Relaxing along the mainland coast January 2016

Staying at Paradise Village can be captivating.  This upscale resort and marina is geared to tourist and it delivers.  English is spoken in all the restaurants which include Starbucks, Domino's and McDonalds.  We managed to pry ourselves away for the 6 mile journey to La Cruz.  Its also about 20 years back in time.  La Cruz is cobble stone streets, mom and pop stores and a very relaxed cruising community with lots of local music and local color.


Always amazed at how small the cruising world is:  When we docked at La Cruz our friends Neil and Dianna from Portland Oregon (Salacia N40) stopped by.  Two slips from ours was this cruising sailboat.  Neil and Dianna owned it before buying their Nordhavn several years ago.  They last saw the boat in the Seattle area.

Dinner includes some shrimp for the barbecue from the La Cruz seafood market.

The competition for the freshest shrimp is pretty intense during the Sunday farmers market.  Over 75 vendors are present offering everything from fresh food to local art work.  Its a great place to shop for unique local clothes also.

Vehicles get a real workout all over Mexico.  Here is a Nissan compact truck chassis doing yeoman's work as a water delivery truck.  Single wheel rear axle. The math goes a little like this:

18 full water jugs per side at roughly 7.5#/gallon or 18 x 5 x 2 x 7.5= 1,350 # but wait there were 15 more jugs in the bed so add 15 x 5 x 7.5= 563# for a load of 1,913 #.  Add for the truck body, a few tools and lets just round up to 2,500# total payload..........At least the load gets lighter as the truck makes its deliveries.  

The plan is to continue south to Barra de Navidad and likely Manzanillo.  More on our journey next posting.  Keela seems ready to travel and so does the rest of the crew!