a chance to visit a few people at work. It was great to catch
up with them. Although I wish I didn’t
have to wait until July for surgery, I am pleased we will have some time to visit family and friends. We have missed you all and are very happy to be
on dry land and get a chance to see you!
p.s. Ken misses Sea Biscuit already. I miss parts of being on Sea Biscuit, but I'm definitely enjoying our home stay. Kyle says he is enjoying be on dry land, but he also misses being on the boat.
In
April the Kids Club from the La Cruz marina set up a pool party and invited the
kids from the orphanage in Bucerias (about 5 miles to the East of La Cruz). Allison
from Kenta Anae did most of the coordinating and Katrina who works for the
company that owns the marina, Marival, also helped organize the party. Each of
the four families with kids on boats in La Cruz brought some party food and Philo’s bar generously provided enough pizzas for everyone.
The small pool somehow had enough water for all the kids.
Kyle and Savannah with their popsicles
Another happy popsicle eater
Savannah and Teresa with the Los Manos kids playing a balloon pool game. Toni is in the backgorund.
I have
to admit, I was a little worried that the pool party would be depressing, but
it turned out to be far more fun than I thought it would be. All the kids enjoyed it. The orphans seemed healthy and happy. It seemed like at least half of the
twenty or so kids knew how to swim and none of them looked malnourished or
malformed.
Toni from Popokihad some fun stories about the
Kids Club Christmas visit to the orphanage last year. Her son, Leo, was dreading the visit. He
said, “It will be like revisiting Oliver Twist.” She explained to him that the
building is new, the orphanage is clean, and the kids are well taken care of. They
have a new playground at the orphanage and they walk to school nearby in
Bucerias.
For
the Christmas visit, one of the resident sailors dressed up as Santa Claus and
listened to the kids tell him about the dolls and toys they were hoping Santa
would bring to them. One of the orphans is blind. She climbed into his lap and
was feeling his face to see if the beard was real. It was real. Then she felt
up on top of his head and started giggling.
He told her in Spanish, “Yes, Santa is bald.”
Our
short stay in the La Cruz anchorage gave us an opportunity to put our dinghy to use. We drove the dinghy in each day at least once, sometimes twice to
do chores or meet up with people. When the 3 horsepower motor started giving us
trouble, Ken worked on it quite a bit and then decided it was too unreliable. The 8 hp motor was our backup motor for the day the little motor quit on us or in case conditions
warranted having a motor with more oomph. The 8 hp has hardly been used and works great.
Because the 3 hp motor was an older vintage model, it was difficult to get parts and rebuild kits for it, so we decided to sell it. We advertised it on the morning VHF net and within an hour it was sold. Our neighbors on Kenta Anae bought it. The day they bought it, Shandro, Allison and Merle's older son (9 yrs) came over in his small red dinghy and explained that his vessel was the perfect pirates’ tender. For at least a year he had been hoping to get a motor for it. It needs a transom to mount the motor on and of course the motor needs some work, but we were pleased to see that about two weeks later, Merle had the motor running (at least temporarily).
Shandro and Matero took Kyle out for a spin.
Three boys in a boat. Below - a short video of a paddle around the marina.
Of course Kyle has decided he too needs a kid sized dinghy and wishes we would have kept the motor for him. Our answer - he needs to learn how to swim well and be 9 yrs old before he can have his own dinghy.
I'm slowly catching up with blog posts. This post about staying in the anchorage describes time we spent out of the marina in April during Semana Santa/Pascua when Kyle didn't have any school.
We have spent a lot of time in marinas so far, so we decided it was time to try out the La Cruz anchorage. We had heard from some of our friends how great the neighborhood was – regular dolphin sightings, peaceful breezes, and invitations to dinner at neighboring boats. We also heard even more people complain about how rolly it was in the anchorage.
Dinghy and paddleboard tied off the back. This was a pretty calm day.
View to the West of the marina and the town.
View toward Nuevo Vallarta to the East
Kyle was a little sad to leave his friends Shandro and Matero, from Kenta Anae, and the fort that they built. We broke down the fort and set off for the anchorage on Thursday the 5th of April. We were just a short dinghy ride away from the marina and we still found lots of time for Kyle to play with Shandro and Matero.
Matero, Shandro, and Kyle working away on the fort.
The ocean breeze at night was great and the first morning Kyle jumped out of bed and yelled to us to come out on deck to see the fish swimming around the boat. We also regularly saw dolphins. It's too bad it's too late in the year for whales.
We enjoyed the new 'hood.' We had tea and cookies over at Lungta and practiced our Spanish with Dan and Kathy. Kyle had a chance to visit his friend Savannah (from Endorfin) out in the anchorage. As for overall comfort, it seemed like a very rolly week with a lot of swell, so we may have timed it badly. We got used to the rocking and the swell, but didn't sleep terribly well some nights. Even with our flopper stopper set up, the boat rocked a lot. The afternoons in the bay are typically windy with breezes of 15 to 25 knots. Being on the boat in the afternoon is tolerable but not peaceful. Going in on the dinghy in the afternoon can be a somewhat wet affair, but we learned to take dry clothes if we needed them.
We came into the marina on Easter Sunday for an egg hunt at the marina pool.
Savannah and Kyle hunting for eggs
Savannah had a nice bunny bag, Kyle had a handy trashbag for his eggs
Kyle and Lisa, Savannah's mom.
We found the neighborhood was nice, but the boat was rocky and it was harder to get land based exercise and run our errands. With the afternoon thermals (winds generated from the heat on land) you cannot expect a particularly calm setting. At the La Cruz anchorage you have 15 miles of fetch across the Bay during the afternoon thermals.
When we anchor we try to find a place that is protected. One of the things we have been most disappointed about is that there are really no nice protected anchorages in Banderas Bay. It would be nice if there were some coves you could anchor in. It is surprising that for the largest bay in Mexico there are so few options for anchoring.
All in all we didn’t have too much trouble with it, we just agreed that life was easier in the marina. Plus, with Kyle going back to school, it would be easier to be in the marina. So after a week out we decided to head back in and tie up in our slip again. As soon as Sea Biscuit was close to the dock Kyle jumped off and ran up the dock to play with his friends.
Two of our friends were worried we were giving up on sailing completely after just one week in the anchorage. We assured them we are happy with Sea Biscuit and still like sailing, we just like calm seas and sleeping well too. As another neighbor pointed out - it's supposed to be fun.
In April, Ken and I had our first date in months for our anniversary. We went to a restaurant named Sandzibar, located on Manzanilla Beach, a 10 minute walk from the marina. The view from our table of Banderas Bay was excellent. That evening Kyle spent with Angelito and his family (Thank you Norma and Angel).
My fish dish had a red chile and green chile sauce - it reminded me of enchiladas with Christmas red and green chile in NM.
Kyle has been going to school since early
March. He attends a kindergarten that is about three blocks up the road from the
La Cruz marina.
Kyle in uniform on the plaza in front of a Huanacaxtle tree.
Each morning Ken or I walk Kyle into school. We
walk by the town plaza and a dog that lives at a house next to the
plaza happily walks along with us each day, hoping Kyle will play with him. School
is from 9AM to Noon. After his first day at school, Kyle said with some disappointment
that school was all play and no challenging works (at the Montessori school
Kyle used to go to the kids each had “works” to do). He said, "We just play, play, play." We explained that his
goal should be to listen to the Spanish and try to pick up some words. He
didn’t need to succeed at any challenging work, just listen and learn. Besides,
going to kindergarten in La Cruz doesn’t get him out of home schooling, we do challenging works on the boat.
Kyle’s
best friend from school is Angel. Angel
speaks some English and seems to help Kyle figure some
things out in school. Angel's mom is 1/2 American, 1/2 Mexican. She and her husband are bringing up Angel and his little brother to speak English and Spanish. Kyle has gone over to Angel's house a couple times to play and we have enjoyed having Angel come over to the boat for a
visit. He and Kyle like playing in the little pool that the marina recently put
in.
Kyle and Angel
The whole town celebrated the first day of spring with a parade. There were many princesses and princes. Kyle didn’t start school in time to learn the dances and songs that the
kids performed at the amphitheater near the marina after the parade. Angel had a dancing role and Kyle’s friend Savannah, from Endorphin, who
until recently was going to the same kindergarten, was also one of the
dancers (thanks Lisa for some pictures).
Savannah dancing
There seem to be a lot of days off at the La
Cruz kindergarten. In April Kyle only had two weeks of school. April 2nd to April 14th, Semana Santa (Holy Week) and Semana Pascua (Resurrection Sunday through the next Sunday) are traditional weeks off for kids at school. Semana Santa is a week most of Mexico takes off.
We didn’t go on
a vacation for Kyle's Spring Break, mostly because all the beach towns and roads
are very crowded during this time; instead, we worked on homeschool materials, Kyle played at the pool and played with the neighbors. We made sure to stock up on groceries so we wouldn’t have to
go to the large grocery store and battle with tons of other shoppers.
Despite not going to school very often, Kyle seems to be picking up some Spanish. Every few days he will come home and ask me, Mom, do you know what the Spanish word for _______ (fill in the blank). I’ll say “No” to see what he has for an answer and he will proudly tell me the new word he has learned. He’s quite disappointed if I tell him I know the word already.
The other day Kyle tried to trick me by telling me his teacher was “en vacacciones” for the next few days and there wouldn’t be any classes. This actually happened in March, the teacher went on vacation and then she was also sick that week. There haven’t been any substitutes filling in for her. We have heard that at the primary school the teachers sometimes don’t come to work because they haven’t been paid recently.
There is a calendar in the play area of Kyle’s school. The box for March 18thhad an oil rig picture marking the day they commemorate Mexico’s expropriation of oil.We thought Kyle might have that day off from school also, but luckily he didn’t.
From this link you can see Kyle, clad in uniform, playing with a butterfly he caught one day on his walk home.
One of the best parts about school for Kyle is the ice cream man selling small cones for 6 pesos right outside the entrance/exit gate as the kids leave school at noontime. It's the new price of the commute to school (but Kyle only gets ice cream on Mondays and Fridays). I figure it's at least a little better than the man selling cotton candy outside the school in La Paz, Baja California Sur.
Before I get started, we want to say a big Thank You to Stefan and Rachael and to my dad and Lorie for bringing us so many things in their suitcases when they came to visit in February and March. Not only did they bring all the things we had ordered and sent to their houses and to my Mom's house but they also brought presents (and not just for Kyle)!
Stefan and Rachael, Ken's older son and his wife, brought a meteorological station and a three in one compass/binoculars/magnifying glass for Kyle. Both toys became instant favorites.
"I Spy" just got harder
Stefan and Rachael escaped from the cold of Broomfield, CO to warm up in Sayulita for a week and to celebrate Rachael's birthday. Sayulita is about 30 minutes away from La Cruz. We started out with margaritas on Sea Biscuit toasting to Rachael's birthday.
Rachael and Stefan just north of La Cruz
Ken, Kyle, Stefan and Rachael went out to Manzanilla Beach, north of the marina, and played around on the paddle board.
Stefan and Rachael went out in a boat with a local fellow to whale watch and saw quite a few whales.
Whale Mom and Baby
Later in the week, Stefan and Rachael went out on Chica Locca, a trimaran that takes folks to Marieta Island for snorkeling and more whale watching. The water was a bit cool for snorkeling, but they reported back that the whale watching was excellent. We heard recently that La Nina conditions have kept the water temperature down in Banderas Bay. The temperature in February was more like January temperatures and even now, at the end of April, the temperature is in the 70's, March temperatures.
Toward the end of their stay, we took them out for a sail on Sea Biscuit. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see any whales while we were out.
Ken and Stefan
We even had some wind
Figuring out our heading
Back in the Marina, Rachael on the paddleboard
Dad and Lorie
In early March, my dad and his friend Lorie came to visit. Our second set of visitors to La Cruz. Before they made it out to the
marina, we visited them at their hotel in Nuevo Vallarta. We had a fun time at their hotel's pool.
They rented a car and drove us back to La Cruz. On the way back we stopped at the grocery store to buy a few things, including some birthday cake to celebrate my
birthday.
Kyle is testing the frosting
Dad and Lorie
Among many gifts, my dad brought a box set of Captain Underpants books for Kyle. At first Kyle said, "I'm not into superheroes," but after a few weeks the books became keepers. Now we are reading them to him over and over.
Captain Underpants Book #1
My dad, Lorie and I took a trip led by our guide, April from Wave House, up to San Sebastian. Unfortunately
Ken and Kyle didn’t join us since they both were starting to feel sick. Ken’s cold/flu turned into a cough that didn't go away until he started taking antibiotics.
Lorie, Dad, Christina at a scenic spot on the road to San Sebastian
Bridge to San Sebastian
The trip took about 2 hours of driving in April's van while she told us about the history, flora, and fauna of San Sebastian and Jalisco. San Sebastian lies at about 4,500 ft, so the temperature was very comfortable. The road getting there is good now, but 10 years ago, it sounded like quite an adventure to drive there on dirt roads that would wash out.
San Sebastian was founded in 1604 and was the mining capital of New Spain. Our first stop was at Hacienda Jalisco. The hacienda was the original ore processing facility. The owners of the mining operations used to stay with their families in the house while the silver was melted out of the ore in back of the house. The Hacienda is now a bed and breakfast and a museum.
Ovens where the ore was smelted.
Death masks - when people died a cast was made of their face to show their loved ones and confirm their identity.
After the hacienda tour we had a delicious lunch at Comedor La Lupita, then toured the town of San Sebastian, took a hike up to a silver mine, and visited a coffee cooperative where the local coffee growers bring their coffee to be dried, roasted and sold. The coffee was delicious.
Looking down a street in San Sebastian
St. Gertrude's Silver Mine
Group picture in front of the mine shaft with April's friend Cecilia joining us.
We brought our flashlights to light our way as we walked about thirty feet back into the mine.
We look forward to future visits from my Dad and Lorie and from Stefan and Rachael.
Another blog post should be coming soon. Adios for now.
