Hotel Villas la Audiencia Manzanillo

... making sure we weren't drifting to shore proceeded to rock and sway for the remainder of the night. Josh pulled an all nighter watching out for the large container ships which often come into Manzanillo as its one of the largest ports on the entire Pacific Coast. Without an engine and with no wind there was really nothing we could do but expect they would not hit us, haha. In the morning ...

... line running from a compressor over to the diver. Not only were there divers to watch for but because of holding pens for shellfish which are on shallow shoals all over the lagoon the channel which goes into the lagoon was EXTREMELY shallow and narrow. We actually touched keel to sand at one point, really, really shallow and narrow ...

We packed up "La Familia" (we started calling my truck this which is Spanish for The Family half way through the trip due to the fact we had my mom and my dad riding for two weeks with us) for the three hour drive to Barra De Navidad or Christmas Bar. We stopped in the Mismaloya area of Puerto Vallarta for lunch and head the best fish we had our entire trip. We got into Barra De Navidad on the weekend of the end of the holiday week and it was ...

... it was getting dark & I wasn't going to risk hitching & getting stranded in the dark, so I never went - still on the to do list! Another day I went to Manzanillito, the village at the opposite end of the bay & an expat favourite, with nice houses set in wooded slopes overlooking a pleasant bay. The mangroves feed into the bay there in wet season but don't rise above the beach but even so the huge resident crocodile population comes right up to the beach, no doubt ...

... to Spend the Winter Months --------------------------------------- ------------------------------- Melaque No. 10 of 23 Destinations (this is not a ranking) --------------------------------------- -------------------------------- In case you noticed: but Barra de Navidad was no. 10? - no I did not list Melaque as a separate destination as I rightly or wrongly viewed it as an adjunct to Barra de Navidad ...

... starkly contrasting choice of beaches. On the west side of the malecon is the start of a 4.5 kilometre beach that extends all the way along the Bay of Navidad to the town of Melaque. (next blog). It is a beautiful sandy beach in Barra de Navidad that nevertheless has two disadvantages - it is relatively narrow and steep. The narrow part would present a problem during the holiday season when there would be a lot of people vying for a spot in the ...

... who proved to be not only welcoming and friendly but she also spoke fluent English. Now normally I enjoy practicing my Spanish but sometimes it feels good to slip into English. Here are some of the points that "Arianne" made during our conversation: Asked about the cost of living in Barra de Navidad she mentioned that she likes living here because it costs half as much as in DF (Mexico City ...

... in Mexico is excellent and that there is nothing to complain about except for the TVs on the bus which are constantly on at a higher than comfortable volume. It definitely grinds on your nerves. But it soon becomes obvious that TV is a huge part of Mexican life. For example it is not uncommon for people to be eating in a restaurant and watching TV at the same time. The front of our bus displayed the name of our destination ...

... and archaeological museum, very interesting but not as exciting as some of our previous tours. A long journey back to the ship and plenty of zzz's to catch up on our beauty sleep after all the late nights. Upon leaving the harbour we spotted lots of dolphins and porpoises which made the day.

... of memories from Seymour Heights elementary and Windsor's concert choir. Lowlights of the last 3 weeks or so: ~having to convalesce from our respective illnesses in a van; ~ not having it in us to go to the club complex in Mazatlan that Adrienne and Kelly went to when they were 18; ~ the seemingly sudden turning up of the thermostat once we arrived in PV. While hot weather is not normally a low light, very hot, muggy weather and trying to sleep in a VW van tent can be a ...