8th March, 2023

Adios Barra de Navidad

The sunrise peaked through the aft cabin windows and tickled my eyelids open. My nose caught a whiff of the coffee Jay was brewing. Even though I rarely drink coffee anymore, I love the smell of it in the morning. I stretched and slowly made my way out of bed.

It is our last day in Barra de Navidad, and I am feeling kind of wistful. I’m excited and ready to move on but will miss this beautiful place. The sunrise over the lagoon. The sunset over the ocean. Our afternoons at the pool, cooling off and visiting with neighbors. Dinners in town, sitting out on the street, people watching, and listening to live music. The churro man. It is quite unique in that Barra feels like what Mexico might have been many, many years ago. It has a lot of tourists, yes, but it isn’t commercial. And these tourists stay on for months, not days, embracing the vibrant culture. It is simple and funky and full of life.

Some mornings, I paddle out into the lagoon and over to the mangroves. It is a great place to watch the birds. Some are looking for food. Others just stand ever so still, watching me watching them. The other day I saw a leopard ray swimming past my board. Its back was full of gray spots. I was distracted by its beauty. Then I realized I was only in a foot or so of water. I almost grounded my paddle board! I should have known. I have seen birds walking across the sand bar in the middle of the lagoon at low tide. And legend has it, many sailboats have grounded their keels.

Today I decided to choose yoga instead of paddling. The hotel/marina offers yoga classes six days a week. They have great teachers that fly in for a week or two and then someone else steps in to take a turn. We meet under the palm trees on a quiet beach off of the lagoon. It is a great way to start the day.

While I was at yoga, Jay went to the Harbor Master to close out our bill. That took almost as long as my yoga class. When I got back from yoga, we had breakfast, compliments of our local French Baker who delivers to our boat. Next chore was to check out with the Port Captain. In Mexico, we have to check in and out of every harbor. (Or most harbors.) The Port Captain asks for proof of insurance, our documentation and he also wants to know where we have come from and where we are going and how many passengers are on our vessel. Usually, the Port Captain’s office is close to the water. Makes sense, right? But here in Barra, we have to take a water taxi and then walk approximately a mile to a mile and a half – in the hot sun – to get to the Port Captain’s office. Oh well, it gave us an excuse to have lunch in town. This is some of what we have to do in preparation for cruising.

Yesterday, was our day to provision. The first time this season we went to provision. we took the bus into Melaque. Or rather, we tried to take a bus into Melaque. It was the first bus we have taken since Covid and it didn’t look like the ones we usually take. We asked the driver if he was going to Melaque. “Si,” he answered. Since there were eight other gringos on the bus, we walked up the steps and paid our 11 pesos each.

It was crowded. We moved to the back of the bus. I was in the very right-hand corner of the back seat with no air circulation, I couldn’t see much and there was a metal thing-a-ma-gig sticking into my side. The driver turned right instead of left and we were on a tour of all the small neighboring towns or barrios. The roads were dirt. There were many potholes. It was hot. Burros, dogs, and horses trotted along the roads. We went around and around and around until we got to a paved road. Surely, he will make a right-hand turn and go toward Melaque. But no. He turned left. And we ended up right where we started! Jay was relaxed and enjoying the ride, but I wasn’t feeling so great in my cramped space with no air. “Let’s get off here and take a cab,” I told Jay. He was in for the adventure but finally agreed and we got off the bus and paid 100 pesos for the taxi. When we arrived, we were standing across the street from the Super Hawaii market and what do we see? The very bus we were on as it passes by. All we could do was laugh.

So yesterday, we decided not to make that mistake again and took the bus that went directly to Melaque. We filled our cart with all the goodies and headed home via taxi as we also had to replenish our water supply.

Late in the afternoon, we received 17 six-liter bottles of water. (Again, delivered to us by boat.) We used that to fill our water tanks and refilled some of our one-gallon bottles of drinking water. It took us about 90 minutes and a lot of sweat to empty the water into the tank.

Chores done, it was time for a swim and a shower. As we walked up to the pool, I noticed the howling of the wind through the rigging and with so many empty slips, it left me feeling a wee bit lonesome. It was eerily quiet but not. And when we reached the pool, there wasn’t the throng of cruisers sipping margaritas and lounging in the pool. There were only a few people left, reading in the shade or quietly having a drink under the palapa bar.

We didn’t stay long at the pool as we were invited to Seamaster, a restaurant on the beach in town. After all our hard work, raising funds for the schools, it was now time to present them with their checks. It was a festive event with music played by an amazing duo, The Black Strings, a son on violin and his father on guitar. Rumor has it that the son was offered a full scholarship to Julliard. There are so many great musicians in and around Barra. It is one of the things we love about the town.

We had dinner and when the music was finished, Linda Bello-Ruiz gathered the directors, one from each of the six local schools and brought them up to the stage, while Elinore gathered some of the volunteers. Each volunteer stood next to a director and held a rolled-up “check.” On the count of three, we opened them up for all to see how much money was raised. To the astonishment and joy of the recipients, each school was given approximately 92,000 pesos. Which is a little over $5000. Wow!  I’d say Cruise-In Week was a success. And what a great way to end our last day in Barra de Navidad.

February 2023