More friends from afar.

 Our long time friends Lawrence, Linda and their son Callum arrived on the 12^th February all the way from Wales. What a magnificent effort they have made to come and see us, along with a bit of business as well. It is so wonderful to see them after so long. I had taken a short trip to Mexico City and almost missed their arrival due to a delayed flight but in the end it worked out great as I was able to meet them at the airport and we all travelled to the Marina in a minibus.

Coffee beans

Apart from sampling the delights of La Cruz (eating tacos and drinking cold beer), we hired a Minivan and went up in the mountains to visit the old silver mining town of San Sebastian. The old Spanish colonial town is beautiful, well at least I thought it was but the children thought it was a bit uninteresting. I must say that driving on the Mexican roads was nowhere near as bad as some people made it out to be, infact its better than a lot of places in Europe and definitely better than driving in Asia. The following day we drove up to Chacalla and lounged around on the beach, had lunch and swam in the sea and enjoyed the surf.

 

Yelapa was on our places to show people as really there are not that many places you can take people within a day or two of La Cruz, but it’s a great place and it would give us a chance to meet up with Steve and Sandy again after fleeting visit with TC and Kelly.

Off we went to Yelapa with hopefully a sighting of whales and other marine mammals along the way. We did see some but from a distance. Now that we are old hands at visiting Yelapa Domingo showed us to the same mooring buoy and we arranged for him to take us ashore, meanwhile we went for a refreshing swim.

Steve had VERY KINDLY arranged for one of his friends to guide us up to the larger waterfalls. The walk takes about 1 ½ hours up the donkey track which is also lined with small shops, local businesses, homes and the occasional bar. It’s a wonderful walk: so much to see and hear. The walk takes you up a gradual shaded incline and has two river crossings which cool the feet nicely. The final stretch goes through the jungle and you can hear the waterfall from about ¼ mile away by which time I was ready for a cooling swim in the wonderful swimming hole that accompanies the waterfall.

Jude buying fresh coffe

Rose, Katya and Callum

Sunset over Punta Mita

Having spent a an hour or so swimming and enjoying the area we headed back down the mountain where Steve dragged us kicking and screaming to a bar/restaurant to have refreshing marguerites and food. How could he do such a thing!

We had one more beer on the beach before we said our goodbyes to Steve and Sandy and Mike and Domingo dropped us back to our boat in his panga.

River crossing on the way to the waterfall

It was our intention to stay overnight in Yelapa and head back to La Cruz early the following morning so we settled down to a few more drink and supper. The winds slowly built in the evening and the swell coming from the north with it. The motion was not too bad for us but looking around we could see others having a really rough time of it, some boats rolling over 30 degrees each side like a metronome. I set the anchor alarm and headed off to my bunk only to be awoken at around 2:30am by the alarm going off. I went and had a look outside and sure enough our mooring buoy must have dragged and we were probably 15 feet away from another boat and closing. I quickly started the engine and gave it a brief blast forward to take us away from the other boat, I then went downstairs and woke Jude so that we could release the mooring line and make our way back to La Cruz under the cover of darkness. With the start of the engine everybody was up, well apart from the kids who stayed in bed. We slipped the mooring line and headed out of the bay, a light breeze picked up so we raised the sails.

Shortly after leaving  Yelapa a pod of dolphins came streaking through the water leaving a trail of glowing phosphorescence in the wake. They played on the bow giving us all a real thrill with the lightshow. How wonderful it was.

We sailed about half of the way to La Cruz before the wind died so we motored into the anchorage and waited on the hook until it was light before entering the marina.

We were sad to see Lawrence, Linda and Callum depart, we had a wonderful time with them and we will look forward to seeing them in the summer.