Keeping Up: Barra de Navidad

It’s hard to keep up with this blog. Most mornings I plan to write an update but that evening as I’m climbing into bed, I realize that I haven’t written anything, and I wonder where the day went. Between sailing, boat projects and exploring there isn’t much time left to write and edit photos. I’m also a slow writer which doesn’t help the situation. Ah well, here’s a quick update.

From Banderas Bay we completed an overnight sail to Chamela. Chamela is a charming village with several beachside restaurants and a perfect long sandy beach. Getting in and out of the village involved taking the dinghy up a narrow estuary to the town docks. The estuary is very shallow which meant Sharlene kept a close bow watch as we zigzagged our way up to the docks. Thankfully, we made it without running aground or hitting our outboard on one of the many rocks.

We stayed in Chamela for three days enjoying beach walks and meals ashore.

From Chamela we moved on to Tenacatita. We had planned to stop for a night at Paraiso before reaching Tenacatita but the bay is exposed to the NW and we weren’t comfortable with the amount of swell entering the bay. We decided to push on for a few more hours and go to Tenacatita. Tenacatita did not disappoint.

We loved Tenacatita. The anchorage is at the north side of the large bay. There is one small restaurant and campground near the anchorage and a resort a kilometre or so along the beach. It’s a quiet gorgeous anchorage. It’s very popular among cruisers but it didn’t seem crowded.

Near the anchorage is a long estuary that was fun to explore. We spent an hour travelling up its narrow channels and did not reach the end. We’ll be back and hopefully we’ll make it to the end then. Some friends saw a small crocodile in the estuary the week before we were there but we didn’t see any. I’m not complaining. I don’t want to encounter a crocodile while in our inflatable dinghy! We did see many birds and small fish as we putted our way up the estuary.

There is a small wave that forms at the entrance to the estuary. We had fun trying to surf our friends’ stand-up paddle boards. It was great fun being tossed around in the waves.

On the south side of the bay is the village of La Manzanilla. We joined our friends Greg and Lori on Palomita for a trip to the town. We went on a Friday which is market day. The town square was full of venders selling everything from clothes to tourist trinkets, to fresh produce. It was the fresh produce that we needed so we loaded up while we were there.

Also, while in La Manzanilla we visited the crocodile sanctuary. We saw a lot of large crocs! We walked along the edge of a lagoon on raised wooden walkways that crossed above and beside the crocs.

We are now at the small town of Barra de Navidad. We are anchored in the well protected lagoon with a number of other boats. The lagoon is very shallow so we were a bit nervous coming in but it all went well. We are anchored in 2.5m of water and we draw a little under 2m so there isn’t much room for error in our navigation or we’ll run aground. We’ve been told it’s a mud bottom which shouldn’t do any damage to our keel if we touched but I don’t want to test this hypothesis.

We’ll be here a few more days exploring the area. We’re not sure if we’ll go further south or start making our way north again.

We need to get back to Banderas Bay so we can order and install more solar panels. Our current solar set up isn’t meeting our power needs. More on this in a future post.