"Cruel Destiny," a dramatic bus
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"Cruel Destiny," a dramatic bus |
Four days before Christmas, our one rolly night in the anchorage outside of La Cruz, convinced us we'd had enough of rolly anchorages for a while and deserved the present to ourselves of being tied to the dock for a while, so we motored the few miles in to Nuevo Vallarta. Once we were inside the entrance we tied up in an empty slip at the run-down Nuevo Vallarta marina, but were soon told that particular slip needed to be repaired and they had no others available until after Christmas. We sighed and called the Paradise Village Resort marina next door, hoping they had room in their very posh marina next to a huge resort hotel, complete with spas, swimming pools, tennis courts and even an indoor mall. We weren't terribly disappointed to hear that they were full too until after Christmas, since they also had huge slip fees.
We radioed Marina Vallarta, located a lot closer to downtown Puerto Vallarta and were ecstatic to hear they had empty slips and would hold one for us. An hour later "Paperman Karl" had taken our lines for us and we were tied up safely in P.V. at the marina, surrounded by mega yachts, hotels, restaurants and a few other cruising boats on nearby docks. We gave Karl our papers and were told that he'd take care of the checking-in process for us (for a fee of course, which turned out to be $20 extra). We set out on foot, stopping for a pancake breakfast along the way and explored the giant Walmart and Commercial Mexicana stores with wide eyes at all the available food. It had seemed to us like it had been forever since we'd been in civilization, but really just over a month. We bought some essentials -- beer, cheese, and chocolate.
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Luscious Rio Cuale |
The following day we discovered the "La Evasion" cruiser hangout which had a bar, fast internet access, a pool table and best of all FREE hot clean showers, towels included. We were to visit this little establishment just about daily. Our friends on Rouser arrived and we began planning in more detail the inland trip we all wanted to take over New Year's, which was originally our main reason for staying in a marina for a couple weeks.
Our other task while in the marina was to get our recently acting-up transmission hopefully fixed. By the time we arrived in Marina Vallarta, the gears were slipping madly and the transmission oil was coffee black with all sorts of metal bits glistening in it. The situation was not good. Our new engine now had 500 hours on it; we'd replaced the last transmission at 250 hours and couldn't believe the new one was going out at 250 hours again. Michael spent many hours writing email and calling Westerbeke trying to find out why our transmissions kept going out and how they were going to fix it now we were in Mexico. It was very slow progress as it happened to be the holidays of course and no one in the office seemed too interested in our transmission problems down in paradise.
In between our few boat maintenance chores (like installing a new bow light since the 37-year old ones had corroded beyond repair) we spent time exploring Puerto Vallarta. It was a 4 peso (about $.35) bus ride from the marina to downtown on one of the highly decorated, sometimes shaky, often music-filled old Mexican school buses. The old downtown area was really beautiful with lots of colorful flowers, the Río Cuale running through downtown surrounded with lush tropical trees and foilage (with fun swinging bridges to cross!), and many old buildings with delicious-looking restaurants we could not afford. We did visit "Pipis" as a special Christmas Eve treat -- a fun, loud tourist restaurant with four-shot margaritas and huge plates of scrumptious hearty food.
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Hangin' on over the Rio Cuale |
It was a bit melancholy at times for us in Puerto Vallarta as it was the first holidays we'd ever spent away from our families. We missed them a lot and as the weather was around 80F and sunny every day it just didn't seem like Christmas at all this year. Unlike in the United States, Christmas is not one of the biggest Mexican holidays so there weren't even many decorations around town. On Christmas day we took the bus north to Paradise Village and spent a few fun hours riding down their water slides into the warm pool, then ate dinner at an all-you-can-eat Christmas turkey buffet put on by Desperado Marine for cruisers. Then, happily as in other years, we fell asleep early with our stuffed bellies.
On the day before New Year's Eve, our friends on Waking Dream arrived in P.V. and plans were quickly cemented for our inland trip to Guanajuato, the small town that had been recommended to us by a local as being very quaint, beautiful, and historic. Since there were three couples total, we found it would be cheaper to rent a large van, including gas and tolls, than the price of bus fare for all of us. So the van was rented and we were off to Guanajuato that evening.
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Beautiful evening on the town |
On our return to Puerto Vallarta, we did some final provisioning at the large groceries stores in town (much like shopping at home in the states, but with prices around 30% less, not to mention all the delicious Mexican products) and took in a movie downtown "Lord of the Rings II", a steal at only $3.50 per ticket. Movies in Mexico are a real deal -- very affordable and just about always in English with Spanish subtitles (which also helps with improving our Spanish!). Marinas are not a good deal, at least in Puerto Vallarta, and we cringed as we paid our $350 moorage bill which was only for 15 days, then made a beeline for the free anchorage in front of La Cruz again on the north side of Banderas Bay. But first, we had to pay $70 to Paperman Karl for doing our check-in/out paperwork with the Port Captain and Immigration (this included the $30 port fees).
To that date, our only response from Westerbeke had been to flush the transmission with new fluid a few times. We were still waiting to hear what we wanted -- that they'd be sending a new transmission to P.V. right away, but with the office apparently still on vacation we continued to wait.
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Getting crazy at Pipi's with |
In La Cruz we met up with some old and new friends and had a good time hanging out at "Philos" the local gringo restaurant/bar hangout that had live music nearly every night. Since we had bought the new larger dinghy in San Diego, we had found it was impossible for just the two of us to carry the heavy beast up the beach out of the water. In La Cruz, we found a cruiser who was selling a nearly-new pair of dinghy wheels. Having installed them on the dinghy transom and made our first dinghy landing in La Cruz with them, our cruising lives were changed forever -- now only one of us was needed to roll the dinghy for miles if needed. What a difference they made for our most important piece of equipment -- the dinghy.
We found the La Cruz anchorage to still be very rolly, quite stinky from the trash burning on shore each night, and noisy with party music always playing from the hotel on the beach. A humid heat wave had seemed to overtake Banderas Bay so we spent most of each day trying to stay cool in the shade in the 90 degree heat and nights too hot to sleep with even a sheet. But we had heard from Westerbeke that they were sending the new transmission to P.V. so we waited.
Later in the week, we picked up our 10-year "Temporary" Import Permit at the airport Customs office, which we would need for getting our parts through customs without paying duties, but no parts had arrived.
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Dinghy wheels bring freedom in La Cruz |
After a week waiting for what should have been an overnight delivery, a call to Westerbeke discovered that they had not sent any transmission, but were waiting for the backordered transmission -- which turned out to be the wrong model. They did had the one we'd asked for (the next bigger model than the standard M25-XPB Hurth HBW50, which included a cooler that the HBW50 did not). Finally we asked for them to send the parts to our address in the U.S. as we were very tired and frustrated of waiting in Banderas Bay. Anxious to get cruising in new areas again, we decided to just baby along the transmission we had as far as we could.
One day Michael was working in the engine area when he suddenly had a vicious case of vertigo. He sat in the cockpit to try to get his head to stop spinning, but for hours he couldn't even hold down water. Later in the evening we were able to get him ashore to solid land and he did get better but reported for a few days afterward that he felt dizzy a lot. He seemed to get better, so we hoped that this mystery illness would not return.....
After another bus trip to Paradise Village to visit with friends and enjoy the pool and jacuzzi and one last hot shower for many weeks, we sailed happily early one mid-January morning out of Banderas Bay at last, bound for Cabo Corrientes and ultimately Tenacatita and other lush warm quiet anchorages along Mexico's Gold Coast.
