Category Archives: Travel

Oh, The Humanity!

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I just logged into this site for the first time in weeks and suddenly the website insisted I prove my humanity. I mean, Okay.  Make me do math to prove I have a brain and not a bunch of circuits. It’s not that there’s any harm in doing a simple arithmetic problem, it’s the whole ‘prove you are a human’ thing that gets me. I guess that’s what I get for not logging in for weeks. But hey, I’ve been mildly busy lately. We humans. We’re known for ‘doing things’ and for not reporting them on the internet.

Back in Mexico. For the uninitiated, this is what the streets look like outside of town. That gate hides our car.

But we’re back in Mexico as of today. After a stint in Mike’s home town in Tennessee, then a visit to my family up in Washington, we finally decided we were simply putting off the inevitable and bought a ticket home. And by ‘home’ I mean back to Galapagos and the sweltering heat of Mexico. Do I look forward to being back aboard? Sure I do. We have missed having our own place where we can spread out and have our privacy. And we have missed the water.

Do I look forward to being hot and sweaty again? Not so much. So I’m enjoying our last few days of air conditioning sitting here in our cheap AirBnb in the barrio outside of Puerto Peñasco. Drive a little, save a lot and get a really sweet little place for about half what a room down on the malecon would be. I tell you land living makes you soft.

Behind the gate: this!

And then open the door to this! Two bedrooms, one with a nice king sized bed. Be still my heart! I wish we could stay longer. Alas, this place is booked. 37$/night. WHATT?

Is our boat here? It is not. Galapagos sits sweetly in her slip down in San Carlos at Marina Real, awaiting the day we arrive with our van full of supplies, load her up, and sail her into the sea again. But first, we wanted to be on the ground in Puerto Peñasco to check out the boatyard here and the marinas. I mean, we’ve paid for moorage through the end of August. What else do we need to do with our time?  Nothing being straight forward in the world of cruising, we are getting the lay of the land so we can return with the car after we unload in San Carlos. We hope to leave the car somewhere safe here and bring the boat up,  and find a place to park it for a few days. Why? Kids coming to visit! Hurrah!

The next adventure on our agenda is having our Andrew and his wife, Jill, aboard Galapagos for a three week tour of the northern Sea of Cortez. They arrive in September and we have been waiting PATIENTLY. FOR. OUR. TURN. to see them. We are the last stop on their year long travel adventure, which has been such an epic trip!  Currently at a lovely Workaway in Spain, they have completely rocked this whole travel thing. If you know young people who want to travel and do Workaway stays, they should check out Andrew and Jill’s blog. Lots of great travel, Airbnb, and Workaway stories (the good and the ugly), excellent photos, and some advice from seasoned travelers.  I’m sure the Sea of Cortez, while not exactly Europe, will not disappoint.

We stayed in a casita at this property in Tucson. What a beautiful place. We loved it.

Wherever we go we take notes about what we love in the places we stay. We love this architecture, the use of line, the curved walls and spaces. And the pool. I loved this pool so much. Damn, I already miss that pool.

This season will be the deciding one in terms of what’s next for the Little Cunning Plan crew. We are hoping to do a Pacific Crossing next year, hoping Andrew and Jill will be able to crew with us for that, but there are issues playing in the background of our lives that may make us have to put that off for a year or so. And if we put it off, will we ever get to go? We are the generation that gets squeezed in the middle between our own aging process and that of our parents. Both oldest kids in our families, we are keenly aware of the vulnerabilities of our surviving parents as well as our own mortality that has crept upon us with the greatest of stealth. If we cannot do the crossing, will we continue to travel by boat? Will we be finished and ready to sell beloved Galapagos? How does anyone ever know how to make that kind of decision? We feel stuck right now, unable to move forward until things out of our control get resolved. That won’t be until at least October. So for now, we are focusing on the here, the now, the enjoyment of getting back to the boat and getting back on the water for as long as it lasts.

This is just to say we have a lot of balls up in the air right now, many of which will not appear on this blog or on our Facebook page. Like all people, our lives are very human, very complex, very much in-motion at all times. Blogs make things look so straightforward, even when they are not.  I wonder if  all this will cause me to have to do another math problem to prove my own humanity the next time I log into this site. Ah well. I can just about manage that.

I leave you with some photos from Tucson, a city worth visiting even in the heat of summer.

At the Tucson Botanical Garden on a day we played ‘tourist in the heat’.

In Marshall Gulch, on a hiking day. The mountains are a cool respite from the heat of the valley.

Is it a fly? A bee? We don’t know.

On the way to Marshall Gulch. Up where the air is cool. The next day was thunderstorms all day.

That to-die-for pool at the Airbnb. Did I mention I had a close encounter of the respectful kind with a beautiful wild Bobcat Lynx? Such a fantastic cat! I saw him up close and personal. I probably should have been afraid, but I was not.

A tile at the Tucson Botanical Garden. True words.

Until next time, S/V Galapagos, standing by on channel 22a. Damn, it feels good to say that.

 

 

The Sweet Spot

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Back in the Sea of Cortez, we are finally finding our groove. Yeah, it’s been awhile since we felt this way. We are in a nice routine of relaxing over breakfast in the morning, then getting our snorkeling gear on and spending a few hours exploring reefs. Hot afternoons are spent below in the relative cool of the cabin, eating late lunch and examining the photos we took that day. We play our version of Exotic Fish Bingo. I just love sitting down with our field guides and a batch of photos fresh from the camera! We are such nerds. I always feel a little light headed and giddy when I discover I’ve seen a new fish.

“Look, Honey! I think this is a Glossy Blenny! I’m calling it! I’m marking it down!”.

“Oh yeah? Well I’ll see your Glossy Blenny and raise you one Zebra Moray Eel! Who’s winning now?”

I absolutely love this part of cruising. Even on a bad day, a day of snorkeling is better than just about anything except maybe French Toast.

My work station. It feels a little like being in school and having homework that you love.

One of our favorite snorkeling sites is the bay of San Juanico. Huge pinnacle rocks standing in the north part of the bay offer refuge to myriads of fish and other salty beings, offering hours of snorkel play. Most boats tend to anchor up near those rocks, protected from most wind and swell. This year we decided to explore the southern half of Bahia San Juanico. Imposing rocky sandstone and volcanic guardians stand over the entrance to the southern most anchorage in the bay. Under the sea these rocks are completely encrusted with hard and soft corals, sea fans, anemones, and tiny fish. The colors are true to the spirit of Mexico: bright pinks, purples, greens, reds, oranges and yellows pop out from the more muted tones of the rocks and sand. It’s a psychedelic visual feast and I have trouble tearing myself away from the rocks; there is so much to see.

Rocky guardians  where the great snorkeling is found.

Yes, the month of June is definitely the sweet spot here. The weather is heating up, but that means the water is heating up, getting clearer, and the sargasso weed is dying off, exposing the bottom and its creatures beneath it. The nights are cool enough to sleep. Alas, that will not last forever as summer approaches. Temperatures of 98-100F are predicted next week. So for now we are enjoying our time.

This deluge photos show the true, unaltered colors under the Sea of Cortez. Can you blame us for wanting to hang out by the rocks?

Orange cup coral

Those sea fans!

What are these white feathery things? They are everywhere.

More sea fans.

Let’s take a break and talk about our cunning plans for the coming months. We’ve had so much flexibility it’s almost like we didn’t have a plan, cunning or otherwise. But we do have goals. They involve a trip to see Mike’s mom in Tennessee, a trip north to Washington to see our family there sometime in the near future, and a visit from Andrew and Jill in October. In the short term we are crossing over to San Carlos to visit the Brownlows from S/V Slow Motion before they leave for the summer. We’ll retrieve our car over there and hopefully it will still run after sitting in the lot since December. We are still making decisions about the timing for a haulout in Puerto Peñasco and how to get both our car and our boat there at the same time. We plan to leave the boat in Marina Real, San Carlos, for the few weeks we are gone to Tennessee. We think it will be safe from tropical storms there. Right now we have so many balls in the air we are kind of waiting for some to fall into place naturally.

Back to the soothing world underwater now because part of the stress of cruising is having a ton of goals but no solid plans. It’s a blessing and a curse. That can be said of many things.

Oh, and there’s a good possibility of a Pacific Crossing next year. Lots of things need to fall into place and there needs to be no interference from the Universe for that to happen. We are practicing non-attachment to outcome on that because at this point it’s a goal, not a plan. We throw ourselves on the mercy of the Universe and its ways and work our end of the agreement to make it happen.

I need a guide book to invertebrates. See the nudibranch?

He’s called a Mexican Barnacle Blenny, but I call him cute! So many of these little guys!

Redside Blenny

Not a great quality, but here’s a Carmine Triplefin (I think) for you. Along with his friend the barnacle blenny.

Currently at Bahia Santo Domingo, we travel today back into Bahia Concepcion to our favorite spot at Playa el Burro. Here’s what we saw there last year. Will we see another one? 

FYI, I’m using a fairly inexpensive Olympus Tough underwater camera. I’ve been pretty happy with it, considering it’s pricepoint and how easy it is to use. I actually like it for carrying around daily. If we make this Pacific Crossing thing happen, we’ll buy another one for Michael. He’s been using his old Nikon Coolpix underwater camera and the quality of the photos with this Olympus is much, much better.

S/V Galapagos, standing by on channel 22a.

 

Dinghy Lust, Whale Aversion, and Turtle Love

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We’re still here in the anchorage in La Cruz (Banderas Bay) and, in spite of this being a VERY rolly anchorage, we are really in no hurry to move along. We’re having a great time here meeting new friends, catching up with old friends, and taking it slow; getting a few little boat projects done and trying to stay out of trouble. Our goal for the season is to make it south to Bahia de Zihuatanejo. Or not. After that we have no clue. Maybe we’ll come back north into the Sea of Cortez, maybe not. We don’t know what we’re doing for hurricane season; i.e. the season of hellacious heat. We don’t know if we plan to cross the Pacific next year, or at least get to the Galapagos Islands. We don’t know a whole lot of things lately. But all that will fall into place.

From the anchorage in La Cruz. People just go sailing here.

What we do know is that this is the first anchorage we’ve been in, ever, where we’ve begun to develop Dinghy Lust. It’s funny how other people always love our little Portland Pudgy and in return how much we love their big inflatables. Goes to show there is no perfect boat, but still, we are at a point where we are considering trading up to a different model to fill the bill as the family truckster. Maybe it’s time for us to move along. After all, there are a lot of dinghies here to lust after. That probably isn’t helping.

We thought long and hard about our choice of dinghy before we bought one. We also talked to a lot of experienced cruisers. Of course, most of them have inflatables. But the ones who have the Portland Pudgies love them and stand by them. We see more and more Pudgies out here cruising. So what gives?

Our Portand Pudgy, the boating equivalent to our old Mazda pickup truck. A real workhorse. But small and lacking in power.

Frankly, it’s the power. We don’t have enough of it. I can already hear the ‘I told you so’s coming’. However, we have used small, hard dinghies for the last 15 years and have been happy with them. We have been cruising now since June 2016, full time, with this little dink and it’s been fine. We have never owned an inflatable dinghy. The reasons we chose this little boat, the fact that it’s indestructable, will never sink, is rated as a life raft, is fun and easy to row, can withstand the tropical sun, and is very unlikely to get stolen; are all still true. It may be slow, but it gets us there. If I keep going, I might talk myself into just keeping it.

Here’s what it doesn’t do: go fast and far, land safely in surf, pull up on the beach with ease, allow wheels to be fitted to it. Now you’d think none of these things are that important. In fact, the pudgy-owner cruisers we talked to before we bought swore that they would choose one again even with all these shortcomings. Then we got a screaming deal on ours and the deed was done. We paid $1000 for this dinghy, less than $2000 for the whole dinghy/engine combination. So we’ve had good value for the money so far and as cheap cruisers, that’s sometimes a deciding factor.

But now we are in an anchorage that is pretty far from the dinghy dock. It takes us a long time to get there and we’re likely to make that trip only once in a day because of that. In a nutshell, we could travel faster and further with a different dinghy. We could go to beaches that are out of reach of our dinghy, but not anchorable with our Galapagos. So we lust. We do nothing about it at this point, but we lust in our hearts. If we decide to go further than the coast of Mexico and Central America, another dinghy will be at the top of the list of equipment we’ll want to buy.

Something else we have a lot of here in Banderas Bay is Humpback Whales. We see them all the time just outside the shallow water of the anchorage and lucky Mike, he can hear them singing through the hull. Of all the times my hearing loss has made me sad, this is one of the worst. Not to hear the whales sing? Damn it.

Because at this point I’d rather hear them than see them, especially up close and personal. It’s not that I don’t like whales, because I do. I’ve always been one of those whale-loving-tree-hugging-crystal-wearing touchy feely types when it comes to animals of all kinds but especially whales. It used to be that I would get very excited to have them near the boat, running for the camera, talking to them in cooing tones. “Who’s a big whale, then? Are we a big, sweet barnacle-encrusted whalums? Show me your precious fluke! Bless me with your special fishy smelling breath! “. No more.

This whale isn’t even particularly big by whale standards.

I believe my recalibration of whale love began with our encounter with Grey Whales in Bahia Ballena on the west coast of the Baja. Having a whale breach clear out of the water just to port, then being hit broadside by his friend as he log rolled under the boat, was a one-two punch that takes awhile to process. We both recovered from the shock of it as we stood in the cockpit, taking stock or ourselves and checking our pants for dampness in our personal areas. We laughed about it, exclaimed, expressed gratitude that the frolicking whale had not actually fallen on our boat, ruining both our days if not killing us outright. For at least an entire day one or both of us would, without warning, break out with a ‘SHIT! DID YOU SEE HOW CLOSE HE WAS?’ or  ‘DANG! I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE HOW LUCKY WE WERE!’. Yes, I do actually say ‘dang’. I make no apology for this.

As time went on it became one of those stories you tell new friends over dinner in the cockpit. But entertainment value was not the only lingering gift from that experience. The darker gift is that, once more, the separation between the conscious mind and the body’s experience is put into high relief. The conscious mind realizes we had an exciting experience that turned out OK and a story we enjoy telling. The body still sees whales as a threat to our safety. I just hate that. Where I used to be very excited, I am now only mildly amused. Where I used to run get my camera at the first sign of whales, now my first thought is how far away from the boat they are and which direction they are traveling. It kind of sucks, but it’s getting better. Every time I see a whale and it doesn’t jump on my boat, I take a moment to register this fact. These things take time and lately I am jealous of the time I have left in this world to enjoy the things I want to enjoy. Like jumping whales.

To have an experience that casts a shade on a child-like wonder in witnessing our natural world is another small leaving of the Garden of Eden; to have forced upon us the knowledge that not only is our life decidedly finite, that end could come at a moment’s notice; dealt us by a hand we assumed to be benevolent.

An appropriate distance from my boat, a whale jumping for joy? Maybe. Or maybe he’s just a show off.

I don’t want to case aspersions on whales. Unlike our daughter, the whale hater,  I do not believe they are malevolent creatures who are out to sink my boat with malice and forethought. Rather I have come to believe I have given them too much credit. I wonder if they even know we are there and if so, if they actually care. I know that people can have what they describe as spiritual experiences with whales. It’s all over the You Tube. But I begin to wonder if that’s saying more about them than it is about the whales. I’m willing to be wrong about that, and part of me hopes dreadfully that I am completely mistaken. I would love to have a spiritual experience with a whale encounter, as long as that doesn’t lead to my untimely death. Until then,  let’s just say I have a, probably healthy, desire for them to stay in their lane out here on the sea; a healthy respect for their power. I like to turn on the engine when I see whales around. I figure they can hear us better that way. I’d like to have the innocent joy back, but alas, once that road has been traveled there is no going back.

Still, I do long to hear them sing.

This juvenile Humpback Whale may or may not be lunging at a panga, who is, by the way, entirely too close. Enlarge this and see if you can make out the expression on the face of that passenger. That’s the same whale as in the first whale photo, and he was feeling mighty frisky that day. Lots of tale slapping, spy hopping, and general trouble making. This panga driver was insane to be that close. Taken right here in the bay at Punta Mita as we went sailing by. It was a good show.

You know who DOESN’T jump out of the water and land on boats? Sea turtles, that’s who. So I’m pretty sure I can continue to be excited when they’re around, which is often! Anchored off Isla Espiritu Santo there were dozens of sea turtles in the cove. We had a cool experience in Puerto Vallarta last week where we got to go and release baby Olive Ridley Sea Turtles onto the beach and watch them find their way to the water. Less than 24 hours old, they looked like claymation animals; hardly even real.

Baby Olive Ridley turtles. So precious! All of these are boy turtles because their gender is determined by nest temperature.

Holding this tiny, perfect little sea turtle was a highlight of our crusing time so far. The turtle rescue operates all year long and they release thousands of babies onto the sand each year. Before the rescue efforts only one in a thousand babies made it and returned back to the beach to lay more eggs. According to the biologist at the site, now one in a hundred returns to lay more eggs. That’s pretty great!

I named him Wally. I hope he is out there eating and growing into a big, strong turtle.

If you are still reading, congratulations on your attention span in today’s sound-bite world. Your reward today is a few photos from our three hour tour through the mangroves at San Blas. It was pretty fun and we saw some birds we had never seen before. Also a lot of crocodiles. Absolutely no animals jumped into our panga on this tour.

Don’t worry, he’s just regulating his temperature.

Lovely Green Heron

Not even a little bit worried this toothy guy is going to jump on my boat. See how friendly he looks?

Boat Billed Heron

Wood Stork, migratory bird from Canada

Common Nighthawk

I spied this iguana as we zoomed passed and asked the panga driver to go back. Worth it.

This fresh water pool was irresistible. It was the perfect temperature and the beauty of cruising clothes is that this is a good way to give them a wash.

What the river fish look like. Those catfish are kind of weird.

Until we feel the urge to post again, S/V Galapagos standing by on channel 22.