February 6th – Zihuatanejo – Jim’s Blog #22

We are spending another few days in Zihuatanejo as we await the shipment of our repaired autopilot. We had thought of going down to Acapulco, since that place was famous as we were growing up as the place where the well-to-do wintered over. And how can you not want to see where Elvis Presley was a cliff diver in a very forgettable film way back? We decided not to go there, since the cost of mooring there is quite high, and anchoring out is in very deep water – neither of which appeals to us. Moorings are floating balls chained to a heavy weight on the bottom; so all one has to do is grab a line from the mooring ball and that serves as an anchor, instead of using one’s own anchor. In the case of Acapulco the moorings cost about as much as staying in a marina in other parts of the country – and that is not a cost that we have included in our budget. So we’ll wait here and plan to head north in a week or two.

Yesterday we attended a presentation by the Tahitian Tourist Bureau inviting us to come to Polynesia as part of the annual Pacific Puddle Jump. Tahiti is made up of five separate archipelagos, including the Marquesas (The Land of Men – referring to their rugged mountains), the Tuamotus (The Jewel Islands – primarily black pearls), the Gambiers (The Islands at the End of the World – few people go there), the Australs (Land of Tradition – based on their traditional crafts), and the Societies, which include the islands most people are familiar with: Tahiti (the Queen Island), Moorea (the Magic Island), Huahine (the Garden of Eden), Raiatea (the Sacred Island), Taha’a (the Vanilla Island), and Bora Bora (the Pearl of the Pacific). Although they want us to visit, they don’t want U.S. citizens to stay longer than 3 months (Europeans can stay for 6 months) – must have something to do with their being a French-owned protectorate and they don’t like the fact that we renamed French Fries to Freedom Fries a while back.

I flew a number of surveillance missions in the P3 Orion aircraft when I was in the Navy over some island atolls in the Western Pacific, and I have always wanted to actually set foot on those white sandy beaches surrounded by azure lagoons and protecting reefs. Reading James Mitchener’s Hawaii on the way to my Navy duty in Hawaii started my interest some 35 years ago. Sheilagh doesn’t quite have the driving desire that I do, but this presentation made the trip sound very good to me; so it may rub off on her. One of the concerns is that a 3-month visa would not give us a chance to see much of the islands; so why sail for 20 or 30 days to a location that will require that we set out again to another long-distance location in just 90 days? The U.S. is working with the tourist bureau on this, and maybe the new French President, who actually expresses a liking for the U.S. could help to get things changed.

Despite the interesting presentation we’ve decided that we don’t have enough cruising experience to head to the Marquesas this year; so we plan to make the trip next year. In the meantime we will be cruising back up the coast of Mexico to the Sea of Cortez, where we plan to take a couple of trips back up to the U.S. It turns out that we have to leave Mexico before the end of 6 months; so we will be heading back to California during the month of April, in order to come back and start another 6-month stay. What is it with these foreign countries that don’t want us to stay and spend money for longer than three to six months? In the case of Tahiti, we have to put up a bond to insure that we won’t be left penniless in the islands. Apparently we have to buy airline tickets to return to the U.S. before we can even get a 3-month visa.

We have also heard that the summer months of July and August are wickedly hot in the Sea of Cortez; so we are thinking about using those months to visit various family members (our condo is rented out to our niece, Lori – which leaves us without a home for those two months). Now we have to find out who will let us come live off them for a few weeks at a time. We also need to start making plans to have family members and friends come visit this spring or next fall, when the weather is perfect for cruising in the Sea of Cortez. Let us know if you are interested in hanging out on a boat surrounded by perfectly clear water and sunny days every day.

This week is Carnaval Week in Zihuatanejo (yes, it’s spelled that way here) – they take the whole week despite the fact that Ash Wednesday is supposed to be the start of Lent, when there should be no celebrating. The loud music started on Tuesday evening, which also happened to be a national holiday (to celebrate the Mexican Constitution, I believe). On Wednesday we dinghied in to the beach and followed the crowd to the town square, where a platform had been erected as a stage for the festivities. At about 7PM we witnessed a small parade that had groups of pre-school kids dressed up in costumes and being shepherded by their mothers between motor vehicles with large boom boxes directed out the back.

Apparently the kids had been trained to perform gyrations to the sound of the music in the truck immediately preceding their group, but the music from all the trucks came together and confused everyone but the mothers, who performed the gyrations as examples for their children. Some of those mothers had some great moves, but the kids more or less walked along looking around and wondering what all the hoopla was about. Each group of kids had on a different costume, with shiny hula outfits predominating, but the first group of kids had their skin painted a dark color, wore a bone tied up in their hair (actually rawhide dog chews) with grass skirts for both boys and girls, and each carried a spear. We’re not sure if the different groups of kids were supposed to represent different eras in the life of the Mexican people, but we didn’t see how that first group of supposed head hunters fit in.

We wandered about for awhile to try to get into the spirit of the Carnaval, but we were finally driven back to the boat by the noise and confusion. Perhaps we’re a little too old to appreciate the carefree life of the Carnaval, or maybe we’re too aware of how our bodies will feel the next day, if we should go a little crazy. I had always pictured the excitement of the Carnival in Rio or New Orleans as something I wanted to experience someday, but now I suspect I can do without.

I should mention that the day seems to really start for the Zihuatanejans at about 6-7PM, when the temperature starts getting cool. The evening crop of food vendors sets up stalls along the street and entire families get together in the streets and on the sidewalks until about 11PM, when everything starts shutting down. A typical day starts with fishermen at dawn speeding through the anchorage on their way to collect the catch for the day. The permanent stalls are up and manned by 10AM, or earlier when the cruise ship comes in. The last call for the cruise ship returnees is about 2PM, after which many of the stalls shut down serious business until that evening. We often see someone half dozing in a typical shop/stall in a beach chair after 2PM, who will come alive if we seem interested in something in the shop. The children are home from school for the siesta period from about 12 noon to 2PM and then back in school until 5 or 6PM. It appears that this is a great schedule for the tropics, where it is difficult to get anything done when it is too hot. I only wish I could have had a 2-hour siesta every afternoon as part of my lunch time throughout my career, although some will say that my work output after lunch was about as productive as a siesta. More later . . .