La Cruz de Huanacaxtle

By Aaron

We’re in La Cruz, Marina Riviera Nayarit,  for an extended stay of over a month.  (At least I am.)  We splurged on a marina for the whole time since they were giving us a good monthly rate which was further discounted as El Salvador Rally participants. 

Dock 4, home for the next month

Nicole is heading back to Seattle for a couple weeks in the middle of January in order to visit friends and family and use up a free plane ticket that she earned from miles accumulated with business travel. The ticket needs to be used from Mexico, and Puerto Vallarta (just 45 minutes from here) is a convenient place to depart from.  She’ll be leaving with a small bag, but coming back with a large suitcase full of filters, parts, spares, and probably some food items that we’ve been missing.  I will hopefully make some progress on the project list!

Fortunately La Cruz is going to be a cool place to hang out and we’ve already been having a good time.

The Christmas Eve potluck party on dock 4

Dock 4 is known as the “kids dock” and most of the boats with kids picked up a slip here for the Christmas Festivities.  The youngins’ all seem to be having a great time living the cruising life.

Ruby from SV Convivia stopped by to let us know she’d lost a tooth that had been wiggling around for several days.  This was Christmas Eve, so she got the el Ratón and Santa Claus double whammy.  (In Mexico it’s a mouse that delivers the cash for teeth.)  The magical rodent pays out 50 pesos for a tooth down here!

The Convivia kids invited us to their dock picnic

We spent Christmas Day lounging around and visited the weekly market they have near the marina with crafts and food.

For our Christmas Lunch we had delicious hot tamales from the market.  It was my first ever tamale and I thought they were fantastic!  Suspicious that something could be so good, Nicole got online to see how they were made.  They use lard to make them.  I don’t care.

We’ve been eating a LOT of tortillas in Mexico.  Nicole makes them up in all kinds of different ways and we don’t ever seem to get tired of them since you can always change up the filling.  Even though we’ve been eating them almost every day, it’s still hard for the two of us to get through a whole 1 kilo package and they’re best when you get them fresh.  So it’s nice when you get them direct from the tortilleria and can get any fraction of a kilo you want. 

For about 35 cents US we get several days worth of tortillas.  We reoload every 3 days or so.

Grabbing some produce from the local market.  We also load up on limes whenever we get the chance.  They have vitamin C to prevent scurvy.  We don’t like eating the limes directly, so we cut them into wedges and drop them into our beers.  Beer is an excellent delivery system for the scurvy fighting vitamins our bodies need.

Fruits and vegetable prices here are very reasonable.  We’re even starting to see bananas growing wild right along side the street.

Sooner or later we’ll have a stalk like this hanging off the stern and then eat nothing but bananas for a few days when they ripen all at once.

Speaking of reasonable prices, Nicole and I were both due for our dental cleanings.  We noticed a dentist office in town so we stopped in to inquire about getting an appointment.  Well they could do it right then, but we had plans.  Tomorrow?  No problema!  We showed up the next day and the dentist herself does the cleaning.  I couldn’t tell the difference from the care we  got in the states and everything was clean and modern inside the office.  Total cost?  $42 US for both of us. 

In the evening we went out for drinks at Ana Bananas with Keith and Olina from SV Anon and Erlin and Jenn from SV Ventured.

The cover band did a great job!

Early on nobody was dancing except this guy and his wiener dogs.  The wiener dogs were amazing dancers!

But Nicole was getting ready to unleash her dance moves

And once the bar started giving away free shots of tequila there was no holding back.  Erlin was justifiably skeptical, but apparently redheads can’t say no to free tequila.

And so we danced like wiener dogs for a few hours

Ana Bananas is the second Mexican establishment we’ve visited that encourages cruiser graffiti

We’d been out for beers and fantastic quesadillas at La Silla Roja with SV Nyon when we got here and had a great time talking with them.  We’ve followed their blog for quite some time and it was fun to finally meet them in person.  The bar they took us to was called The Octopus’ Garden and it also had a native art gallery. 

The Octopus’ Garden

The restaurant is also equipped with a turtle pond

The Huichol art gallery at Octopus’ Garden

We went back a few days later to pick up a couple T shirts that we’d seen.  I got one with a deer on it.  The deer appears to be on fire. 

Wednesday we went out for quesadillas at La Silla Roja again (I doubt it will be the last time) with Anon and Ventured.  Then it was open mike night at a place called Philo’s.  Keith was a little apprehensive about going up but eventually he went and strummed along.

Nice work Keith!

This guy did some awesome percussion with his washboard instrument!

So that’s the first week or so of our stay in La Cruz de Hunacaxtle.  It’s pretty laid back here and we really like it. Now if we can just figure out what to do for New Year’s Eve…