Melaque and Barra de Navidad

Melaque is a town situated at the northern end of Bahia de Navidad (Yes, Christmas Bay). It offers the typical Palapa restaurants, white sandy beach and good holding for the anchoring. We anchored bow and stern to the swell. We decided that we would take the dinghy to the Barra lagoon with our handheld GPS and the GPS way points. Barra lagoon is situated at the south end of the Bay and requires careful maneuvering through a narrow channel with mud bars on either side. We wanted to check it out and see if we wanted to go to the lagoon. The trip across the bay was wet in our little dinghy and we worried about the trip back. We checked out the lagoon and then landed our dinghy at the Sands Hotel. We eventually found our way to port captains office and found him talking to a neighbor outside. We walked into the office and he came running in to his post behind his glass partition to tell us that he was closed. Justin played it a little dumb and he decided to finally check us in. We then wandered the town of Barra to find a restaurant that would serve Justin a Hamburgesa con papas (he is still on his search for the best hamburgers and pizza in Mexico). Once our upper was done we headed to the French Baker's cafe for a latte and apple pie. We debated to hang around Barra till the wind died down or to bite the bullet and get wet in the dinghy ride back to the boat. We decided the later. As we moved against the current and the waves poured into Ghetto Duck we vowed to never do that trip again by dinghy!

Thursday ended up being an errand day where we went into the town of Melaque to do some internet, lunch and some groceries. Friday we went to a restaurant/Deli that was recommended to me by a man swimming by the boat the night before. Chez Penny is small deli where we discovered some imported extra sharp cheddar, something we have been dying for since all Mexican cheese lacks any real flavour. After dinning on cheddar sandwiches, potato salad and buying all sorts of baguettes and croissants we finished doing groceries and headed back to the boat. We went for an evening swim, rinsed off and headed over to Lovely Reta for drinks and horse ovaries (as Debbie calls it). John and Debbie, on Lovely Reta, are another couple from Dock 6 that Justin became good friends with while working on the boat and left for cruising before I arrived in Mazatlan. It was so very nice to meet them after Justin had talked so much about them! They were heading into the Barra lagoon the next day to catch up with some boats anchored in there and at the last minute on saturday morning we decided to follow them into the lagoon. Once Anchored, we launched the dinghy and picked up our laundry. We met up with Tristan &Mindy and they invited us over to the Grand Bay Hotel where they had some passes that we could use to go swimming in one of the three pools. We spent the afternoon colling off in the pools and waterslides which was a nice change from sea water;)

On Sunday Dalia took the dinghy into town on her own and spent 2 hours looking for long distance calling cards since she had a couple of calls to make on monday concerning her student loan. On Monday Dalia and Justin took the dinghy into Barra where Dalia made her calls (very frustrating) and Justin checked out with the port captain, checked his e-mail,bought a pizza, banana bread and some croissants. We had lunch on the beach and headed back to the boat. We dropped off Justin's purchases and headed to the town of Colimilla which is across the lagoon from Barra. In Comlimilla we did our final stock up of fresh produce, juice and water at the famous Maria's Tienda. Which was promptly delivered to Steady Beat that evening.

Upon our return Justin noticed that two boats in our proximity had swapped positions in the anchorage and one boat was closer to us than before. Concerned Justin try to hail both boats on the vhf and was unsuccessful. Another boat in the anchorage hailed us and proceeded to explain that boat 1 had dragged back onto boat no2 who moved out of the way and several cruisers in the vicinity got into their dinghies and threw out a second anchor on boat no 1. The wind had picked up considerably in the afternoon in the lagoon causing boat no 1 to drag back and no one was on the boat. The importance of putting out enough ground tackle was the lesson from that close encounter.

Tuesday with our boat stocked with provisions we pulled up our anchor and headed to the fuel dock for diesel and water and then South to Manzanillo.