Buenas dias from Paradise Village, Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico.

No, we have not sailed off the edge of the Earth. It’s a changes in latitude, changes in attitude, manana, manana thing. Guess I have to quit playing and catch you all up to date on our whereabouts.

We enjoyed our stay in Cabo San Lucas and all that it offered us. The day we arrived in Cabo was November 9 and after having a great dinner out at a restaurant in the marina district to which we were treated by our crew members, we strolled over to Squid Row for an evening of drinking, very loud (but good) music, and table dancing (including yours truly—sorry, no photos)--a chance for Ha-Ha skippers and crew to let their hair down and boogey the night away. We had time to reprovision at the local Costco (just like walking into the Folsom Costco, except everything is in Spanish). And on Saturday, November 11 there was the Baja Ha-Ha awards ceremony, where if you didn’t place 1st or 2nd in your division, you were automatically a 3rd place winner. Skipper Paul and his first mate Marilyn stepped up to proudly receive one of the several 3rd place awards in the Jalapeno Division.

Mid-day on Monday, November 13 Renegade together with Robyn’s Nest, Aphrodite and Shiraz (all from Fleet 4) left Cabo for the approximate 48-hour transit to La Cruz de Huanacaxtle (try pronouncing that) in Banderas Bay, home of Puerto Vallarta. At the time we left Cabo, we were watching Hurricane Sergio’s predicted track and we expected to arrive in Banderas Bay long before its possible arrival in that area. Our transit was easy and mostly unremarkable except for an interesting event the first afternoon when we had to do an SOB (spinnaker overboard) recovery. While sailing along in 15 to 20 knot winds, we heard a terrific sound and then saw our spinnaker bag in the water. The bag’s straps had been securely tied to the deck stanchions, but the bag had ripped off from its straps. Crew Ron kept his eyes on the prize as Paul turned on the engine and we adjusted the mainsail and let fly the yankee sail to luff while we maneuvered into position for the successful recovery.

The second evening out just before the sun set a sea bird landed on our solar panel aft and to our surprise rode with Renegade all night long for over 100 miles, leaving only when the sun was on the rise and we were within sight of land. I think Paul took at least 3 dozen photos of the bird during the night—attempting to get a good shot, but it was also something to occupy his time while on watch. About late morning we arrived in La Cruz, dropped anchor and dove into the water to cool down. Shortly thereafter Robyn’s Nest and Shiraz pulled in and not long later Aphrodite dropped the hook. Later in the evening we went into shore in our dinghies, left them at the beach, and walked the dusty dirt and cobblestone streets into La Cruz to Philo’s Bar & Restaurant, a cruiser hangout. In addition to food and drink, they offer live music, pool tables, showers and laundry facilities. We enjoyed pizza, beer and margaritas before wandering back to our dinghies for the short trip back to our homes on the water and welcome sleep.

On Friday we all motored over to Nuevo Vallarta’s Paradise Village Marina to get checked into slips for which we had previously made arrangements. Our crew Ron Hatton stayed until Tuesday, Nov. 21 when he flew back home to Ranch Cordova. That gave us several days to get chores and errands completed before my sister Karen flew in for a weeks’s visit with us.

During our time at Paradise Village, we made ample use of their facilities including the Vallarta Yacht Club (meals, drinks, Wed. night movies), the Spa with its various services, two large beautiful pools ocean side, lounge chairs under palapas on the beach, various restaurants, shopping plaza, laundry service, etc. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal, delicious and beautifully presented, at the Uxmal Restaurant in Paradise Village. We missed being with our family in Sacramento, but we were thankful for and thoroughly enjoyed the companionship of our fellow cruisers.

We went by bus (cheap and frequent) into the Centro and Viejo (old) parts of Puerto Vallarta twice and we enjoyed our experiences walking the cobblestone streets visiting various shops, galleries, restaurants, flea market, and eating and having drinks at ocean side restaurants. Of particular note was the Los Altos Restaurant on the beach in Viejo Puerto Vallarta, the two-story flea market with its many merchandise and food stalls, a tile and pottery shop on Carranza, and Pie in the Sky which has brownies to die for.

Shopping for food is always an experience. Luckily, since P.V. is a large city, in addition to all the various markets or mercados, there is a Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club on the main road into P.V. So if you want to shop there, you take a bus, do your shopping, get a taxi back to the marina, and before taking any of your groceries on board you remove anything in cardboard and discard the cardboard to avoid bringing cockroaches on your boat. Many cruisers also wash fruits and veggies in water with a little bleach to disinfect. So, you can see that food shopping alone might be the only thing you would do in one day. If you’re in smaller towns, you would end up shopping at several places—one for meats, one for fruits and veggies, one for breads, and so on.

We had some minor problems with our sails on the way down Baja, so we arranged for the North sails guy in Puerto Vallarta to come and pick up all three sails for some restitching. A few days before we planned to leave P.V. for Ixtapa, we were to go on a jungle zip line canopy tour in Mismaloya. Unfortunately, I came down with Montezuma’s Revenge which ended up staying with me for over a week and I simply wasn’t up to the tour. But Paul and the rest of the group had a good time zipping through the jungle and afterwards stopping for tequila tasting.

We plan to leave for Ixtapa on Saturday, with a stop in Manzanillo to obtain a temporary import permit (TIP), and expect it will take a couple of days transit to Manzanillo. Any boaters coming into Mexico must get a TIP in order to leave the boat in Mexico and fly home and to bring any boat parts in. Puerto Vallarta no longer does TIP’s and Cabo San Lucas (our first port of entry) was just about to start doing TIP’s but wasn’t up and running yet.

Photos attached are captioned as follows:

(1) Cabo San Lucas Marina District. (2) Sea bird perched on aft solar panel. (3) Our anchorage in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle. (4) One of the pools at Paradise Village with croc slide. (5) Palapas on the beach at Paradise Village. (6) Fleet 4 cruisers aboard Renegade for a celebration. (7) Malecon (or boardwalk) along the waterfront at Puerto Vallarta. (8) Sand sculptures on the malecon beach. (9) Thanksgiving dinner at Uxmal with Fleet 4 cruisers.