San Felipe Mision Oaxaca

... flips into the crowd, onto the cement and chairs.  If they came flying at you, you had to get up and run!  And since we were in the front row they came flying at us several times!  It was such a blast… three and a half hours of entertainment for about US$4.  It is a must if you ever get that chance!

Monday morning we got up early, said our good-byes to our gracious host and his dogs, and hit the road.  Time for Wesley to work and get us up that mountain!

... got some variable winds and proceeded to sail in at around a knot or two. Who says you can't anchor under sail, that's exactly what we did back outside Las Hadas. Thank god I speak spanish fairly well because having to talk to a mechanic in spanish is much harder than just shooting the breeze with people. Turns out our intake valves are shot. I hope that's all thats wrong with the motor ...

... 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 ...

... I got some surf in and Helen did a whole lot of relaxing. Our room was literally on the sand. We occasionally had high winds due to a local weather phenomena that happens that time of year. We were only here two full days in this quaint little town but it was long enough for Helen to kick my butt in some pool and take a nap at a table in a bar where we were watching a band. She even forgot I bought her flowers. Some good deeds never go unpunished.

... place, there would certainly have been more purchases made). Last stop was an ancient tree which had grown into rude and amusing shapes (well... at least one of the shapes was rude... a bum, in fact :) Tee hee hee). Some formations were quite impessive, really... but most delightful was the little girl who acted as our tour guide for the tree... the only English she knew was the names of the formations and the extremely useful "¿did you ...

... it may refer to any one of those three villages. Without a doubt the most impressive thing about Melaque is the outstanding beach. It is a beautiful smooth and wide sandy beach that is great for swimming and walking. I say swimming because there is no steep incline to the beach therefore minimizing the possibility of undertow thereby making it less dangerous. The walking is great because the beach is flat and is composed of hard packed sable sand ...

... entry point to the malecón that runs along a long narrow sandbar. It is tastefully done with ample use of palm trees and only a smattering of kiosks selling local handicrafts. As it turned out, the handicrafts were not local. We were immediately struck by the intricacy of their design and particularly the richness of the colours. We also noticed that the indigenous people who were selling the handicrafts had a look different from any we had ...

... to see the displays and the place was rammed, when some bright spark (haha) decided it was time to start the fireworks a half hour ahead of schedule (probably the police wanting to knock off early!). Consequently me and several thousand others were bottlenecked/crushed under the trees of the plaza and missed the fireworks - hope the 3 people that saw them enjoyed them!

Xmas Eve saw the plaza heaving with local families there to watch the candelas, parades from/to the ...