Gresham Family Exodus

January 2014

One of the nice things about being in the Banderas Bay area while preparing for the Pacific Puddle Jump is that they put on regular seminars on all kinds of topics at both the La Cruz Marina and Paradise Village.  It always seemed like when there was one at Paradise Village, I wanted to go to I was in La Cruz and vice versa, but no worries, the bus is an easy solution.  However, on our way to our first seminar from La Cruz to Paradise Village we had to take a taxi.  It all started by agreeing to go together by bus with Lady Carolina and True Blue V.  I had never taken the bus from La Cruz to Paradise Village at this point and since it involved changing buses, I felt better going with someone who knew what we were doing.  Since the bus can be a pretty slow transportation method, we set a departure time to leave the marina and walk down to the bus stop fairly early.  So, I’m a pretty punctual person.  OK, I’m compulsively punctual.  I don’t know, I just think if you set a time for something, there’s no reason not to meet it (barring things out of your own control, of course).  Everyone showed up at the dock just a little late, no big deal, but then they tell me they need to take showers, but they’ll be quick.  Carolina and Joel intentionally walked ahead, because they thought they would be slow, but the boys and I sat down and waited.  We waited and waited long enough that I decided to just go ahead and take a taxi, because I figured if we were going to go that far to a seminar then it didn’t make any sense to show up late.  Alex, Brenden, Jonathon (Fluenta), and I pressed up the hill, passed Carolina and Joel and let them know what we were doing, and then went to the taxi stand to negotiate a price.  Are you kidding?  I don’t have enough money?  I played a little negotiating hard ball, and they didn’t bite and they let me walk away.  I guess it didn’t help that when I said I didn’t have enough money Jonathan pulled out a bill and helpfully said, “I have this…”  After we walked away, I considered catching a bus, but then we would definitely be late and who knows how late since I didn’t know the details of the bus transfer.  So, we went back to the taxi, and I borrowed money from 8-year-old Jonathan to pay for it.  Would you believe it that when we showed up, everyone else was already there?  They ended up catching a taxi too, and I guess their driver was a bit more aggressive than mine.  The seminar itself was pretty good.  It was on the Marquesas and was given by a couple (sv Kavenga) who had cruised there in the late 90s.  However, I hadn’t done much research on The Marquesas at that point, so I had trouble with context and very little of the content regarding specific anchorages actually stuck.  I went to several other seminars including Radar, Communications, Rigging, Weather, and Health.  There were also many others that I missed.  Most of them were more valueable for the networking with other cruisers that were planning to do the puddle jump as opposed to the seminar itself.  And a few of them, specifically the radar and comms ones would have been far more valuable had I gone to them a year ago rather than now.  I’ve figured out a lot of stuff on my own, the hard way, or by talking to other cruisers.  But I guess it’s good to get validation of stuff you already think you know when preparing for an ocean crossing.

January 2014

Mom joined us for a five-day visit during our stay at Paradise Village.  In fact, she arrived the same day we checked in, and I took a bus to the airport to meet here, and then we took a taxi back.  The boys were very excited to see Gramma Nay.  Since her stay was only 5 days, we didn’t make any plans to cruise anywhere, but rather just stayed at Paradise Village the whole time and pretended we were on vacation too.  We relaxed by the pool while the boys ran around and never grew tired of the alligator slides. We also had a very nice and relaxing beach day.  We sat under palapas soaking up some internet with our ipads while the boys boogie boarded.  They had a little animal show, and Brenden got to hold a snake, but unfortunately, I didn’t snap any photos.  We did venture out one day and play tourists by visiting downtown Puerto Vallarta and the Malecon.  We took the bus, but we had no idea how to get there or where to change buses.  But as usual, that wasn’t a problem.  We just asked and then followed the crowd of people going to the same place.  We were on a pretty run-down bus our last leg, but everyone was in good spirits, and no one complained.  The PV Malecon is like La Paz on steroids.  The walkway is dramatically wide, and the sculptures are much more elaborate.  The boys wanted to eat at McDonald’s and I’m sure my mom would have relented (because that’s what grandparents do), but I would have none of it, so the boys moped a bit.  We lucked out and found a place to relax and have lunch right on the Malecon that served, wait for it, burgers AND pasta, so now nobody had any reason to mope anymore.  In pretty much all of the larger Mexican towns we’ve been to, possible exception Santa Rosalia, there is always someone posted outside of restaurants trying to lure you in.  To me, this is a bit of a turn off, and I like to find the places that seem to have many customers without having to drag people in off the street.  This time in PV was the first time I took the bait.  What was I supposed to do after all?  They had burgers AND pasta!  The food ended up being pretty good, and we enjoyed just sitting, eating, and chatting.  We walked quite a ways down the Malecon and made our way up to the beautiful church of La Iglesia de Nuestra Senor de Gualdalupe.  The boys haven’t been in very many churches, so I gave them a quick reminder to be solemn and respectful, since even though there were tours going through, there were also people sitting quietly in some of the pews.  I can only guess they were praying.  Although I didn’t let the boys have McDonalds for lunch, we did take advantage of the fact they have little McDonalds dessert kiosks scattered about, where you can get soft serve cones and blizzards (although the blizzards aren’t churned like they are at home, they are basically just ice cream with Oreo crumbles on top).  We walked across the Rio Cuale and down around the narrow island that is near the mouth of the river.  I thought I had read it was an up-and-coming artsy type of area, but mostly it was just the same ole types of vendors you see everywhere.  On the way back we hit the municipal market, and I purchased a little shirt for baby Benjamin (sv Fluenta) that I totally forgot about and never gave to them.  I’m sure when I see them again, he will be way too big.

Overall, it was a very nice, slow-paced day and we enjoyed some of the sights that Puerto Vallarta has to offer.  This was our only trip into the heart of Puerto Vallarta, even though we were in Banderas bay for a month and a half.

Mom’s visit was fun, but way too short, and before you know it, I was driving her to the airport.  Yes, I was driving because I rented a car for a couple days to do some massive reprovisioning.  I feel a little regret that we didn’t provide mom with a better look at more of Mexico, I mean we didn’t even take her to La Cruz.  Unfortunately, since we were in a marina, we were also preoccupied with getting things done that can only be done in marina, even though we had already spent 2 weeks in the La Cruz marina.  Tim worked on projects, and I attended seminars.  But I know mom’s main focus was spending time with us, and particularly the boys, so hopefully she got her 5 days fill of that.  She thinks the next time she visits it will be when we are “summering” in New Zealand, and John will be able to come too.  John has always wanted to go to New Zealand, so it will be fun that we can offer a reason to go.

January, 2014

Paradise Village is a hotel resort in Nuevo Vallarta, and it also has a first-class marina. Our first visit there was by bus to attend one of the Pacific Puddle Jump Seminars, and we took the kids so they could play at the pool while we listened to someone drone on about stuff we already know about our radar.  Think of any stereotypical cheesy resort, and you’ve got Paradise Village.  Unlike La Cruz, there’s no cute little Mexican town just off the marina, no, there’s an American style shopping mall.  It definitely wasn’t my idea of a place I would like to stay.  However, there were a few upsides that we just couldn’t pass up, and we did end up staying there for a full 10 days.  One upside is that they have dockside potable water, so you can fill your boat tank directly (although there was some concern about chlorine content and whether it could damage our watermaker membrane when it fresh-water flushes).  The other upside might seem like a small thing, but it was a huge thing to us.  The hot tubs.  Almost every evening after the day’s tasks were complete, we would go sit in a hot tub.  Sometimes we’d just go to the yacht club, which was near our slip, and sometimes we would go over to the hotel and use the more touristy hot tubs.  A perk of staying at the marina is that you can use all of the hotel facilities as well, and that included the pools, which the kids enjoyed immensely.  They played on the alligator water slides and picked up games of pool basketball and volleyball with other hotel guests.  The alligator slides had a rough texture that destroyed the seat of many a set of swim trunks, that’s for sure.  Alex even made some friends, including a girl that he was very hush, hush about.  I heard about it from Brenden.

Every Sunday the hotel does a “welcome party” at an outdoor amphitheater where there was free food and drink, so of course we checked it out.  It was pretty crowded, and they did have some nice snacks like bruschetta, but it ran out quickly.  There was a line for drinks, and they had alcoholic and non-alcoholic, and as we were making our way to find a seat, Brenden let me know that he did not like his drink at all, it was bitter and not sweet.  I tasted it, and sure enough he somehow ended up with some sort of rum and fruit juice concoction.  This is the sort of thing you would never expect to happen in the States, and you might even be a little peeved about it and want to go talk to a manager or something.  Here in Mexico, we’ve gotten used to more citizen personal responsibility/accountability, and things like this don’t surprise us and we just roll with it.  Even see the humor in it most times. And this time I saw that bright side that now I have two drinks, as Brenden just went and got himself another one.  The welcome party had some nice dancing and fire twirling, but overall, it was a bit cheesy and somewhat reminded me of a timeshare presentation.  They lure you in with free stuff only to get you to sit there and listen to their marketing.  In between dancing acts, they had restaurants and other businesses in the area that cater to tourists give little speeches about this offer and that special.  And the MC was so engaging everyone really seemed to be enjoying themselves and laughing and clapping over what were basically live commercials.  It was surreal.  The best part of the whole thing were the games, especially the game they did with the kids.  They called kids up there and I basically made Alex and Brenden go up.  In hindsight, I feel bad about it, because Alex was by far the biggest kid up there, and some of the kids were like 4-5 years old.  They lined them up in a single file line, smallest to biggest, and did this thing where they had to hop back and forth on command, and they would go fast and whoever messed up was out.  Big surprise, Alex won the contest, and I felt really bad for him, because it was almost like the crowd was rooting against him, because he was competing against these tiny kids.  He was miserable.  His prize was candy, and he ended up sharing it with some of the other kids that were sitting near us, so maybe if the crowd saw that they would have cheered for him a little more.

I mentioned the shopping mall near the marina, and one nice thing is it had a decent grocery store, even if expensive.  The best part was the bakery, and every morning I would send Alex to the store for Baguettes.  It was heavenly.  After white Bimbo bread for so long, we could not get enough of these baguettes.  It was so nice to have daily access, and unlike most of the items in the store, they were pretty inexpensive.

They also have a tiny zoo, and by tiny, I mean not many animals, but they have gone big with the ones they have: a couple of Tigers named Daisy and Diego.  They are caged (obviously), and I felt pretty sad about it, but apparently it started as a rescue effort.  Not sure if I believe that one or not.  They also have several parrots, and some of them say “Hola” and some of them say “Hello.”  We always tried to talk to them as we walked by.

Our stay at Paradise Village just happened to coincide with the full moon, so we got to attend one of the yacht club full moon potluck parties.  They fired up a big grill and everyone brought something to grill and something to share.  I brought artichoke bruschetta (of course, with access to all that bread and all) and I think we grilled chicken.  It was a nice event, though we didn’t really know anyone there other than Lady Carolina.  The evening culminated with open mike storytelling, and wow there were some good ones.  Cruisers really do have lots of good stories to tell, because you just never know what’s going to happen out here.  Steve told his story about crashing the RC airplane in Agua Verde, but the Exodus crew stayed our usual quiet, shy selves.

January 14, 2014

My mom came to visit for 5 days, and we spent one day being tourists along the Malecon in Puerto Vallarta. We had to take two buses to get there and two to get back, and overall it was a great day. Tim stayed behind to attend a seminar called “Navigating with Google Earth” back in La Cruz.

Since we wouldn’t be going to Costa Rica on this voyage, we thought we could at least give the kids a canopy tour here in Mexico.  So, we organized with a bunch of other kid boats, searched the internet for a good deal, and on Jan 3 we took advantage of a 2 for 1 special and hopped on a bus to an OXXO parking lot in Jarretaderas to be picked up by the tour company.  We were with Sand Dollar, Kenta Anae, Appa, and Kyle (Lady Carolina), Jonathon and Victoria (Fluenta) came along as orphans.  We picked this tour mainly because of the special, but it turns out that it is on the set of the movie Predator, and they take advantage of that in all of their marketing.  Cheesy? Yes.  The ziplines themselves were quite fun, but much different than what Tim and I did in Costa Rica.  First of all the setting was far more touristy since in addition to all the Predator marketing there was a large restaurant that we were zipping over.  Second, the method of braking yourself as you were coming down the zipline was different.  In Costa Rica we wore thick gloves and we braked by using the glove behind the attachement point on the line to provide friction.  Here, we rocked ourselves side to side and the friction was provided by metal on metal.  The landings were pretty forceful as well.  My instinct was always to slow down but the guy at the bottom would tell me to keep coming, and then I’d jerk forward as he stopped me at the bottom.  The kids had a lot of fun, so I’m glad we did it, but it just didn’t live up to me memory of our experience in Costa Rica.  Afterwards the kids swung on the rope swing into the water at the restaurant while we sat around and ate and drank.  Good Times.

I forgot to mention the bus ride!  After we were picked up at the OXXO (in a regular large bus, not an open air one like the advertisement said, but whatever) we went back and forth from Puerto Vallarta because the driver thought he forgot someone.  Turns out he didn’t, so it was just wasted time, but after about an hour, or maybe more, we made our way to the base of the mountain and then proceed to drive what felt like straight uphill on a windy, partially washed out dirt road.  I think the bus ride was more of an adventure than the ziplines!

After the tour we took the bus back down the mountain into downtown Puerto Vallarta to a little place to do some tequila tasting.  I was a little disappointed at first because I was tired and didn’t feel like drinking tequila, but it turned out to be a bonus as we got to taste all the various tequilas, from the ones you “share” (the cheaper ones) to the ones you “keep for yourself” (the better ones).  The guy who did the presentation was quite amusing and we were with a Mexican family too, so he did it in both Spanish and English.  No surprise that since I enjoyed the presentation and the tequila, I had to buy something, so I brought home a bottle of coffee flavored tequila.  Very nice for sipping after a good meal.

I’ve probably mentioned that most cruisers in Mexico are retirement age, and also that there are a few our age both with and without children.  But every once in awhile, I mean like almost never, we meet some younger, like twenty-something, cruisers.  In La Cruz we met s/v Moments who are taking a year off from their young lives to cruise.  He’s and electrical engineer and she’s just finishing medical school, so of course they’re geniuses and surprisingly fun to be around.  We only hung out a couple times, including Christmas Eve on Lady Carolina, the night in Bucerias at Luna Lounge, and when we had a dock party behind Exodus for Rachel’s 28th (I think) birthday.  I’m sure I asked for it, but I struck up a conversation with Rachel about how they are younger than most of the cruisers, and she mentioned they had met a few their age in La Cruz which has been a lot of fun.  Almost certainly she was thinking maybe she was implying that “we” weren’t as fun, so she followed it with, “Don’t get me wrong, we love you guys…”  And yes, with that little sentence I was officially cast into the old people pile.   Forty something (I mean late thirties) has it’s perks, though, so I can live with it.  

Bucerias is a town along Banderas Bay in between La Cruz and Puerto Vallarta.  I never looked up actual populations, but it seemed to me to be bigger than La Cruz, and quite a bit more touristy.  We didn’t spend much time there, but a couple experiences may be worth mentioning.  Lady Carolina had been talking about his place called the Luna Lounge for like, forever, because when they were here the previous season they had gone to see an Elvis (as in the King of Rock) impersonator band and they also have good, cheap ribs (two for one dinners, I think).  Once we got to La Cruz we had been trying to organize a big group to go there for dinner.  Once we got foiled by too much rain, but we finally pulled it together on Jan 6.  After a seminar at Paradise Village, the boys and I hopped on a bus with Lady Carolina and True Blue V back to Bucerias and then met up at the restaurant with Tim, Dazzler, San Dollar, Moments, and Appa.  We had tried to hire a taxi van to take us but we couldn’t haggle down to an acceptable price (by Steve’s standards, a near impossible task) so we were all pretty hungry when we got there after the long bus ride.  The kids all sat together at their own table, which they much prefer these days, and we all dug into ribs, ribs, ribs (and plenty of beer and wine too).  We enjoyed each others’ company but we just weren’t in much of a dancing mood it turned out, and Lady Carolina was a bit disappointed it wasn’t the magical evening they experienced there a year before.  That’s the way it goes sometimes.  Those fun, memorable nights just spontaneously happen sometimes and recreating them is near impossible.  But, like I said, we had fun, and we all hopped into a taxi this time for the ride back to La Cruz, and we got a ride all the way back to doorstep of the marina.  Which was great, until I remembered Jonathon (Fluenta) was with us and I was supposed to stop up at the top of town to take him up to their condo.  So, I asked the driver if he could take us back up there.  I didn’t have any more money, but he was nice about it.  It was on his way back, after all.  Once Jonathon was safely home, I ran all the way back down the hill to the marina.  In flip flops.  It was exhilarating, but my feet were not happy with me the next day.

The next day, I used the fact that we needed more cash to hop on a bus back to Bucerias.  There aren’t any ATMs in La Cruz, so my plan was to go to Mega in order to take out some money and get a few food items.  Along the way, I stopped at Bucerias El Centro, and just meandered around.  I just felt like getting out on my own for some low key exploring.  The coastline in Bucerias was very nice with a soft sandy beach and lined with palapas.  But the town didn’t draw me in like La Cruz.  It was much more of a tourist town, and it was lined with those little garage shops that all have the same t-shirts, hammocks, and blankets and the people yell at you to come see there stuff.  It reminded me of Cabo, the part of Cabo I don’t like.  Once I got away from that I enjoyed a couple art galleries and stopped for a fizzy water before calling it a day and continuing on with my errands.  It’s kind of funny what a big tourist town Bucerias is, and before now, I had never even heard of it.

While staying at the marina in La Cruz the kids all enjoyed riding bikes around the docks.  The Kenta Anae and Heavy Metal boys all had normal boy bikes that they would graciously share with the other kids, and we got out our folding bike to also throw into the mix.  One day Alex came back to Exodus, not quite in tears but definitely on the verge and visibly shaken.  He said, “I fell in the water with the bike.”  Since the kids were young I’ve always tried to teach them “first things first,” meaning that when something happens we always check that everyone is OK before we start assessing blame or scolding.  So, my immediate reaction was to ask him if he was OK or if he was hurt.  The tears are getting closer now, and he assures me he’s ok, but he couldn’t save the bike.  He lost it and it’s now sitting on the bottom of the marina floor.  At this point I almost start laughing, but I knew it wasn’t yet appropriate for that.  Thankfully, Tim jumped up without leaning into him about how it happened or how he needed to be more careful.  He just started brainstorming ideas for how to retrieve it.  The first thing they did was go over with the depth sounder to see how deep it is.  If I recall correctly it was about 11 ft deep, and at this point Alex starts to visibly calm down, because he realized the bike wasn’t really lost, he could dive for it if he needed too (except for that alligator that had been spotted in the marina waters!).  The first thing Tim tried was magnets.  We have very strong magnets for retrieving metal objects that have been dropped overboard.  He could get the magnets to attach, but it was difficult to keep the bike oriented properly while raising it, and the magnets would detach.  So, the next thing he tried was the boat hook, which wasn’t quite long enough.  Then one of the dock workers came over and suggested we could use a small anchor, and we had a claw anchor for our dinghy, so Tim lowered that down, and the third time was the charm.  He retrieved the bike by hooking the anchor claw under one of the bike cables.  The bike got a thorough fresh water rinse and WD-40 bath, and seems to be doing just fine.

A conversation with Alex afterwards revealed he had simply lost his balance while going slow, and he treaded water for a little while holding onto the bike, but he couldn’t hold the bike, keep himself afloat, and reach for the dock.  So, he sacrificed the bike, a wise choice, I told him.  I told him that I worry about so many things out here, but him falling off the marina dock with the bike and drowning simply wasn’t one of them.  It was totally off my radar.  Truth be told, he was so upset, not because he was physically shaken at all, but because he was worried about how much trouble he was going to be in for being careless and losing the bike.  We also talked about how he was likely going to take a lot of ribbing from the other kids about it, and his best tactic would be to just smile and laugh along about it.  Making a couple jokes at his own expense could also diffuse it, which he did, and it did.

Right after Tim pulled the bike up one of the other kids said something like, “Geez Alex, that was the stupidest thing I ever saw.”  At the point Alex was still more concerned about how much trouble he was going to be in than engaging in banter with the kid, but Brenden piped up, sticking up for his brother saying, “Well, it’s not like he did it on purpose!”  That was nice to see.

Exodus has six macerator pumps and it seems like there is always an issue with at least one of them at any given time.  Each head has two of them, one between the toilet and the tank, and one at the tank exit (so when we empty heads its all nice and ground up.  TMI?)  The latest issue was the exit macerator on Alex’s head, so his head had been out of commission/off limits for awhile.  Tim tends to (understandably) procrastinate these repairs because we have 3 heads on board so one being out of commission is not that big of a deal, and, well, they can be a little messy.  Unjamming or repairing the macerator is usually not a difficult task.  The difficult part is detaching the macerator without partially emptying the tank into the bilge.  Yes, sadly, this time we ended up with a bilge full of poo.  It was HORRIBLE.  The smell drove us all from the boat except poor Tim who had to endure the smell and deal with the mess.  Would you believe we even had the tanks pumped out at the marina beforehand hoping that would minimize mess, but to no avail.  For several days, Exodus was known as the poo boat.

Many times Steve and Carolina have told us how they learned from Steve’s parents not to flush their toilet paper.  It doesn’t matter if it’s the special kind of paper that dissolves it still messes with plumbing systems and clogs pipes, and perhaps, jams macerators.  So, we finally started taking their advice and don’t flush our paper.  It’s kind of gross because we have to keep a bag near the toilet to collect it, but we have only had one macerator problem since.