La Mazanilla (December 29 - January 5)

My friends David Kuszmar and Jen Jenkins decided to spend a week around New Years down here. We arranged to meet in PV, stay on the boat for a night and then drive a rental car down to La Manzanilla, where another one of our friends, Dave Hope, is building a house. As the minutes ticked by after the agreed on meeting time, I began to worry that they’d missed a turn and were braving the downtown traffic, desperately trying to make a u-turn. Fortunately that wasn’t the case, though they were happy that I’d warned them about the weirder aspects of the rules of the road down here, such as the left turn from the right hand lane. And they brought Christmas presents: some sailing stuff I’d ordered and sent to them, the rolling duffle I should have brought originally, and 3 boxes of Lady Grey tea, my favorite.

When David and I were in Hawaii last year, we both went crazy for poke -- raw ahi in a soy sauce with garlic and other things that make it delicious. So, I had been looking forward to taking David to this ceviche tostada place near the marina that is popular with the locals. That was our first stop. Both he and Jen were as enthralled with the place I as was. A good start to a great visit.
We went downtown for dinner and called it an early night, leaving just as the party was starting. Between Christmas and New Years a LOT of Mexicans from inland go to the coast to vacation. And they party late. Its fairly common to see little kids running around at 11 pm.

The next day we packed the rental car, which became known as the Pocket Ford because it looked pocked-sized, to its absolute limit and headed south. We stopped for lunch at a roadside place that gets few gringo patrons. Although it was a concrete structure, not a shack, there were little chickens running around under the tables inside. We all shared in Jen’s daring order of camarones aguachilie (raw shrimp in a spicy green sauce), and were happy when none of us suffered ill effects later. When we reached La Manzanilla that afternoon, we found Dave Hope and he explained the lodging situation -- his house wasn’t done yet, but we would housesit for a friend in town for a couple of nights and then stay at their “spec house” that they had built and were trying to sell. Both houses were beautiful with great views of the bay. There were bats at night and flocks of little parrots during the day, which was nice. There were also a couple of scorpions, which was not so nice. One crawled out from under something on the porch and hid in a shadow a couple of steps down. Dave Hope killed it with one quick flip of his Teva’d foot. Jen and I only stopped wimpering when we saw scorpion parts fly in two different directions.

Jen and David in front of the fancy "spec house"

The first night we had a great dinner overlooking the beach and a carnival in town. After suspiciously eyeing a nausea-inducing spinning ride called the Volcano throughout dinner, tequila got the better of us and we hopped on the thing. The rust spots and zip ties which seemed to hold it together made it all the more exciting. David couldn’t resist a ride on the "dog running away with a chicken" seat on the merry go round.

David and Dave on the Volcano, David on the Mexican Animals Merry Go Round

We joined many vacationing Mexicans up the road at Tentacatita the next day for some beach time and snorkeling. This was the same place I had anchored with Dan just a week or so earlier. Once again, the snorkeling was great. This kid was really cute, running up and down the beach wiggling his arms wildly. We dubbed him pasta arms. David was thrilled to see people at a nearby table playing Scrabble in Spanish. He’s convinced that we should not let our lack of vocabulary or ability to conjugate verbs be a deterrent to playing. Somehow, we never got around to it…

The next day (Dec 31) we went on an Immersion Adventure kayaking and snorkeling trip led by Hot Dave (as he came to be known) and Santiago. The town seemed to shrink for us, as we realized that Hot Dave’s sweetie Milora runs the restaurant that we had breakfast at every morning. And we saw Santiago’s reggae band play the next night, and sat at the table with him wile (somewhat) patiently waiting hours for tacos at a street stand another night. The trip was fun, though we decided that single kayaks would be much easier to control than the doubles we were in. I sprained my ankle taking a bad step on the rocky beach, which brought the new years eve party potential for us down a notch. The Mexican siesta seems to be key to partying until 3 am. We experimented with rum pina colada recipes instead of siesta-ing, further contributing to our abbreviated evening. I think we called it a night around midnight, but we could hear the party going well until 3. The guys that looked like the were really having a good time were in a 10 piece band who were playing, jumping dancing in the back of a dump truck as it did laps through town. Unfortunately, no pictures were taken. America dump trucks are so underutilized for these purposes.

Dave is "OK"; David, Jen and Santiago paddling along

On David and Jen’s last night in town, we all went to see the latest progress on Dave’s house We toasted the imminent pouring of the third floor with a few slugs of tequila while admiring the amazing view that the place has. And Dave explained where the rooms and arches on the third floor would be.

The view of the beach from Dave's house

We spent a couple more days playing on the beach and in the water before Boca de Tubas (as we nicknamed Kuszmar, due to his uncanny ability to make tuba sounds) and Jen had to leave. The kayak trip a few miles down the coast in search of tacos was fun, but difficult. We paddled into a headwind on the way up the shoreline, making slow progress. But we saw dolphins not to far away, which was very cool. On the way back the wind helped us, but it had also disturbed the water quite bit more. A three foot swell doesn’t seem like much in a big sailboat, but in a kayak where your head is only about three feet above the water it causes a little anxiety. The boats were stable and we didn’t flip while paddling, but Jen and I were getting increasingly anxious about the size of the breakers we’d have to paddle through to land the boats. In my experience, the waves increase in height near the shore… so I was trying not to panic while visualizing trying to not hurt myself paddling through a 5 foot breaker. David went in first, and did a nice job of staying upright, giving Jen and I a boost of confidence. It can be done! He helped guide Jen in, and then me. The breakers were actually quite small, which was good, as Jen and I both got a little sideways in the surf and bailed before getting ashore. Next time we’ll stick the landing…

Dave and Jen headed back to PV in the pocket ford, and Dave and I hung out in La Manzanilla a couple days more before he flew home and I went back to the boat. It was great to seem some familiar faces and make up some new inside jokes.