Morelia from our hotel room
One of the Plaza's in Morelia
Butterflies
more Butterflies ... millions of Butterflies
Wednesday, 28 January 2009 - Sunday, 1 February 2009
Mazatlan - Readjusting to the confinement of boat life. Changed the engine and transmission oil, oil filter, and raw water impeller and tightened the alternator belt. It’s a little bit early to do this work, at 690 hours, but better to do it where I have help than where I have none. I had the bottom cleaned, the oil pressure gauge re-installed, and I re-waxed the deck and hull for the umpteenth time. Saturday Steve and Weta (JAKES family whom we met in the sea this summer) hunted us down to take us out to dinner.
On Sunday went to a Super Bowl party at El Cid. The crowd was older than I, and very obnoxious. Why not enlarge on this point?
Monday - 02 February 2009
1000 - Skies clear. Wind NW, variable. Waves small and long period swells from the NW. We slip our dock lines and make our course for Puerto Vallarta (PV).
1200 - Julie is a little seasick adjusting to life underway. Winds NW 10 knots. I unfurl the jib and hoist the main sail. Doing 7 knots under sail alone, an easy ride.
1400 - Winds have increased to 20 knots. Placed one reef in the main. Doing 7.5 knots now, course steady at 153 degrees.
1800 – Sunset; winds at 10 knots. Doused the main and motor sailed with the headsail out. OK - Headsail out of what?
2300 - Julie is still seasick. Winds variable. I douse the headsail.
Tuesday - 03 February 2009
0200 - Pass Isla Isabella to starboard.
0400 - Crystal clear night; visibility excellent with a full moon. All of the constellations are visible. I can easily identify the Big Dipper, Altair and Pleiades. I should make it a night watch practice to get out the star chart to study, identify, and memorize the constellations. Swells eight to ten feet, often rolling the boat 15 degrees or more.
0600 - Julie reports for watch, apparently healed of mal-de-mer. Pass Tres Marietes (see 09 March, 2008 log entry) on starboard. I drop into the salon for three hours of sleep. It's really "saloon" but that would confuse the gardeners among your readers.
1200 - Round Punta Mita at the northern tip of Bandarras Bay. We’ve been warned not to cut the corner due to unmarked shoals: twenty-two miles to PV.
1400 - Whales sounding all over bay. This is their winter home prior to migrating back north to Alaskan waters.
1630 - Tie up Marina Vallarta (PV) - Slip C-25. Engine hours: 692.
Wednesday - 04 February 2009
0900 - Checked in with Marina and started boat maintenance: Lubed winches, replaced the bottom reef lines on the main sail, and retied Lazy Jack lines. The winches are used to crank in the headsail sheets (ropes that attach to the headsail). Reef lines are small ropes that go through the sail at three different heights on the main sail. Reef lines secure (tie-up) the sail to the boom when reducing sail area to compensate for increased wind speed. Lazy Jacks are lines extending down from the mast that help manage the sail when lowering it.
Efren Ramirez Calderon M.D. came to visit us at the boat. Efren is Esther’s medical contact here in Mexico. Esther is Julie’s friend from Alaska. Esther collects outdated medical supplies from the local hospitals in Anchorage, inventories them, and sends them to facilities worldwide that need them. Efren has many contacts in the local medical community and is able to distribute the unused supplies to the patients' and caregivers' advantage.
Attended to email. Julie heard from MERIDIAN (one of the boats trapped in Moro Bay with us and that also did the Baja Ha-Ha with us). MERIDIAN is in New Zealand now, having work done on their boat. They plan to stay on the hard for six months and tour around on land. MERIDIAN reports that many of the boats that have made the puddle jump (a euphemism for crossing the Pacific) are either up for sale or being put on Dockwise for the return trip. Dockwise is a freighter that hauls boats around the world. The center part of the ship actually sinks and the boats are driven onto the holding area. The sunken portion is refloated and the vessels are secured. The crews are citing parts failure and exhaustion from the long passages as the two main reasons. The marine environment is terribly harsh, perhaps the harshest I’ve ever seen. In my opinion, most marine suppliers and retailers do nothing to make life at sea easier. With very few exceptions the parts, materials, and workmanship are grossly inferior. If the component itself doesn’t break, then it was put in poorly or just plain wrong. Shoddy workmanship (our own troubles being just one of so very, very many examples) that we’ve seen coming out of Seattle, Port Townsend and San Francisco are routine, not rare. Perhaps it’s a reflection of what’s been going on in society as a whole, lately.
We were inside a coffee shop attending to email when a bee, in an unprovoked and unwarranted attack, took it upon himself to sting me. I felt a tickle on the top of my left foot and subconsciously massaged it with my right foot. I felt something different than the satisfaction one gets from itching a scratch and looked down to see a bee flopping back and forth trying to escape the stinger he had, maliciously and with intent, thrust into me. I extracted the stinger and killed the bee.
Bees: Mexico has swarms and swarms of bees. While at sea this summer, along with daily weather reports, we had daily bee reports. Some anchorages were worse than others and nearly every boat had some issue with the Mexican bees. For example, BEYOND REASON did a fresh water washout of their wetsuits they had used for diving. They left the wet suits on the cabin top to dry and came out some time later to find an entire swarm (thousands of bees) had taken up residence in the wetsuits.
The bees are attracted to fresh water. The hive will send out a scout bee (or several scout bees) to find a fresh water source. After finding the source, the scout returns to the hive, reports, and then the entire hive flies out to enjoy the waters. The trick is to kill the scout bee so he can’t report back. All the cruisers are pretty vigilant about two things in this regard: keeping sources of fresh water under tight wraps and killing the scout bee. In regards to the later, many of us have purchased electric fly swatters. They look like junior-sized tennis racquet, only they are electrified with a couple of batteries. The novice will swing and swipe the racquet-swatter like a normal fly swatter, often damaging the boat or shattering the racquet-swatter itself. Once experience is gained, an elegant dip of the racquet-swatter can catch the bee in mid-flight. Electrocution is a certainty, whether it results in death or merely a permanent palsy is often a matter of luck, for the bee. Julie, being the hunter she is, goes for the one-time clean shot kill. I tend to send the scout bee hobbling back to the hive, scorched wings, bent antenna and a permanently shorted-out navigation system. With so much damage to his internal electronics, his communication dance looks more like he has been into the peyote than on a scouting mission. No way can he communicate the trail back to the water hole.
Thursday - 05 February 2009
Puerto Vallarta - Awaiting Esther and Jan (Julie's friends from Alaska). To Zaragoza (a marine store) for Cetol, an extra Danforth anchor (13 pounds) and shaft zincs.
Friday - 06 February 2009
Puerto Vallarta - Five-dollar cab ride to the airport to pick up a rental car. Back to the marina to meet with Esther, Jan and Efren. Then to the community indigent hospital to distribute Esther’s medical supplies, enjoy a hospital tour, consult with the staff on further equipment needs, and get an X-ray of Julie’s ankle. The bone remains broken but the break is closing.
Lunch after the hospital visit was at a large open-air restaurant. The remarkable thing about it was they had no menus. A large (all you could eat) plate of beef, pork, chicken and lamb was set on the table for the party to share family style. No vegetables, no potatoes, nothing: just our drinks and this huge plate of meat. Back to the boat to make plans for our inland trip to Morelia.
Saturday - 07 February 2009
0900 - Depart PV for Morelia and the Monarch Butterflies (via automobile). It took nine hours driving time and that was staying on the toll roads, which cost about $50.00. The toll roads are not always divided highways, often under construction and include stoplights and huge speed bumps as they meander through small towns. Even so, they are better the libre (free) roads, which wind and twist every which way adding, in this case, four hours to the journey.
1800 - Arrive Morelia, a city of 600,000. Absolutely charming city, unlike anything we’ve seen in Mexico. It’s a very old city with a modern section as well. It is clean and organized. The historic portion of the city has multiple large plazas with majestic European-style cathedrals. The four us dragged Morelia’s narrow cobblestone streets disappearing into the historic district’s maze. We bumped into one dead end after another, passing marvelous stone buildings, balconied windows and always the heavy, sculpted wooden Spanish doors. After dark had destroyed any further chance of sightseeing, we found a hotel room and had the best and least inexpensive dinner we’ve had in Mexico to date.
Sunday - 08 February 2009
0800 - Depart Morelia for the town of Anganguao and the Butterflies. Anganguao is three hours more towards Mexico City and sits in the low foothills of the country. The road is narrow, loaded with huge speed bumps, passes through many small villages, but is marked well enough … with pictures of Butterflies. At Anganguao we climb steeply into the mountains on switchback roads with hairpins turns. At the top, we enter the butterfly sanctuary and are greeted by local Indians selling a variety of curios and more practical bottled water and surgical masks.
The trail to the butterflies was an arduous hike on a dusty, steep, winding, shifting, and uneven path. They had horses (ponies really) that one could rent, but we chose to hike it (Julies broken ankle and all). Many, many Mexican families were making the same hike but the remarkable thing was they were dressed in their Sunday best (not hiking gear). The men were in dress slacks and dress shoes and white shirts. The women were dressed equally as nice, usually slacks, and we saw more than one hiking the trail in high heels. No kidding: high heels! The little girls were in their pastel green and blue church dresses with white ankle socks and patent leather shoes. The older women were in dresses as well, and their footwear was only marginally more practical. All ages were represented on the trail. It took about two hours to reach the butterflies via the trail and at the end everyone was covered with the black dust of the trail, which was as fine as talc.
While the trail was busy, it was not overcrowded. Additionally and inconveniently, another gringo decided to join the four of us and our little Mestizo guide. This was important because Esther and Julie needed to pee. Jan was 25 feet ahead of us with the Mestizo guide and the inconvenient gringo waiting for hobbling Julie, panting Esther and me to catch up. I gave Jan the high sign and she led the two strange men further down the path (not an unusual thing for Jan to do at all). Oops, here comes a young couple sauntering romantically down the path. She probably weighed 225 pounds to his 265. Waddled past us they did: star-struck, hand in hand, completely unaware of taut bladders and spastic sphincters. Not quite in the clear, Esther made a command decision and firmly announced, “to hell with it!” One heartbeat later, Esther had made the necessary adjustments and was quietly watering the ground below her. Julie, in the excitement of Esthers’ decisiveness but positioned poorly, was caught completely unaware. Last out of the gate, she hobbled over by Esther (girls always pee in twos), made her own adjustments and commenced her business. The girls did finish in record time and at nearly the same time. Would that I could pee that fast. With guys, however, time is not critical, rather it’s more about creativity. Writing one's name, perhaps some artwork… leaving the world a little better place than one found it.
Over the entire trek we saw very few butterflies: 12, 15 tops. The butterflies remain high on the mountain in the morning, but as the earth makes one more rotation towards evening the butterflies follow the sun down the mountain and into the forest canyons. This is where we finally saw them; millions of them. The sky was lively orange and black confetti that flittered about. The trees, trunks, branches and needles were painted a flowing orange and black. The ground, too, was covered with butterflies.
Millions of Monarch Butterflies from the Eastern United States and Canada migrate several thousand miles, annually, to this specific spot in Mexico. What’s amazing is that the butterflies that make the trip down are not the same ones that make the trip back. In fact, it’s the third, fourth and even fifth generation that make the return trip. The Monarch Butterfly only lives for about two months and is the only butterfly that can cross an ocean.
Filling oneself on nature’s splendor made us quite ravenous. We found a comfortable log and wiped our dirty hands of the black trail dust as best we could and filled our bellies with Esther and Jan’s leftover cold steak from the night before. We’d paid off our guide, still unsure exactly what he did or how he hooked onto us, and caught the pony ride back to the car. Each pony has a wrangler. Some wranglers have two or three ponies and they accompany them on each trek from the stables to the butterflies. They usually make about ten round trips a day. The trips are 30 minutes each way of tough hiking over a rock strewn, tree root exposed, shifting and dusty trail. The wranglers didn’t hike. They jogged beside or behind the ponies, sometimes hanging onto the horses' tails. Even though the trip was arduous, the wranglers hustled the animals right along. Natural marathoners, these boys were.
We arrived back in Morelia just at dusk and found our way down the cobblestone street beneath the 16th century aqueduct to our hotel. We checked into an 18th century building that had been converted to a hotel. Our room had a window that opened to overlook the street below and the panoramic view of the cities many historic cathedral spires.
Monday, 09 February 2009
Morelia - Up early to explore the historic part of the city. The historic district has been in continuous use since the city's inception and still conducts a full day’s business. We walked under huge porticos where folks were enjoying morning coffee with pastries on tables draped in white linen. We strolled along the cobblestone streets, across the plazas where we saw school children, dressed identical in their uniforms, doing exercises. Inside the cathedrals we examined the vast expanse of the domed ceilings that reflected the morning light creeping through the stained glass windows onto the rudimentary pews and stern religious icons below. We toured local shops and wandered through the Mercados (a generic term for shops and marketplaces). All the buildings are stone and were constructed beginning in the 16th century by Spanish missionaries. Many have huge, heavy, wooden, double-entryway doors that open onto large patios. Some of the huge timbers, used for framing the doorways so many years ago, have dried, causing the dark frame to split at its base. Plaques throughout the city commemorate Mexican heroes. One of the more memorable plaques, on the corner of a hotel that used to be an administrative building in days past, honors the firing squad execution of a would-be revolutionary (right on this spot). Morelia was the birthplace of Mexico’s independence movement. The old city sits high on a hill and has a commanding view of the surrounding plains. Efren told us about one of his ancestors who was the “stupid hero.”
The city posted guards in the cathedral bell towers to warn the populace of the government troops approach. My ancestor was on watch during such an occasion and dutifully began ringing the bell, as well as waving a huge white sheet, to sound the alarm. A gust of wind caught the sheet and blew him out of the belfry onto the cobblestone streets several stories below. He saved the day but died stupidly.
1130 - Depart Morelia: an hour outside the city on the toll road we come upon and accident. There are four bodies strewn across our two lanes of the highway. None of the bodies was moving; one was covered with blood and another’s upper torso with a blanket. The lower part of that body’s left leg was traumatically amputated. Worldly goods, such as they were, were strewn over the highway. There was no evidence of a vehicle, broken glass, skid marks or any other paraphernalia one sees at a motor vehicle accidents. I’m sure the victims were all dead, or rapidly approaching that state. The only official vehicle on the scene was an ambulance with a couple of attendants. They were casually moving about, but not performing any health care procedures. We saw no police cars driving to the scene, even though at the next toll both (20 minutes down the road) there were five police cars in attendance. Efren, later, told us that accidents like this are not infrequent. The highways (toll and free) are populated with vendors selling their wares (baskets, fruit, trinkets, etc.) as well as the pedestrian traffic crossing them. Sometimes pedestrians get hit: often by one of the tractor-trailer trucks. The involved vehicle does not stop and the ambulance does not move the bodies until the police arrive and perform their investigation: all in all, a gruesome scene.
1900 - Arrive PV. Dinner with Ester and Jan in the marina and I drove them back to their hotel.
Thursday - 10 February 2009
0800 - Out to Nuevo Vallarta marina (a newer marina north of marina vallarta where we are staying) to gather information on going south. A complete bust, but we did visit with SULA (Herb and Betty whom I had known at our yacht club in Tacoma).
1000 - Retrieve Jan and Esther from their hotel room and spend the rest of the day on the boat.
1400 - Efren came to the boat to take Esther and Jan to the Airport and their plane back to Alaska.
1500 - We walked over to SUNSEEKER to pick up our Central American flags of the countries that we’ll be visiting as we head south. Some cruisers supplement their income by making flags of various countries
1830 - Up to a local hangout called Pizza & Beer in another attempt to gather information on heading south. Again, a complete bust! PV is not very helpful to cruisers heading south through the Panama Canal.
Wednesday - 11 February 2009
Puerto Vallarta - Lay day attending to email, finances and boat chores.
Thursday - 12 February 2009
Puerto Vallarta - Painted the dinghy with white latex paint for three reasons: to protect it for ultra violet damage, increase its resistance to wear, and upgrade its appearance. Only time will tell if the first two will work and the third showed only a marginal improvement. To add insult to injury, I painted ITCHEN on the tender's left tube. My granddaughter could have done as well. Julie completed an awning between the dodger and bimini.
Many visitors today: two couples from Canada, a couple of guys from Australia with babysitting duty, a couple from the San Francisco Bay area that had a boat named ZARAZAN. Everyone was very friendly and intrigued with our adventure.
1930 - Arrived at an upscale restaurant in old town Puerto Vallarta, whose admission was gained through locked doors. We were the invited guests of FISH n Chips. FISH n CHIPS is a 55’ Mickelson powerboat owned by Roz and Harry. Julie met Roz last year in Cabo San Lucas. They had followed our distress calls on the radio when we lost our transmission. Julie and Roz hit it off, and this is the first time we’ve been in the same port together.
The restaurant is called the Hacienda San Angels and is part of a hotel/bed and breakfast. The buildings sit in the hills of Puerto Vallarta and overlook the old city. Originally there were three houses, built in a semi-circle with a central patio. The multi-level patio is now the dining area and the houses have become guest rooms.
Friday - 13 February 2009
Puerto Vallarta - Stripped and varnished the Ensign staff and cockpit table and re-waxed the boat. Julie caught up on more sewing projects: bags for the fishing poles and spear gun, covers for the hatches, and an insulating blanket for the Engle refrigerator. Fella’s across the dock from us returned after a successful fishing trip and gave us a 36-inch filet of Dorado.
Saturday - 14 February 2009
Puerto Vallarta - Boat work.
Sunday - 15 February 2009
Puerto Vallarta- Bus ride out to Nuevo Vallarta Marina to purchase two used six-gallon diesel cans, for trip south. To CCC (the local grocery store) to re-provision and Julie purchased new bedding to reappoint the V-berth. Cleaned the boat bottom and the inside of the diesel cans.
