After a month in Puerto Vallarta, I was ready for new scenery and exploring new places. My friend Harrison, his mom, and Stumbles (her AT trail name) flew in for the trip south to Barra de Navidad. A bit less time to explore due to Harrison’s schedule and my parents visiting Barra, but we still managed to squeeze an incredible amount into the next 10 days.
The first stop was a visit to Yelapa to hit both of the waterfalls and set ourselves up for a bit shorter passage to Chamela.
There are those that like “spirited” passages, that is not me. I’ll take mellow, boring ones every time. Maybe “boring” is the wrong adjective since we were treated to more sea turtles than we could count and amazing food cooked by Lori.
Slowing down a little, we got to string a couple of days together to take in Chamela. Sampling the local cuisine, the ostion were a hit but Stumbles (who speaks fluent Spanish) struggled to understand what almejas were. The addition of “chocolate” made her even more confused. Was it a dessert? No, she was told. It wasn’t until the following day that I banged my head feeling stupid for not realizing it was chocolate clams. Duh. And mother-trucker were they spectacularly good!
The second afternoon Harrison, Stumbles and I took the kayaks up the estuary behind the restaurants. There was not a whole lot to see besides tied up pangas, but it was good for exercise. Game time was in full effect both nights, enjoying Mexican train and Code Words.
The next morning, wanting to move on so that there would be time to explore Barra together we headed further south to Tenacatita, where we found the cruisers! There were more than 25 boats anchored in this nice bay. I had read stories about the beach surf break and how it has stranded folks on shore. Not to be deterred we jumped in the kayaks excited to chat up the other cruisers and try the famous rollo del mar. I timed the landing well in the single kayak but in an effort to provide some shore entertainment Kat, Lori, and Harrison were slow to jump out of the kayak and got some underwater time. Oops.
The next day after a relaxing morning we pulled up anchor and moved along the last few miles into Barra de Navidad – my new home for a couple of weeks.
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