Here’s all the photos of Mazatlan, Isla Isabella, San Blas and Chacala:

So when last you saw your two heroes we had played a whole bunch of music in San Blas and were ready to take off for parts unknown. Well we didn’t quite make it out from San Blas that day. Rain came in and there’s really no reason to go sailing in the rain, so we hung out for another day. I was really shocked, I hadn’t had any honest to goodness rain the entire time I’d been down. It was kind of nice, Tate went out birding and I just sat around the boat and read all day. The next day, the weather cleared up and we decided to take off for Chacala. Of course when we went to pull up the anchor, we found that we had once again hooked an old abandoned anchor. What are the odds? This one was a very corroded 45lbs Navy style anchor, so we just unwrapped it from our chain and committed it back to the briny deep.

Chacala is a little beach resort hamlet 20 miles south of San Blas. The wind wasn’t up, so we motored the 20 miles trying our hand at fishing along the shore. Well we didn’t get a bite the entire day. At one time a group of 4 Bonitos came and swam right along side the boat. It was great, they were pacing us, hanging out about four feet off the port side just below the surface. I decided to reel in my rod, and then went forward and dropped the lure back in the water and let it back until it was right in front of one of the Bonito. He just swam on like it wasn’t even there. I guess I should try a different lure.

Chacala:

We got to Chacala in mid afternoon. The bay is completely exposed to the west, but we were able to tuck right behind the northern point inside the rest of the anchored boats by putting out a stern anchor to limit our swing. This gave us great shelter from the northwesterly swell that was rocking most of the bay. I had only planned to spend the night in Chacala, but as usual 5 days later we were finally picking up the anchors. The first couple of days were slow, but then Tate and I decided to take our instruments ashore. Well, like usual it took about 15 minutes of us playing before someone came over to check us out. This time that someone was Erwin and his brother German (pronounced hairmon). Erwin is the lead singer in a 17 piece Banda band and he invited us to the festival they were playing that night. The sand flies were killing us on the beach, so the four of us got some fresh beers and went out to the boat for a few hours. Tate and I hemmed and hawed about taking off with these guys for the festival. We’d just met these guys and the festival was 20 kilometers away in Campome. In the end we decided that it was too good an opportunity to miss.

Tate and Erwin on Bodhran:

The next thing I know I sitting in the back of a pickup with Erwin, the band equipment and the case of CDs which I was sitting on as we were bouncing down a dirt road into the pitch black night. Erwin and I were chatting remarkably well considering our mutual language skills, the bugs in our teeth, and the fact that we were both only marginally inside the bed of the truck and hanging on for dear life. I’m not sure if things were better or worse when we hit the paved road, yes it was easier to hang on without the potholes, but now we were doing 60 down a little back road in the dark of the night. Eventually we did make it to Campome, but there was a religious procession going down the main road, so we had to work our way around the edge of town until we found the Zocalo where they started setting up for the nights entertainment. I’m still not sure what the festival was, but it was definitely very Catholic with the long meandering candlelight procession headed by a float with a live person playing Jesus preaching on the front and another one playing Jesus being crucified on the back all being pulled by a very nice new looking tractor. It turns out that the town couldn’t afford the full 17 piece band, so Erwin and the other singer were there along with a substitute band from Tepic. If you haven’t seen a Banda band before, it’s quite a spectacle with the two singers, 3 clarinets, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, a drummer or 2 and a tuba all playing ¾ time oompa style music. They were great. The other highlight of the festival was the fireworks. I just love this country’s lack of concern for human safety. The fireworks got started off with this guy running through the crown with a paper mache bull on a metal frame on his shoulders. Attached to the metal frame are a bunch of lit fireworks, mainly they’re just shooting sparks and making lots of smoke, but occasionally one of these buzz bomb/ground bloom flower type things would go shooting off into the crowd causing people to scatter to keep from getting burned. The big firework finale was a big wooden devil frame covered with pinwheel fireworks, whistling peetes, and the obligatory burn everyone in sight little buzz bombs that would jump out into the crowd, two of which caused my life to flash before my eyes. There were five different sets of fireworks on the devil to prolong the finale, the final set caused the devil’s head to split open and start spinning with a shower of sparks ending with a big honkin buzz bomb taking off straight up into the night sky. I’ve definitely got to build one of these things for the 4th of July next year. It was just too cool!

Watch out for the Toro:

El Diablo ready to go off in a blaze of glory:

The Band (Erwin is in the middle and German is above):

German was cool enough to give us a ride back to Chacala about one in the morning. I’m sure that the party went on quite a bit longer, but we were getting tired. Erwin and German were supposed to come out the next day at 1:00 to go fishing with us, but they never showed up. Instead we ended up hanging out with Cap’n Ron, Tate (another Tate), and Antonetta off Voyager. They had bought a bunch of shrimp and mystery fish off a shrimp boat that had anchored in the bay and they treated us to a 5 or 6 course meal.

This morning we left Chacala and motored off for Banderas Bay. Once again there was no wind, so we motored all 40 miles. Along the way I was treated to one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen. A Humpback breached, entire body completely out of the water, not 200 feet right in front of the boat comping down with a huge splash that set the boat a’rockin. It was so close that I could actually smell it, not a pleasant smell by the way. Of course I didn’t have a camera ready, but I did finally get a couple of whale fluke pictures today. We’ve been seeing all kinds of Humpbacks the last few weeks, but normally they’re not that close to the boat and we haven’t been going out of our way to get close to them, but today they seemed to be coming to us.

Finally had my camera around when some Humpacks dropped by:

So now we’re in La Cruz, which is about 10 miles north of Puerto Vallarta. It’s kind of crowded here, but we’ll check out the scene and see how we like it. We may be here a couple of days or we may be here a couple of weeks.

Tate’s Thoughts

I rowed to shore alone, Jason staying back with Bodhran for a little peace and quiet…. Chacala, where we found ourselves, is a bit of a fishing town but also kind of a touristy place. Not touristy in the sense of Mazatlan or Puerto Vallarta, this place is small and out of the way. Ten or so beach palapas filled the shoreline, all with hundreds of chairs but attended by only about 15 patrons. I wandered my way out of town listening to the hum that is the borderline between a Mexican pueblito and the encroaching countryside. There was a little spur road which ducked into the shade and I followed it as it quickly narrowed to no more than a footpath. Yellow-winged Caciques were flying through the trees overhead and I came up to a little stream, not clean but not filthy either, and aside the stream sat an old woman named Rosa. She was working her way through a bucket of laundry in this trickle of a creek and she looked up at me quizzically. She must have thought me lost but I was not lost, just wandering and that was what I told her. Ahh, the birds, she said, commenting on something I had said to her. She professed her love for the songs of the birds. ‘Las cantas, son bonitas!’ she said with real inflection. A small flock of Painted Buntings were converging in a tree nearby. I spoke to this woman for quite some time. It seemed that she was from the land itself, perhaps she’d washed her clothes in that stream when it flowed clean with unfertilized water, when you could drink from it and were healthier because of it. She was somewhere between 80 years old and timeless and wore long sliver braids. She dressed like a schoolgirl. When I asked her if I could continue on the trail up toward the hillside she said I could provided I did not take the fruit that grew on the trees.. No, I told her, I just wanted to enjoy the songs of the birds. ‘Ahh, you are like me’, she said.

Five hours later I was back in town and looking for an Internet connection. I asked another girl with long braids, this one actually a schoolgirl, and she told me to go on up to the primary school and I could use the computers there. Upon entering the school I met Teresa, the volunteer teacher for the 1st-3rd graders. Teresa is an American with Cuban heritage and speaks both Spanish and English without a hint of accent. We talked awhile and she invited Jason and I to give a presentation to her students about out travels. ‘Could we include music in our presentation?’, I asked. She said that that would be great and it was decided upon .

Jason and I reported to school the next day, thirty minutes after the students were to be there but only 3 children were in class. Teresa said that the kids seem to show up late on Fridays. Another thirty minutes and the classroom was full. There was even a lady from the Department of Education, a truly a nice lady and I wish I could remember her name so I could write it here. We came in with our instruments on and there was a big map of the world on the board. I gave a little introduction in Spanish and told the kids why we were in Mexico and how we got there. Then we broke into ‘Monkey and the Engineer’ which seemed to delight the kids. Not one of them had ever seen a banjo and certainly they’d never heard ‘Monkey and the Engineer’. After the song I asked the kids a bunch of questions, mainly about music and languages. I told them that I was learning Spanish and encouraged them all to begin picking up a second language. Its much easier at that age. Jason knows a bit of German and he taught them all to say hello and goodbye which they all repeated in unison. I wish you all could have seen that!

Tate and I singing Salty Dog Blues to the school kids:

Tate helping this kid strum the banjo while I was playing Stealin:

After our presentation we all went outside where thank yous were exchanged and pictures were taken. Teresa let the kids run wild for 10 minutes or so and we stayed to let them play our instruments.

In all it was a great experience and both Jason and I enjoyed our peek into the education system of rural Mexico.

Tate and I have been having a great time here in San Blas. Our first day in town pretty much set a precedent. We went into town about 6:00 and after posting my last blog entry we went to the town square and set up next to the gazebo and picked for a couple of hours. All the kids came over immediatly, followed soon after by a bunch of other people in the crowded square. I don’t think that they hear much bluegrass around here and everyone seemed really interested.

Tate and I in the main square in San Blas:

After a couple of hours of picking, we went to a restaurant to get some food, but the owner wasn’t around. The people who were watching the placed hooked us up with a some beers and as we were the only ones in the place, we whipped out our instruments and started playing there as well. Unfortunately the owner never came back, so we paid for our beers and found a little taco stand that made their own tortillas. We each had 3 or 4 60 cent tacos and a ballena. They owners were interested in our instruments, so we pulled them out and started playing at the taco stand for an hour or so.

Playing music with Stefano, some Italian guy we met, at our favorite taco stand in San Blas:

We eventually went back to the main square and were going to play a bit when some guy told us of a jam session going on at the San Blas Social Bar. It turns out that there wasn’t a jam session there, but they wanted us to play and even put out a tip jar for us. Well by 2 in the morning when we left, we had only paid for one round of beers ourselves, had $10 in the tip jar and had made a lot of friends. Not a bad evening.

Tate and I playing late into the night at the San Blas Social Bar:

The last couple of days have been more of the same. Exploring and birding during the day and playing music at night. I think we’re going to play at the Social Bar one last time tonight and then take off tomorrow. I’m still not sure where we’re going next. I guess we’ll all find out when I put up my next post.

Tate and I stayed in Mazatlan for 3 days reprovsioning, catching up on sleep and hanging out with Evan off the 48 foot catamaran “Java”. It turns out that Evan was friends with Bonnie and Greg and had even gone with them on their inland tour of the Copper Canyon at the beginning of the season.

The water from the aft water tank was getting a bit funky and so we emptied it leaving us with a hundred gallons of water to fill along with the 30 gallons of diesel we were down. Tate made the run to and from shore with four 5 gallon water jugs and three 5 gallon diesel jugs for the 6 times while I took the bus out to the Gigante in Mazatlan’s “Gold Zone”. We planned on doing most of our provisioning at the Mercado ( the central market downtown), but there were a few things that we wanted that we could only get at a big box store, so out to the Gigante I went. It’s really a depressing place right across the street from the Home Depot, next door to the Office Depot and up the road from the Wall Mart and Sam’s Club. It’s basically a Fred Meyer style all in one store with three quarters of the shoppers being American retirees who fervently believed that all the Mexicans were trying to rip them off. I don’t know, maybe they were. You could tell that all the employees were sick of trying to argue with the customers in what English they possessed. The whole place has a really bad vibe. Unfortunately my trip was a bust. I was looking for Ramen noodles, mac n’ cheese and brown sugar. I came away with five bags of groceries, but none of the items that I had set out to find.

Tate on top of the hill by the light house:

The next day was far more successful. Tate and took off early and hiked to the top of the hill with the lighthouse right next to the anchorage. We then set off to do the rest of our provisioning at the Mercado. It’s basically like a big 365 day a year farmer’s market except with a bunch of stalls that sell dried goods and canned goods along with all the butchers, poulterers and fishmongers stalls. We had to go to a whole bunch of different stalls to get everything we needed, but that’s half the fun. The place is definitely a tourist attraction, but it’s also the place where a lot of the locals do all of their shopping. After the Mercado, we turned in our case of empty Ballenas (1 liter Pacificos) for 12 fresh ones and left Mazatlan in mid afternoon.

Tate at our vegetable stand at the Mazatlan Mercado:

I like Mazatlan a lot, but the anchorage is a filthy place. Every morning we awoke to an oil spill around Bodhran. There would be so much gas in the water that you were afraid that someone would like a match and the whole place would go up in flames. When water would splash up into the dinghy it would be a blue gray with lots of little particles in it. Looking back from the lighthouse, the entire city is shrouded in a brown haze. Once we were around the breakwater we had a 15 knot northerly rolling us southbound with the remains of the seas that had built up in the storm that we came into town on, but with a stretched out period. Suddenly everything was clean again. Coming into port after a crossing is one of life’s great pleasures, but it’s often surpassed with the joy of setting sail for someplace new especially when we were greeted after a few miles by a pod of Humpbacks repeatedly breaching a half mile from Bodhran.

The boat was a bit rolly through the night and I didn’t get much sleep at all, but the wind was good and we made 70 miles out of Mazatlan before it died and we had to motor the last 15 to Isla Isabella. Once the sun came up, I was greeted by more Humpbacks surfacing every few miles. They’re everywhere down here. We reached the anchorage on the south side of the island about 9:00 in the morning. The anchorage is notorious as an “anchor eater” with it’s rocky bottom, underwater spires and generally uneven seabed. It’s also notorious for poor holding. So we tied a trip line to the front of my Bruce anchor and bouyed it with a fender in case we had a problem retrieving it and dropped the hook in 6 fathoms of water. 9:30 in the morning and it was 80 degrees in the water and in the air. Mission Accomplished, we had arrived back in the tropics. I was dog tired and wasn’t comfortable with the anchor so I sent Tate ashore on his own while I took a nap. Isla Isabella is an Ornithologist’s paradise. Tate’s account of his shore expedition is below.

Isla Isabella’s exposed southern anchorage:

As I said before, the anchorage at Isla Isabella leaves a lot to be desired and I didn’t want to spend the night there. We weighed anchor around 5pm and took off south. Our mission was to get out of the Sea of Cortez and into warm weather again. Now that we were here, we weren’t sure where to go next. San Blas is one of my favorite places in Mexico so far and is only a 45 mile sail from Isla Isabella. It’s also a great place for birding. So we sailed through the night often in less than 5 knots of wind until the wind died all together around 6 o’clock this morning. By then we were only 6 miles out of San Blas and motored the rest of the way to the breakwater, up the estuary and anchored just south of my old spot with three other boats. I don’t think that we’ll be here more than a few days. Who knows where we’ll go after this? We’re warm again and being warm in January is good enough for me.

Tate’s Thoughts

January 19th

We pulled the boat to the leeward side of Isla Isabella at about 9:30am on Jan. 18th. Big rollers from both the Pacific and the Sea of Cortez were wrapping around the island a bit and it felt good to be out of that and back onto a somewhat stable platform. Isla Isabella is a volcanic island about 85 miles South of Mazatlan and it was touted as a spectacle of nature, hardly to be missed although the anchorage was reported to be sketchy so we would only be stopping for the day. I was still sleeping at the time the island came into sight for I had pulled the 7pm to midnight and the 4 to 7am watch shifts with little sleep in between. I came out on deck a little before 9am and looked out to the island, thousands of birds were circling overhead. The rocky shorelines and cliffs were foreboding to say the least and Jason would opt to stay with Bodhran should her anchor lose it’s grip on the rocky bottom.

Isla Isabella’s rocky shore:

We were both deliriously tired and putting the dinghy (old Unruly) together was a test of patience and endurance. By the time she was all bolted together with the wheels on (which allow you to pull it up the beach) I was bleeding in two places, had a jammed toe, had sticky cornmeal paste from my fingers to my elbows (from the emergency rations that we no longer have) and I was working on a good sunburn. All of that pain and suffering, can you imagine?? Not to worry, it all washed away with a swim in the deep blue, the radiant blue 80 degree sea water.

I pulled Unruly up onto the beach in front of a fishing camp just as one of the pangas was unloading its catch. I thought about offering my services as Fisheries Observer but then remembered that I wanted to head out and explore the island. Besides, they’d have to talk to my contractor first. I did inquire about the tide so as not to lose the dink, and I asked about a trail which they pointed out. Soon I was climbing that trail which leads out behind the fish camp and into a genuine fairy tale.

Blue-footed Booby:

There were primarily three species which were nesting on the island, the Magnificent Frigatebird being the most common, followed by the Brown Booby and the Blue Footed Booby. The nesting birds pay you little mind and provided you don’t charge them, they don’t move at all. They just look at you with a very simple expression. They are completely defenseless while nesting and this has lead to their demise over much of their breeding range, it even lead for them to be called Boobies, which is unfortunate enough.

The Frigatebirds were nesting in the scrubby trees which were just over head height, their chicks a bright, fluffy white.

As far as I could tell, all of the boobies nested on the ground.

Brown Booby with chick:

There were birds nesting over the entire island, loud and rancorous, defecating at will.
While hiking around the scrub forest, the smell of guano and the sounds of the birds were ever present. It was as if I had entered their house, with its own particular smells and noises, and indeed I had. The birds almost changed the color of the sky, there were that many on the wing. I ambled around for about four hours and did not see another soul besides that of the fishermen on the beach, who were not all that interested in the birds, or in hiking around in the hot sun for fun.

So people having been telling me for a while that my photo albums weren’t working. Well it turns out that I forgot a nested close tag in my the photo links into the albums on every single one. It worked fine on firefox, but not in IE. So long story long, the links all show up in IE now, but the whole site is designed for and looks better in firefox.