Surf's up at Sayulita

Lovely Sayulita

We jumped on a bus to Buserias, where we caught a second one north to the beach town of Sayulita. 

This is a good time to talk about Mexican buses.  Some people call them chicken buses as it is not unheard to see one or two aboard combing the aisles.

The drivers of Mexican buses apparently have free reign to decorate their interiors in any way that they see fit. There is almost always an image of Jesus or Mary up front, right next to multiple cultural icons, drawings of Mickey Mouse, soccer team logos, you name it.

A colorful Mexican bus

After taking dozens and dozens of trips aboard Mexican buses so far, we have never ever felt unsafe.  Sure, they're not air conditioned, but at 8 pesos a ride, whose complaining?

Anyway, Sayulita awaited. 

Sayulita is the surf mecca of Pacific Mexico. It's got a young, artistic feel to it

Chris with Tricia and Derek of Enterabang! on the Sayulita waterfront 

After soaking up the local color, we wanted to stretch our legs and take a walk outside of town.

A waterfront home south of Sayulita

An oceanfront Sayulita vacation cottage

We headed up into the jungle to get a bit of exercise. Nothing like getting out into nature to clear the cobwebs!

The road less traveled...

                                               

Chris in the midst of splendid isolation

Back up on the beach into Sayulita for lunch

                    We ate at a taco stand on the street. Notice how they put the plastic plate in a plastic bag -- instead of doing dishes they just threw the bag away after the meal. Hmmmmm. That's one way to do it!


                        After lunch I did some bodysurfing in the famous Sayulita waves.

      The waves and surge were bigger than usually experienced in Southern California. The ocean floor was quite rocky in some areas and I cut my knee on the bottom. One big difference between Mexican beaches and California beaches? No lifeguard stands down here. No lifeguards, period. You're on your own.

                        No, this isn't some strange post-mortem body preparation before cremation. This woman actually paid to get a full body massage right on the Sayulita beach with some strange mud concoction. She seemed to be enjoying it...


Well, we thoroughly enjoyed Sayulita, and heartily recommend it for anyone visiting this part of town. It's too bad there isn't an anchorage here -- then the town would be perfect. But we sailors need an anchorage...

                                             So we headed back to La Cruz.

Chris sits at the actual bus stop in Sayulita. How cute is that?

                             

Reading aboard...

                                 I've always been a big reader, as far back as I can remember.

    
                     When I was 14 I stayed up until 3AM with a flashlight under the covers
                                all the way to the shocking finish of "Rosemary's Baby."


Fiction, non-fiction, romance, chick-lit, adventure -- I've enjoyed it all. But since we shoved off and sailed south on November 2, I've been surprised to find myself drawn almost exclusively to memoirs, true adventure and biographies.  Suddenly, fiction is not intriguing me. At all.

 During our difficult first 3 weeks coming down Baja, I dove into Rita Goldman Gelman's "Tales of a Female Nomad." We were cold, tired, hitting storm after storm and wondering if we were really up to this cruising thing.

 I was deeply drawn to this woman's honest story of leaving behind her upper middle class, L.A., show business life, complete with sophisticated dinner parties and award shows, etc. Seeking meaning, she sold everything, traveled alone and immersed herself into the lives of small villages in rural Guatemala, Indonesia, etc. For years.

THIS is what I needed to read. But I didn't give up on fiction yet...

             I tried without success to finish Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged."  I think I deserve a great big brownie point for getting 40% of the way through it!  It certainly deserves it's provocative reputation, anyway. But again, I was drawn back to memoir.  To real life stories of real people, sharing how they got through tough situations.

   After Rand, I felt the need for -- anything else. Craig Ferguson's hilarious, honest memoir of growing up as a young alcoholic in the streets of Glasgow fit the bill.

  Next it was Tania Aebi's memoir "Maiden Voyage." It's the true story of a lost and troubled 17 year old girl whose dad gave her two choices: you can go to college, or I'll buy you a sailboat. The sailboat is yours, but only if you agree to sail around the world. Alone.

She did it -- 30 years ago, too -- before the internet, before GPS, before satellite weather prediction. Holy crap.

It was clear that the dogeared John Grisham and Barbara Taylor Bradford paperbacks which line the shelves of cruisers book exchange libraries would not fit the bill for me. Now now, anyway.

Quite impulsively, I grabbed a bag and cleared my boat bookshelf of the 20 or so fiction books I had accrued that I planned on reading and dumped them into the now-groaning cruisers book exchange in town.

 I replaced them with Sebastian Junger's "Into the Wild" and a biography of Stephen Hawking.

I'm not sure what it means that I'm suddenly not interested in fiction. I think it has something to do with the challenge of this new sailing and traveling life in which we have immersed ourselves.

I want to hear the real stories of people who have also chosen the road less traveled.  I'm basically a student sitting at their feet. I want them to share with me how they did it. How they changed and adapted to their new lives. How they triumphed over adversity.

As crazy at this sounds, our every moment out here is not sipping margaritas (or in our case, Coca Dietas) and watching sunsets. There are doubts. Fears. Marital squabbles and power struggles. There are painful goodbyes. There is loneliness.

And, the dirty little secret amongst cruisers which noone is supposed to admit: there is occasional boredom.

So to allay these issues, I've been reading women's true stories of their lives -- "The Diary of Ann Frank," then a Jane Fonda biography.

                  One other thing: I really want to LAUGH. And Kathy Griffin's hilarious and
              honest memoir certainly left me chuckling to myself at 3AM and rolling my eyes
                                         at her over-the-tops antics in spite of myself.

     Phillip Roth and Ernest Hemingway aren't going anywhere. Neither is Joan Didion.

                   I'm currently reading Michael J. Fox's memoir of life with Parkinson's disease.


So, this is the latest crazy dispatch from lil' old me. Looks like I'm all over the map, as usual. LOL. Sailing south with my husband, sometimes wondering what in the heck I'm doing down here... But we're committed. And I'm learning. And growing. And changing. And adapting. Who knows what's next? Stay tuned...

Meet the "throat cutters."

We took a day trip outside of La Cruz with the crews of Island Bound and Grace to climb a mountain trail miles off the highway in hopes of visiting ancient petroglyphs hidden deep in the tropical jungle called Santuaria del Rey.

We didn't find out until we got there that the ancient Tecoxcuin people, who carved the petroglyphs 2,000 years ago, long before the Mayans and the Incas, were also known as the "throat-cutters" in their native language. We were assured that these ancient people were long ago sold into slavery by the Spanish, and the sole survivors were wiped out by the old standby, disease.

"Are you absolutely sure all of the throat cutters have died out?

We continued to climb deeper and deeper into the jungle, passing more petroglyphs carved into the stone thousands of years ago by the "throat cutters" -- who have long ago died out -- which I continued to remind myself as we passed through miles of jungle, completely alone and exposed.

Chris reads details of how the "throat cutter" people slashed the throats of their hapless victims

Perhaps these four circles are symtolic of the eyeballs cut out by the "throat cutters"
 (who have, they assured us, ALL DIED OUT")

Bill wondering if this trail, lovingly laid to the throat-cutters lair with stones,
 includes the human bones of their hapless victims

Our friend Kevin's dog Patches felt a special affinity with this petroglyph man carved into the stone. Thankfully, Patches didn't "mark his territory" on the ancient carving. That's all we needed...making the "throat-cutter" gods angry.


Finally, we reached the sacred spring, waterfall and pool where, I suppose, the throat-cutters washed off the blood and guts of their victims as they cleansed their souls with a sacred swim after a long and difficult day of throat-cutting.

Judy looks down at the sacred pools and thinks twice about taking a dip in the cold water

OK, this place was lush and simply gorgeous. We all dropped our backpacks and broke out our lunches next to the pool. It was crystal clear, and you could see right to the bottom. Chris stuck his foot in and announced to the group that the water was very cold. Although I was hot and tired from the hike, I wasn't really up for a cold swim -- and neither was anyone else in the group.

Our friend Kevin, visiting from Kauai, calmly removed his shirt and shoes. In his swim shorts, he quietly padded to the side of the pool, and calmly, stealthily, glided beneath the water. His head gently broke the surface at the other end of the pool.

Kevin did not shriek, or yell out, or scream "This is freaking cold!" He calmly tucked his head and again gently and calmly traversed the depth and the length of the pool in sure, slow strokes. He emerged from the other end of the pool and serenely emerged, with a gentle smile on his face.

Watching this display, I had an epiphany:

"What in the heck am I doing?" I said to myself.

"We're here, on this trip of a lifetime. We will never be here again. We have just hiked miles uphill to a sacred, crystalline mountain pool fed by several waterfalls...

And I'm too lazy or too chicken to swim because it's too cold.

Newly inspired, I followed Kevin's lead. I gently rose, stripped down to my swimsuit, stepped up to the pool, did not dip my foot in and shriek as I usually would, but instead (following the example of Kevin, my new spiritual mentor) took a slow deep breath and gently lowered myself into the water with one long, smooth, underwater stroke across the pool.

Me trying to be calm and serene in the (freezing!) sacred pool

My husband Chris soon followed, of course. It was simply wonderful. I pulled Kevin aside later and thanked him for shaking me out of my stupor.

Carpe diem. 

Seize the day!

And we did.

Photo tour of Puerta Vallarta

After a couple of weeks happily anchored at cozy little La Cruz, we finally stepped up to the plate and took the bus (actually, 3 buses) with Rick and Dina of Talaria into the big city about an hour south.

We're here in Puerta Vallarta...and we SAILED here!

Every large Mexican town has a cathedral towering over the town square

Puerta Vallarta reminded us a bit of Laguna Beach, the way the homes jutted
up into the hillside overlooking the waterfront. 

                     

See what I mean? The "malecon" ("waterfront" in Spanish) 

The Malecon glows after sunset

We had lunch in this sweet little open air restaurant. Travel tip: this place at which we ate is frequented by locals, not by tourists, and hence the prices are much cheaper than the waterfront places for the tourists. Ya gotta go a couple of blocks away from the tourist areas, people...it's where the real life is! 

Lovely PV

Captain Chris on the Malecon

There is a charming flea market on the Cuale River, which runs right through downtown PV

Chris' body language says "What am I doing?" as he crosses the suspension bridge over the river

Once again I had the sensation that I was at Disneyland, not actually in "real life."

Down by the river -- right through downtown! Crazy cool!

Happy

The Cuale river runs right down to the beach

Chris with Rick and Deena of Talaria

We ended the day with a trip to the PV Costco

It was so eerily like a Costco in the US, it almost felt like we stepped into the Star Trek transporter back to the states! Here we are having a Costco pizza. Weird. 

You may wonder about the prices at the Puerta Vallarta Costco compared to in the states. Well, we spent 2,000 pesos! But don't worry -- that's less than 200 U.S. dollars. We managed to bypass the gallon jugs of olive oil, as this would take up half of our galley. LOL...

Take me to the river...drop me in the water

Upon sailing south to the warm waters of Mexico, I've re-discovered something about myself that I had long ago forgotten -- a reality that I had not experienced since I was a child:

I love, love, LOVE to swim. To just be in the water.

Chris and I have been enjoying near-daily swims off the stern of Espiritu since the water has been warm enough to do so ('round about Mag Bay in Baja).

Unfortunately our swim ladder snapped in two a few days ago, so repairing/replacing it is now about #11 on our "repair/replace" list. Which meant we were temporarily boat-bound, as there is no way to climb back into the boat from the water without a ladder.

But yesterday it was so hot and muggy here in the La Cruz anchorage that I just HAD to take a dip. I told Chris to listen for me as he practiced the fiddle in the main salon of Espiritu. I would attempt to find a way to climb back onto the boat, either via the dinghy, or rigging some sort of rope contraption, etc, with Chris standing by inside the boat listening for any calls for distress. Plus, it would be smart to figure out an emergency way to get back onto the boat in case we accidently found ourselves in the water without our ladder.

So I dove on in.

AAAaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh............

There is something so comforting and invigorating about finding ones self floating in warm crystalline water...weightless, yet gently supported by unseen physical forces. The ocean calmly embraces you, nudges you along, caresses you and welcomes you for as long as you choose to stay in her encompassing womb.

All of the stresses and worries of the day are literally washed away, like a baptism.

My parents tell me that when I was a toddler, I would swim like a little minnow in our apartment building pool in Costa Mesa for hours on end (and this was before water wings, people!).  Later, when we owned a home in the same town, my sisters and I just about died and went to heaven when our parents decided to build our own pool in the backyard!

                                                       Complete with a SLIDE!   :-)

Those were some amazing years back then, with countless joyous hours spent swimming, playing Marco Polo, floating and just hanging out in our backyard pool.


 If I haven't told you lately, Thanks, Mom and Dad. :-) 

Anyway, after I grew up and we sold the house, like most adults I rarely swam anymore. You know the drill -- working more than full time, then there's dinner to cook after work, etc.

So, back to yesterday. I enjoyed a 20 minute swim around the boat...sometimes just floating and letting the current carry me, other times doing gentle, relaxing strokes to get a bit of exercise in.

I attempted to pull myself up into the dinghy several times, which involved some awkward contortions of my hapless body, limbs akimbo.

No luck.

I continued my leisurely swim for another few minutes, then tried awkwardly to climb aboard Espiritu via the stern. I valiantly attempted to pull myself up by a rope, muscles quivering, and fell back into the water again and again. Nope. Not gonna happen.

Suddenly I saw a dingy barreling towards me at top speed. I waved to make sure that they saw me and would not run me over. The couple, from a neighboring sailboat, cried with concern:

"Are you alright? Can we help? Do you need rescuing?"

Ha! Well, I must have been quite an entertaining sight through their binoculars: my middle aged butt, arms and legs scrambling and jerking as I attempted over and over again to lug this middle aged body onto the boat via any means necessary.

Happy to provide entertainment for y'all. That's me...(LOL)...

I laughed, apologized profusely, thanked them for their chivalry, explained what I was up to, and that my husband was inside the boat ready to come pull me out if need be.

They didn't laugh, though. They looked kind of pissed. Chris came out and we thanked them again. We tried to introduce ourselves, but they promptly terminated the conversation, turned the boat in a bit of a huff and returned, full throttle, to their sailboat. They were a bit miffed, I think, that they came all the way over for nothing. Hmmmm. Sorry to disappoint you that I am JUST. FINE.     :-/

I finally did figure out a way to climb into the dinghy using the bridle, at which point I could climb back into Espiritu. Safe and sound.

The moral of this story is this: if you have access to a swimming pool (or a lake or ocean during the warmer months) -- dive back in. Reacquaint yourself with one of the simple joys of childhood, which should really be something we experience until our dying day. And remember, if you haven't done it in awhile, swimming is like riding a bike. Once you dive in, your body remembers the motions.

You might need some help getting out of the water, though. :-)

Very simple "New Years Resolution" list

Happy New Year from La Cruz, Mexico.

A few weeks ago I read a fascinating biography of the private and modest Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz.

 I've lived in California almost all of my life. But since my parents grew up in North Dakota and Missouri, the simple, humble ways of the midwest/northern plains folk have always inspired and intrigued me.

Anyway, Sparky ( AKA"Charles Schulz") was born and raised in Minnesota. And I was born in Minnesota, although we moved to California when I was one.

Sparky's dad owned a neat, clean and happy barber shop in St. Paul. I learned in the book that his dad adhered strictly to the book "The Art and Science of Barbering," basically the barber's bible.

In this manual, there is a list of the 10 commandments of being a successful barber. They are:


1. Maintain a good posture.

2. Wear an easy cheerful countenance.

3. Constantly practice friendliness.

4. Speak distinctly.

5. Don't be overly inclined to give advice.

6. Don't be didactic (don't go on and on about boring technical details).

7. Be a good listener. A good listener asks leading questions.

8. Be essentially informal.

9. One's success in any avenue of life depends a great deal upon his selling ability.

10. Don't take yourself too seriously.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


With the possible exception of #9 (I'm not much of a saleswoman), this list pretty much sums up my New Years resolutions for myself.

Communication and relationships are everything in life. They are certainly everything in this sailing/cruising life.

And not only does life go better when we have good friends with whom we can laugh and share experiences, it's also a safety issue.

We need each other out here.

So, Happy New Year to you. Wow. 2012.

Maybe since we're in Mexico and it is, after all, 2012 (the end of the world?) we'll head on over to one of the Mayan pyramids, climb to the top and see if we are struck by lightning or something.

Now that would be quite the blog post. :-)