March 4, 2016
We were anchored a little bit closer to the large power boat
next to us than we would have liked. For
some reason, that boat did not swing in the same direction that ours did. For this reason, Don decided to sleep in the
cockpit to keep an eye on the situation.
It started to rain at 3:30 in the morning, but I had to wake Don to get
him to come in out of the rain. It
rained for some time and, though Don tried to tuck them under the bimini, our
cushions and laundry all got quite wet.
I got up about 8:00 and made coffee. In the process of trying to spread the
cushions out to dry, I knocked over a full mug of coffee and made a huge mess
in the cockpit. I had to dig the bucket
out from under all the fenders and lines in the lazarette and wash the whole
cockpit down with sea water. I was not
going to get my peaceful cup of coffee in the cockpit.
All my banging around in the cockpit woke Don, so we decided
to head to shore to take care of errands.
We took the dinghy into the beach.
Between the municipal dock and the pangas pulled up on the sand, there
are a couple of guys who assist with dinghy landings and launchings and watch
the dinghies for tips. We arrived
without incident and left the dinghy in their care. Our first mission was to check in with the
port captain who was conveniently located right at the head of the municipal
pier in contravention of the usual Mexican practice of hiding the port
captain’s office a mile inland in the middle of a residential
neighborhood. Checking in went smoothly.
Then we went in search of a laundry, since I was on the verge of needing to buy
more underwear.
We found a laundry on a side street a block up from the
cultural center and then stopped in a nearby café for breakfast. I had eggs benedict, which was poached eggs
atop ham lunch meat and toast, smothered in hollandaise sauce. It may have only
been an approximation of eggs benedict, but it was tasty and filling and cost
less than $4.00. We met a couple from
Oregon in the restaurant. They were in
town buying items for their house near Caleta de Campos in Michoacan. We had considered stopping there on the way
down, but had passed it by because we had heard it was dangerous. We asked them about it and they assured us that
it was fine and invited us to visit on our way north.
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| Sea Fish Anchored Next to Us |
Our missions accomplished, we replenished our supply of
adult beverages and returned to the beach where our dinghy awaited us. We got away from the shore uneventfully and
returned to Comet. One of our neighbors had departed, so we
hauled up the anchor and moved into the empty space. Then we settled in for some serious
relaxation until dinnertime when I made chicken in green mole over rice.
March 5, 2016
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| Don Getting a Haircut |
We were on a mission to get Don’s clothes to the laundry
before ten so we could pick them up at the same time as mine, so we got up
early and headed for the beach after coffee.
We landed smoothly, unloaded a big bag of trash, and went to drop the
clothes off at the laundry. Don was
feeling brave, so he stopped into a nearby barbershop where he got his first
Mexican haircut from a friendly barber named Abel. Abel and I chatted in Spanish while he worked
on Don, who left the shop looking quite stylish.
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| Hill Above Playa Madera |
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| Playa La Ropa |
We decided to take a tour of Zihuatanejo’s beaches. We walked across town and then crossed the
bridge over the river. From there, we
followed the walkway around the rocky shore to Playa Madera, stopping at Bistro Del Mar for a tasty breakfast.
The atmosphere was beautiful and prices were reasonable. After breakfast, we climbed the long, steep
hill on the way to Playa La Ropa, stopping frequently to enjoy the view and
the fantastic architecture of the fancy hotels along the shore. We were hot by the time we got to Playa La
Ropa, so we stopped into Paty’s for cold drinks under and umbrella by the
beach. We could see Comet riding at anchor in the distance. We took a collectivo back to the center of
town and then returned to the boat for a couple of hours before that night’s
big concert.
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| Bisto del Mar |
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| Walkway to Playa Madera |
Guitarfest’s opening concert was originally scheduled to be
held on the beach in Ixtapa because it has drawn as many as 1100 people in the
past. This year, they had had to change
the venue to the cultural center because of high surf on the beach. The cultural center only held 500 people and
we didn’t have tickets, so we were a bit concerned we might have to listen from
the bar across the street. It was
important to see the opening concert because all the artists played a short set
and we could get an idea of who we wanted to see later.
We arrived at 5:00 when the doors opened and there were only
about 15 people ahead of us. Not only
did we get tickets, but we got third row center seats in the shade! We passed the hour before the show started
drinking beer and talking to the other patrons.
The concert was a delight of cross cultural musical
cooperation. There were artists from
Mexico, the U.S., France, Brazil, India, and Iran by way of Canada. Musical styles varied from blues to new age,
folk to flamenco, although it was interesting how much American music had
influenced everyone. Adam’s
Family and Michael Jackson’s Billie
Jean. The Andrea Perrone Duo from
Brazil did a fabulous version of Summertime. One of the most entertaining acts was
Lipbone Redding, a guy from North Carolina whose guitar playing was really only
accompaniment to his amazing talent of being able to play the trumpet without
actually using an instrument. He played
percussion with his foot, sang like Louis Armstrong, and played the harmonica
to boot. He was a riot. We also really enjoyed the Croweaters, a duo
from San Francisco. I was quite impressed
with José Luis Cobo and his original Spanish guitar numbers. He not only played beautifully, but had a
fantastic voice as well.
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| Jose Luis Cobo |
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| Maneli Jamal & Lipbone Redding |
Perhaps the best parts of the concert were the jams that
occurred afterward. The Croweaters
jammed with Axemonkey, which really livened up her instrumental music with
their vocals. We didn’t know what to
expect when Maneli Jamal stepped onto the stage with Lipbone Redding. Maneli’s style was so light and fast we
weren’t sure how that was going to work with the profusion of sound produced by
Lipbone. The result was
extraordinary. They played St. James Infirmary, Maneli’s guitar
chops allowing Lipbone to concentrate more on the harmonica and his uncanny
vocal talents. Then they did a number
where Lipbone would sing/play a melody and then Maneli would kill it on the
guitar, no matter how wild it got. We
really got to see his sense of humor and it was a lot of fun.
Though it was nearly 23:00 by the time the music wound down,
we stopped at a local taqueria for dinner.
The place was frequented by Mexican twenty somethings and they looked at
us a bit askance, but served us great tacos.
Two tacos, arrachera and shrimp, and a beer set me back just over
$3.00. Zihuatanejo prices were generally
slightly lower than prices in the Puerto Vallarta area.
March 6, 2016
We were tired after our exertions of the day before, so
spent a quiet Sunday lounging around the boat and listening to music. I crawled into the chain locker and replaced
the port running light bulb, which had burned out during our trip south and Don
filled up the dinghy gas tank. We swam
and I finished the portrait of my friend Jan Miller that I had started in La
Cruz. We thought about going to town for
dinner, but the swells were big and landing the dinghy looked tricky. Instead, we made guacamole and had soft tacos
filled with leftover rice and green mole.
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| Magic Lady, Another Nauticat 43 |
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| Jan Miller |
Originally, we had been the farthest boat from shore. As the swells increased, boats began moving
away from shore, one by one, until we had lots of neighbors. Magic Lady, a Nauticat 43 like Fool’s Castle,
anchored next to us, giving me a chance to contemplate their tropical
modifications. They had clearly lavished
a lot of time and money on the boat and it looked great. I wondered if they had made alterations to
the refrigeration, as well, as ours could never handle the hot weather in
Mexico or El Salvador.
March 7, 2014
After our usual leisurely morning and early afternoon, we
took the dinghy to shore to retrieve our laundry. We took it back to the beach and left it in
the dinghy for Alfonso and José to guard.
We explored the center of town a bit, looking for the Guitarfest venues
and then stopped into the last palapa restaurant on Playa Principal for
drinks. We sat there, enjoying the view,
and eventually ordered dinner there. I
had a filet mignon and shrimp for a mere $150 pesos (about $9.)
We had gone into town late because we planned to go to that
night’s Guitarfest concert. The acts
playing that night were Shai Sebbag, Mark Glasmire, and Lipbone Redding. Shai Sebbag is a French guitarist whose
original music has lots of Slavic and Middle Eastern overtones. It was very hypnotic and relaxing. While it was not a style of music that either
of us normally favor, we both enjoyed his set.
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| Shai Sebbag |
Mark Glasmire is a singer songwriter who looked like he ought
to be playing Bruce Springsteen, but sounded more like John Denver. We hadn’t been too impressed with him during
the initial concert, but came away from his set with an appreciation of his
songwriting ability, if not his performance style. He has had some records that did well in the
charts, but his songs have been recorded by many other artists.
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| Lipbone Redding |
Everybody’s favorite act was Lipbone Redding. With his hilarious stories and foot stomping
tunes, he soon had the whole crowd going.
It is impossible to be bored when Lipbone is on the stage being a one
man avalanche of sound. I bought one of
his CDs. Check him out at
www.Lipbone.com.
March 8, 2016
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| Rainy Zihuataejo |
A storm was predicted for late Tuesday and Wednesday, so we
decided to head into the marina to charge batteries and spend the rainy days
where we could get off the boat. We
hoisted the dinghy back onto the cradle on the foredeck and left about 10:30
and started motoring out of the bay and around the point towards Ixtapa. I tried to call the marina on both my
American and Mexican phones and got a message that the number was out of service. By the time Don got through to them on his
phone, we were nearly at the mouth of the channel. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let us enter,
deeming the surf to be too high. We had
to turn around and head back to Zihua Bay.
At least we had charged the batteries a bit. It started raining before we made it back to
the anchorage. We returned to our
previous spot and anchored in the rain.
It rained off and on for the rest of the afternoon and
poured during the night. The windows and
the sail track above my bunk leaked and everything got rather damp. I made spaghetti for dinner.
March 9, 2016
We couldn’t go anywhere because the swell was too large to
launch the dingy, so we spent the entire day on the boat watching rain squalls
come and go. We read, surfed the
internet, and I even played a little guitar.
We were getting very low on provisions, but Don made us oatmeal with
nuts for brunch and I managed to scrape together burritos made from leftovers
and an envelope of chilorio for dinner.
Fortunately, we hadn’t planned to go to that night’s concert.
March 10, 2016
It felt very liberating when the rain clears and the swell
abated enough to launch the dinghy. We
decided to take the bus to Ixtapa because Don had never been there. We dropped Don’s clothes at the laundry and
then walked up to the main drag and caught a bus to Ixtapa. We got off the bus at the craft market at the
near end of Ixtapa and ate lunch in a restaurant mostly frequented by locals. I had an excellent chile relleno.
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| Ixtapa Marina |
After lunch, we walked the mile or so past all the fancy
hotels to the marina. Don didn’t feel
like he had missed anything by not staying there and I had fairly unpleasant
memories of having been stuck there, sweltering, for a month in January of
2014. We were glad to be anchored in
Zihuat Bay, even though it got a little claustrophobic when we were stuck on
the boat.
From the marina, we walked across the road to check out the
gorgeous beach. The swell was still
large and they were flying the black flag which warned swimmers to stay out of
the water. A new hotel was being
constructed right next to the walkway to the beach and they were planting
mature palm trees using a backhoe to lift them.
The backhoe blocked our path, but it was interesting to watch the
process. When they began lifting a tree,
the backhoe rocked onto one track and it looked like the palm was going to win
the contest. It settled back onto both
tracks, however, as the tree lifted and swung closer to the body of the backhoe.
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| Beach at Ixtapa |
We tired of Ixtapa pretty rapidly. Don commented that, if all you ever saw of
Mexico was Ixtapa, you’d have no idea that it was any different from Miami or
Waikiki. We grabbed another bus back to
Zihuatanejo and stopped at the Bodega Aurrera to replenish our supplies. We bought more than we wanted to schlep, some
took a taxi back to the wharf for a very reasonable 30 pesos (about $1.75.)
Neither of us was hungry, so we passed on dinner and just
hung out on the boat until it was time to go back into town for that night’s
concert. That night’s lineup began with
The Croweaters, a duo from San Francisco who played a set of mostly rarely
heard Beatles tunes interpreted in interesting fashions. They did, however, play the ever popular in
Mexico Eleanor Rigby, which lent
itself well to a complex guitar arrangement.
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| The Croweaters |
Next on the bill, was the crowd favorite, Lipbone Redding,
who always played a rousing show. People
were dancing in the aisles. No one at
the festival drew a bigger crowd.
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| Manan Gupta |
Last, came Manan Gupta, a rather morose young Indian man who
had followed a girl to Mexico and gotten dumped there. He was very interesting to watch, as he had
long, spidery fingers and often played from the opposite side of the neck
favored by just about every other guitarist.
He also had a very percussive style, although totally different from
Flamenco. Lipbone was a tough act to
follow, however, and I felt a bit sorry for him.
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| Manan Gupta's Unique Fingering |
Returning to the boat by dinghy late at night is always an
adventure. Alfonso was waiting to launch
our dinghy and we got away without having to wade beyond our knees. The air was quite cool after the rain and the
water was warmer than the air. Motoring
through an anchorage full of swaying masthead lights is a bit like sailing
through a field of stars and can be a mystical experience if you are dry and
comfortable, which is not always the case with travel by dinghy. We were lucky that night, however, and we had
a pleasant ride home.
I got up earlyish and dived straight into the water for a
much needed swim and subsequent shower.
We had not wanted to swim during and just after the rain because the
local streams washed debris into the bay when it rained. After three days without a shower, I
definitely didn’t want to be seen in public until I had washed my hair.
We ran the motor for a couple of hours to charge batteries
and I charged my computer from the inverter while the motor was running. I worked on my blog for an hour or so and
then made tortilla Espanola (a sort of crustless quiche with potatoes, onions,
and peppers) for breakfast.
Don’s leg had been hurting for a few days and he didn’t
recall banging it on anything. Sailors
always have unidentified cuts and bruises because boats bite. However, Don had had cellulitis in September
of 2013 and it suddenly occurred to him that his current symptoms were the
same. We hopped in the trusty dinghy and
headed for the medical clinic that Don had seen near the wharf.
Doctor Morelos Martinez didn’t speak English, but his staff
was friendly and he was very thorough.
With me interpreting, we managed to tell him that Don had been
prescribed Keflex the last time. After
asking a lot of questions and examining Don carefully, he gave him a
prescription for the same antibiotic.
The doctor visit cost 300 pesos (under $18), less than my co-pay at
home.
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| Clinic Waiting Room |
Next, we set off the find a
pharmacy. Our first stop was a pharmacy
advertising generic drugs. We got the
Cephalaxina (Spanish for generic Keflex) for 65 pesos or about $3.50. They did not, however, have the Warfarin that
Don also needed to refill. We returned
to the pharmacy where we had bought Vick’s Vaporub the previous week, but they
didn’t have it either. Don had heard
something about a shortage of blood thinners in Mexico and we were starting to
fear we wouldn’t find any. We tried a
third pharmacy a couple of doors down. A
very helpful clerk looked in her computer and determined that they had some in
stock, but she must have searched for fifteen minutes before she found some
filed under the brand name of Coumadin.
That cost 367 pesos (about $18.)
It was too bad they didn’t have it at the Farmacia Similar (generic
pharmacy.)
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| A Mexican Pharmacy |
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| My Pina Colada |
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| Don at the Arcadia |
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| Kaukan Restaurant |
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| Sunset from Kaukan |
The venue was a restaurant on the
roof of a timeshare. The view was
spectacular and, even though there was no shade, the cooler than usual weather
made it quite pleasant. We had drinks
and listened to the sound check. We both
took lots of pictures and Don made a video.
We were they only cruisers present.
With show, dinner, and drinks coming to about $40 per person,
notoriously cheap cruisers went to the 100 peso concerts at the Casa de
Cultural, which were also accessible by dinghy and a short walk. The other patrons at Kaukan were part time
residents and some vacationers. Everyone
else at our table was from Minnesota.
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| Roberto & Mehida at Kaukan |
Roberto and Mehida played mostly
Mexican songs, which I felt were underrepresented in the festival. They did play a nice version of Carole King’s
You’ve Got a Friend. Maneli Jamal was probably the best guitarist
in the festival and his original music was very beautiful and full of emotion,
but I didn’t buy his CD because, while I really enjoyed listening to him play,
I feared his music would just fade into the background without words or catchy
tunes to draw me in. What we most
enjoyed was when he exhibited his amazing improvisational ability while jamming
with other musicians. Both Axemonkey and
Lipbone Redding joined him on the stage for a tune or two. It was great watching the women seated next
to us watch Lipbone for the first time.
They were astonished at the, “horn section,” that came out of his mouth.
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| Maneli Jamal & Lipbone Redding at Kaukan |
Our neighbors at the table were just in Zihuatanejo on
vacation. They were interested in going
to the concert the Casa de Cultural, but didn’t know how to get there. We offered to share a cab, so we all piled
into a taxi after dinner for the short ride across central Zihuat to the show.
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| The Andrea Perrone Duo |
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| Jose Luis Cobo |
None of us much liked Nick Vigarino’s music. Although he was amazingly proficient on the
guitar, his style was so aggressive and repetitive that, after listening for
long enough to determine that he really did have only the one trick, we all left. Our new friends caught a cab back to their
hotel and we walked back to the beach, glad to be leaving before the crush of
departing dinghies after the show.
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| Nick Vigarino |
March 12, 2016
Don needed to go the the port captain’s office before 14:00
to check out, but we were still waiting for Ishmael to return with our propane
tank and we wanted to order another ten gallons of diesel. Ishmael operates a service which delivers
fuel, water, propane, and beer right to your boat. They monitor channel 65 for orders. Knowing that Saturday port captain’s hours could be unpredictable, we decided that I would stay on the boat while Don went
to shore a bit before noon.
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| Don in His Trusty Dinghy |
Shortly after Don left, Ishmael’s boat arrived to pick up
the water bottle they had left the day before.
They didn’t bring the propane tank, but I did managed to order the
diesel. I hung out on the boat and
caught up on my blog entries, which were rather behind due to a dead battery on
my laptop. I hadn’t wanted to run the
inverter to charge it because, having been at anchor for so long, our house
batteries were running low.
Don came back a few hours later, having retrieved his
clothes from the laundry and the propane tank from Ishmael’s base near the foot
of the pier, next to the tourist office.
We did what we could to prepare the boat for sea, as we planned to
attend the closing concert of Guitarfest and then leave before dawn so as to
arrive in Caleta de Campos before dark.
The closing concert started at 19:00, so we left the boat at
17:30 and ate a leisurely dinner at the café near the Casa de Cultural where we
had eaten breakfast on our first day in Zihua.
Zihuatanejo means, “Place of the Goddess women,” in Nahuatl. Even the locals call it Zihua. Gringos sometimes call it Zihuat or Z-Town.
Each remaining act played a set at the closing concert. Shai Sebbag and Mark Glasmire had left
earlier. Lipbone Redding played a set
with local guitarist Carlos Uribe, whom he had met in a bar. Axemonkey played with Manan Gupta and Roberto
and Mehida. Maneli Jamal and even Nick
Vigarino shared the stage with others.
The final number was a big jam with nearly every musician there doing
Roy Rogers’ You’re So Down Home,
which, even though it was originally a slide guitar number, was ironically the
only song Nick Vigarino played without a slide.
The concert ran until midnight and we still needed to buy beer. It was 00:30 by the time we said our
farewells to Alfonso, the dinghy minder, and returned to the boat.
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| Final Guitarfest Jam |
What happened to the transmission?
ReplyDeleteIt turned out to be fine. We think something was caught on the folding prop that later fell off.
ReplyDelete