Cruise Log #12, Bahia de Banderas and Sayulita
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Updated March 16th, 2005
SolMate crew continues exploring the Bay of Flags, from the city of Puerto Vallarta north to Sayulita.
Bahia de Banderas, the Bay of Flags; anchorages
at Punta de Mita and La Cruz.
Learning the secret code for catching buses
around the bay. Sorta.
Our itsy-bitsy cruising budget was incentive for learning the cheapest way to get
around Banderas Bay. Two main bus lines travel the bay,
the Puerto Vallarta city buses (forty cents US), and the ATM buses that cover the longer
routes (from fifty cents to $1.70 US). The two lines overlap and sometimes cover the same
territory, but that's not the only thing that confuses us bumbling touristas.
Trial and error taught us that sometimes the city
buses and the ATM buses share the same bus stops, as well as routes, but sometimes they don't.
When they don't,
one could stand for hours at the wrong stop, waiting and wondering why. One evening, early
in the learning curve, we missed the last bus from Marina Vallarta, where we enjoyed
a great dinner with the Shea La Vie crew. We were trying to bus back to our starving little
kitty on SolMate in the
anchorage at La Cruz, but we
were standing at the wrong bus stop, just half a block from the right one. There were six of us.
It was a crowded, $25 taxi ride.
Knowing which bus stop to use isn't always critical, though. Most
bus drivers will stop anywhere along the street if they're flagged down - well,
again,
sometimes. Just as bus stops are hit or miss, stopping the bus is also hit or miss, even at signed
stops. It's the frantically waving passenger at the side of the road that's key.
Drivers won't stop, even at marked bus stops, unless someone flags them down; so here we have
another challenge, knowing which bus to flag down.
As each bus whizzes into view, there's a quick, two-second window of opportuniy for reading the
destinations painted on
the windshield, figuring out if it's the right bus, and if it is, catching the driver's
attention. Once flagged, the driver will generally swerve immediately, wildly, to the side of the road for the
pick up (a cool thing about the rules of the road in Mexico, one that saves many a rear
bumper, is that the drivers behind are totally, and legally(?), responsible for avoiding the
drivers ahead).
Ron and Stan and the bus to Sayulita.
Hedging our Bets.
As they say, when in Rome (and Mexico), do as the Catholics do. What the Catholics do here
is bless just about everything on legs, on wheels or afloat. When the friendly neighborhood priest
came to the marina to
bless the cruising fleet, SolMate stood in line for hers. You just never know when that little
extra grace might come in handy. Stan and I followed the priest's panga
around the marina in an entourage of dingies, and on his return trip, he blessed our
dinghy, too. We assume that
Gale was also blessed while SolMate received her sprinkling of holy
water. So, there you go, everything afloat with legs, wheels, oars and engines,
blessed. Even the fleas.
Amazing. Grace. Watch out for lightning strikes.
