Cruise Log #15, Banderas Bay, Still...

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Updated April 28th, 2005

Still messing about in the bay - we've applied for our FM-3 visas, committing ourselves to another three weeks in PV while our applications plow their way through immigration. As the weather warms and it creeps toward hurricane season, we're itching to head north into the relative safety of the Sea, but while we're still here, waiting, we're making the best of it, a little shopping, a forced march or two and, of course, boat projects.

We're enjoying the relative quiet since the raucous revelry of Semana Santa (Spring break). At least it's calmer in the outlying regions - PV, itself, still receives a ton of tourist via their daily cruise ship traffic, but high season has come to an end. Some restaurants and tiendas in our neck of the woods are preparing for the hot, rainy season by closing their doors, many winter residents are closing up their houses and heading north as well.

This lull will be a short-lived respite for Banderas Bay. The government just committed millions of pesos for further development of the bay. This may be the last time we'll see Punta de Mita, La Cruz and Bucerias as sleepy little villages. The plan is for huge development all around the bay including more high-rise hotels, more golf courses and another marina. The new marina is planned for La Cruz. President Fox flew in by helicoptor this past week to kick off the construction. There goes the neighborhood!

Pat (left) at the pareo shop with a gaggle of shopping cruisers.

Pareo Shopping.

Pat on Fresco announced on the local cruisers' net one morning that she and Ann on SunSeeker were making a trip to the pareo shop in Mezcales. They invited anyone interested to join them. Fourteen of us filled Pat's 9-passenger van and Ann's little sedan. No matter the crush, it was a quick trip to Mezcales, a speck of a town just up Hwy 200 from Nuevo Vallarta.

A pareo (sari, sarong) is a flat piece of rayon, 4' X 6' with fringies on both ends, used by cruisers as cool wraparound cover-ups, shade, tableclothes, curtains, pillow covers and lots more. I already have four - I even use them as shower curtains when sunshowering in the cockpit. The little shop we visited was unique in that it had unusual batik designs as well as some clothing already made up, little dresses, wrap-around pants, and shorts outfits. I couldn't resist the whale and gecko designs - we received a group discount.

After a couple of hours pawing through shelves and shelves of pareos, we stalled out and retired to El Farol in Jarretaderas for a show-and-tell lunch, discussing how we planned to use our pareos while chomping chilis relleno and guzzling jamaica (hibiscus flower) iced tea.

Jarretaderas.

It's hard to tell what the little village of Jarretaderas would be like under normal conditions. The whole town has been torn to bits all winter because of leaky pipes. The cobblestones have been ripped up and are stacked on the roadsides all around town, backhoes and front loaders have been creating quite the muddy mess. Mucky pools of stinky effluent stand in the streets.

This little village probably won't benefit from the bay's building boom, it has no waterfront and no tourist attractions. It's a sleepy little rural town, two miles by hoof from Paradise Village marina. Its shops provide beer and hardware, its Tuesday market provides fresh vegies and peanuts, and little ma-and-pa restaurants like El Farol provide down-to-earth Mexican fare. Stan and I like Jarretaderas because the prices are more to our liking than the big tourist centers. We can load up on fruits, veggies, beer and peanuts for $20 and have a month's worth of laundry washed for $15 (half the Paradise Village price).

Jarretaderas sewer project.

Stan schlepping the laundry down a street in Jarretaderas.

Stan making one more modification to the dinghy wheel attachment.

Another modification project.

Using Ron's (Shea La Vie) design, Stan modified the dinghy wheels. He installed a bungy inside the shaft and grooved the top and bottom of the attachment strut for the quick-release pin to slide into. The improvement makes raising and lowering the wheels quicker and easier: pop pin out, lower; pop pin in, secure. Also keeps the pin attached, we already lost one in the surf.

Any little thing to improve dinghy landings is a good thing. Although the surf won't be a factor on the east side of the Baja, dinghy wheels are still critical for keeping the dinghy bottom intact when beaching over sand and rocks.

One of our dinghy wheels with the clamp installed around the hub.

Preventive Maintenance.

The dinghy and its wheels take a real beating. We run into submerged rocks and surf bounces us onto the beach. Keeping the whole system functioning is an on-going job for Mr. Shipwright. Another mod for the dinghy wheels, something everyone with plastic hubs might want to do: Stan wrapped the hub with a hose clamp to keep the plastic from breaking. Cracks were just forming in both hubs. He caught them just in time. Replacing a broken wheel in the wilds of the Baja would be near impossible, preventing breakage in the first place, simple!