Month: July 2010

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San Diego 2

San Diego, CA

It’s not all work and no play down here though; we all manage to find some time to enjoy ourselves (as if playing dodge the anchor wasn’t fun!). First off, we held an assortment of teamwork exercises, which met with varying levels of success:

I also managed to break away for a day to spend some time with my friend Otto enjoying that most exciting of uniquely American pastimes: Disc Golf. What is disc golf you ask? Heathen! Take golf, remove the clubs (which are expensive and heavy and no one likes anyway) and the ball (which you’d probably only loose) and add in their place…Frisbees! (And not just any Frisbees, SPECIAL Frisbees… ~ Tiffany) As we demonstrate below, they are just as hard to control as golf balls, way easier to find, and overall just way more fun!

Mind your head and no dogs allowed, unless they are an established pre-agreed course hazard.

The crew went out to a dinner which led me to this new part of the blog: wines of the world.

As many of you know, I like wine and one of the things I really wanted to do on this trip is sample different wines from around the world and report back to you what I find. That way I would know what to order when I get home and you all can get some wine recommendations from exotic locals that you can pick up for yourselves. I mean, come on, how cool would it be to have some friends over for dinner, calmly stride over to your wine cabinet, and say to your friends “Shall we open the Mexican Cabernet or the Tahitian white tonight?”

See, I’m all about you looking good.

Well, so far Mexico has been a complete bust and not for lack of looking. They make beer & tequila and import most of their wines from the US or Chile. I have nothing against Chilean wine mind you, it’s just that I’d like to taste a Mexican wine in Mexico. I’ll keep looking and for now, I managed to find a decently priced really tasty red wine down here in San Diego.

I should take a moment to describe Tiffany’s and my wine tastes. In whites we heavily favor sweet over dry. Ice wines are right up my alley and personally, if they would just ferment the sugar I would drink it. Tiffany’s not as into sweet as I am, however she really avoids the dry stuff. In reds, we prefer a smooth taste with a minimum of bitterness in the aftertaste. If that didn’t make any sense to you, don’t worry about it. I don’t either. The only way to figure out what you like is to start tasting.

For this project, I will also focus my attentions on wines that you can actually afford to buy and ship and not feel bad about. I love a good bottle of expensive wine as much as the next guy and, having lived an hour from Napa valley and except for the extremes of the spectrum on both ends, I often find that the price and the quality of a bottle of wine rarely have anything to do with one another.

Finally, the day of our departure back to Mexico arrived and we made ready to get underway. As part of our final preparations, we all went out for a final American lunch. As the final meal for what could be a very long time in my native country, I believe I made the right choice.

…and Michael, don’t worry, I had Chick-Fil-A the night before for dinner.

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San Diego, CA

San Diego, CA

Tiffany & I received an offer to come back up to San Diego, help prep a ship for a Pacific crossing and bring her down to Mexico. We figured an REI run would probably be a good thing anyway, so off we went!
Once again Mexican transport did not disappoint

…and we wonder why all our jobs are overseas?

Upon our arrival aboard we moved the boat to the police dock for the final on our ship’s inspection, preparations and final provisioning. Not only were we rained on, not only was it freaking COLD (acclimate to Mexico much?) and the United States seemed dead set to ensure our return did not go, to use an overly appropriate turn of phrase, “unmarked.”

For this particular voyage we have the pleasure of working with two other crew members: Ben & Jurgen. Both of them are a lot of fun and Jurgen is a native German who flew in for a few months of sailing. Now you may not know this about me, but I have a long standing love affair with the German language. Have you ever heard someone talk in German? It sounds like someone discovered the sound of awesome and just decided to make an entire language out of it! Never had the chance to hear German? check this out:

Why oh why did I study French in High School!?

We had a crew meeting and Tiffany was elected to serve as the ship’s captain because as an ASA instructor and a licensed 100 ton master, she was the one with any official paperwork (see what happens when you go out and better yourself? You get to rule over your fellow man and crush them under the thumb of oppression! Stay in school kids!)
After going over this boat with a fine toothed comb, the four of us dove into the two week process of the final preps for getting this ship ready to set sail. I could bore you with details of food inspections, EPIRB shopping, damage control kits, rigging work and sail repairs…or I could just toss up this montage that includes me finding poison ketchup and almost getting clocked by an anchor. I think we both know which option is the one you’d choose.

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Rozario

Hunting Butterflies

Our adventure with tiny busses continues with a video I called, “I guess it’s cheaper than building a gas station…”

Is it bad when you step off a tiny bus into a tinier village and immediately realize that you’re lost in the middle of a rural area in a country that you’re basically unfamiliar with looking for something that you can’t describe to locals due to your lack of higher-level language skills?

Leaving the GPS on the boat was probably not the best plan. Not that we knew the GPS coordinates of this place to start with. Good thing Tiffany speaks some Spanish. However before talking to the locals and finding out where the heck we are, she was so inspired by our recent church explorations that she decided to give us her personalized musical lyrical accompaniment to that well known Catholic tradition of the ringing of the church bells.

We did eventually find a bus that would take us up into the mountains and to the butterfly sanctuary…a transit that I would describe overall as ‘harrowing” to say the least and that answered my unasked question of “why haven’t I seen any roller coasters in Mexico?”

It was worth it though. As I said in an earlier post, I was not expecting much from this butterfly sanctuary as I had spent a few years of my childhood living in Monterey, CA. Which is a town known for its annual Monarch butterfly migrations. What I did not know is that all those Monarchs from Monterey get together with all the other Monarchs from all over North America, all over the entire continent mind you, and they all hang out on this random hill in Mexico for a few months every year. Words like “massive swarm” are not commonly applied to butterflies…in this case though, the word does not adequately describe the sheer volume of Monarchs on this quiet hill in Mexico. No one knows how many are actually here but the best estimates place the number between 7 and 20 million butterflies. Even those numbers do the place no justice in providing you a mental picture, so here is my best attempt with a video camera:

-Greg

(As we headed back toward the coast, we had yet another surprising bus experience…

~ Tiffany)

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Patzcuaro, Mexico

What Greg has completely neglected to mention was the town of Patzcuarto (uh, I totally forgot how to spell this place…) where we could supposedly find those yummy coconut piles. No such luck. We spent a day bussing around and seeing the town and nearby area. I did have a delicious cup of yummy stuff that Greg totally did not appreciate.

We finally found the local cuisine that they’re famous for are their white fish, or Pescado Blanco. And, uh, we had it…

In order to get this questionable delicacy, we had to go to an island with a big statue in the center of it that looked like he was the main character from the movie “Undercover Brother”.

And we had to CLIMB ALL OVER! It was a crazy steep island! There weren’t any streets, just paths, and they ALL HAD STAIRS!

On our way to this mythical island, not only did we get lost (how hard can it be to find an island in the middle of a lake! An island you can see!), we got to make new friends!

I was telling Greg about why burros have a cross on their back (donkeys don’t, just burros, they’re special). These little animals were honored by God because one of them carried Jesus as he entered a town, forever earning them their special mark.

We finally got to where the ferry was, and were serenaded by a mariachi band on our way to the island. Definitely a unique experience.

In summary, here’s what I thought of Patzcuarto, the island and it’s lake:

~ Tiffany

(Two final notes we learned from our road trip into central Mexico.

1) Public bathrooms in Mexico require a certain degree of pre planning to ensure a user friendly experience.

2) Not all of Mexico is tropical, especially the parts 8 hours inland through mountains.

~ Greg)

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Morellia, MX 2

Morellia, MX

Continued from my previous post…

Making money: Morellia is a place where some Mexicans come to be tourists, which was a refreshing experience for Tiffany and I because, as you might guess, most of the tourism industry of the coastal cities we had visited up to now operated on a single premise: gringo = money. So this town included us as visitors without overwhelmingly targeting us as ripe chickens ready for the plucking. A word here should also be said for the Mexican entrepreneur. Perhaps it has to do with less industry or infrastructure in Mexico, or maybe I notice it more because I own a business myself. Regardless, I have found that Mexicans, as a people, seem far more entrepreneurial than people in the United States. By that I mean it is not as unusual for someone to make their living here by working for themselves (be it street taco stand, selling ponchos, or painting boats) as it is in the States, where the average person works for someone else. One thing about entrepreneurs, no matter what language they speak, they are always looking for an edge on the market. This guy found one that really impressed me:

Living life / culture: For those of you who have been following the blog, you will remember that I have on a few occasions encountered the giant mutant bugs of Mexico. Here, yet again, is another installment of “bugs the size of my hand.” I have no idea how these people live coexist with these things.

Also, we’re in Mexico, they do football here and Morellia has a very large student population (think like Boston, a very large town that also happens to contain a lot of universities). Apparently the local team, the Monarchs (remember why we came out here in the first place?) won a big game while we were in town:

The saying in Morellia is that “all roads lead to God.” Which is a literal truth here because just about every road in the downtown area passes about 3 churches before ending at another church. You could spend months going to daily mass here and never have to go to the same place twice. The city’s symbol is the twin spires of the cathedral located in the center of the city, which is a truly epic building. You have to give it to us Catholics, we know how to build a freaking house of God that lets people in the next tri-state area know where they can come to talk to the big man.

We managed to show up in town while a local cultural festival was in full swing and were lucky enough to catch a dance practiced by local natives (as in pre-Spanish influence) called “the dance of the old men”, where the dancers dress up as – guess what? – old men, including masks with wrinkles, and bust out some crazy tap dancing skills. I don’t know the history of the dance, and it sure was interesting to watch! (It was supposed to be in Patzcuarto though! ~ Tiffany)

(What may not be so obvious is that the 2 farthest away in the video couldn’t have been much more than 10 years old! ~ Tiffany)
It was hard to rip ourselves away from this fun town in the middle of Mexico but the butterflies are supposed to be out there somewhere and Tiffany is dead set on finding them.
-Greg

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Morelia, MX

Morelia, MX

A few days between boats and nothing to do with our time? Grab your bus passes kids ‘cuz it’s time for a road trip! Tiffany heard tell of a mythical place far into the center of Mexico that held a monarch butterfly sanctuary. Now having been a first grader in Monterey, CA, I didn’t think there was much that could impress me by way of butterfly homes…I was wrong but I’ll get to that particular experience in a few posts.

Let’s start with the trip itself. Our plan was to ride busses from Puerto Vallarta (aka “PV”) to Guadalajara to Morelia (about 10 hours each way) and base ourselves out of that city as we attempted to find this mythical butterfly haven. Now coming from Northern California and with a good friend who lives in Texas, let us say I had a very firm perception of what I would experience riding Mexican busses. I was excited about filming a report that included surround sound chickens and me sharing a seat with a goat. As you will see, my assumptions could not have been farther from the reality.

Every US airline service CEO should ride a Mexican bus and when they do, they should bring a notepad. Kind professional staff, free meals, no hassles getting onboard, no questions on my bag being 0.2 kilograms over some arbitrary limit, free movies in transit…wow. Truth be told, I was a little disappointed. I mean, come on, the goat would have been cool. (Personally, I’m very glad there weren’t any goats. Chickens, now they would have been neat, or… well… at least interesting. ~ Tiffany)

I will sum up my experience of the majestic city of Morelia for you by tackling the 4 main parts of our time there: Getting Around, Adventures in Dining, Making Money, and Living Life/Culture. It may seem presumptuous to declare myself an expert in these areas after a 3 day visit, and I agree it would be. I didn’t come close to experiencing everything this city could offer. There was just so much there at my fingertips that I could walk out of my hostel and stumble over cool stuff, which is basically what happened.

Getting Around: Perhaps it’s because this city is the capitol of a landlocked region far from the United States – this town is an interesting blend of Mexican and European influence and it’s old. Because of that, the old town district has a very old European city layout, which in Greg’s book means narrow streets that won’t fit the average American car, along with big, beautiful, elaborate buildings crammed next to each other. So if you don’t own a car your two options for getting around are walking or micro buses. These little guys make up their lack of capacity present in the larger species by adopting swarming tactics.

It was not unusual to see packs of these guys roaming the roads looking for unsuspecting prey. Hopping a bus was a great way to get around but walking was also an amazing experience in and of itself. As you will see farther down this post, the real joy of Morelia is that there is something interesting around every corner and random encounters abound. The city itself is also very pedestrian friendly. They go so far as to provide you with a visual reference to let you know exactly how fast you should be crossing the street to maximize your chances for a safe arrival at your destination.

Adventures in dining: Look, as an American who can’t stand the mild sauce at Taco Bell Greg acknowledges that his particular palate may not be for everyone, but seriously folks, God did not intend for every piece of food on the planet to be spicy:

Speaking of Taco Bell, those fools have been lying to me for years…years I tell you! How might you ask? I used to tell people I like churros, much like a man trapped in a prison would say he likes the illumination that is cast from the ceiling lights of his otherwise dank and dismal cell. Take that man from the prison, place him in a sun kissed field full of tulips and baby bunny rabbits frolicking in the golden glory & radiance of God and the man’s perception on the overall enjoyability of the aforementioned florescent light fixture would likely decrease significantly. My friends, I have found that sun kissed field…metaphorically speaking. (Yeah, huh? Anyway, real Mexican churros rock! ~ Tiffany)

And should your taste buds demand a leave of absence, if only to once again experience the unrelenting rapture of that first bite from a fresh perspective…you can always switch hit with the other local desert we found:

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La Cruz, MX 2

La Cruz, MX

And now let us turn our attention to the world of cruisers. La Cruz is an interesting place. A quiet little town that depended on sailing ships anchoring off the beach and the fishing industry, the town is currently going through a massive shift as condos are going up all over, a new multi-million dollar marina has recently opened its doors with over 100 slips and the quaint little town is becoming a tourist Mecca for people looking for a…quaint little town. Sound like an oxymoron? It is. The amusing part is it seems that the only people who are really miffed about the situation are the cruisers. Local business is booming, jobs abound – however all the sailors who came here are watching their little piece of Mexico become an industrialized tourist machine. So far, La Cruz has maintained some balance between old and new, but I’m not sure that will last, and who’s to say whether that’s bad or good?
La Cruz may be going big time but the spirit of the little town that was can still be found when you look in the right places. For example, the marina security system, while completely effective, also adds a certain local flair to the marina.

Needless to say Tiffany’s revived interest in water sports was hastily reevaluated. You’ll also never know what you’ll see while you’re walking the docks.

Have I mentioned most people go to bed on their boats with the hatch to the main part of the boat wide open? Seemed an appropriate time to let you know.

In addition to the wild safari adventures, La Cruz has an interesting announcement system.

These guys drive around all day broadcasting everything from political announcements to local radio to announcements that the propane truck is on its way. The propane trucks have the best music. Don’t ask me why this is.

I would be remiss to talk about La Cruz and not mention Philo’s. Pizza maker, local philanthropist, musician and former cruiser, Philo is a local deity in the cruising world, a heck of a nice guy, and his bar, named “Philo’s” is one of the main hang outs for cruisers in La Cruz. Cheep beer, friendly staff and good music make it a great time. Here is what a night a Philo’s is like when he brings in his band to play.

Leon’s up first on the washboard (he’s a retired school principal!), we’re not sure who’s playing the other stuff, and Philo’s sitting center stage with the electric guitar.

Not every night is out partying though, sometimes we stay in and cook a meal onboard. Here is Tiffany preparing a lunch and doing her best iron chef impression.

The Banderas bay is also one of the main areas that the sailing community gathers throughout the year so naturally they do races, events and what not. I could give you an introduction to this video on the race Tiffany and I participated in, but really, I think it speaks for itself.

Finally, for those of you who are jonesing for your dolphin fix, or wondering what dolphin poop looks like in the wild, we manage to meet both of your needs in this final video

Until next time
-Greg

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La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Mexico

La Cruz, MX

As promised, here is the first entry of the revised blog. You’re going to notice a lot of significant changes.
– Each entry will cover a city, island, series of events or completely subjective period of time that I will use to tell you a more cohesive story all at once instead of single videos posted daily.
– Each entry will contain my notes integrated with videos and pictures as I begin to weave our disjointed adventures into a story, explain and give context to the videos and provide amusing commentary from time to time.
– Our new production schedule will be Mondays and Thursdays. Since the posts are going to have a lot more content, they will often be broken into two parts. I am covering a lot of stuff here!
Please continue to comment on the entries. The only way I know what you want to hear and see is by you telling me what you like and don’t like. Thanks for reading and watching!

Without further adieu, let me welcome you to the Banderas Bay…

…and you thought what Tiffany and I are doing is weird. Welcome to Sayulita, Mexico. Think of it as Santa Cruz, if Santa Cruz ever got to a temperature above completely frigid. To give you and idea of how far south we have managed to get ourselves, we are far enough towards the tropics for Tiffany to consider picking up water sports that are actually IN the water.

(Notice, Greg didn’t put any half naked videos of himself on this blog… No, just of me… ~ Tiffany)

It should be noted that I never saw Tiffany get in the water in the Bay Area…ever. We have sailed down to the Banderas bay, a large bay about half way down Mexico best known for its largest city: Puerto Vallarta. However, to say the Banderas Bay is PV would be like saying the Bay Area is San Francisco. (Ok, it would be like saying that to someone from San Jose, like me.) I spend most of my time well away from the big city and primarily in the outskirt cities of Sayulita and La Cruz. Sayulita is based around surfers and La Cruz is one of two major cruiser towns in the area.

La Cruz was our first real opportunity to stop, catch our breath and actually experience something of what it is like to live in Mexico. Needless to say, a lot goes on around here that has nothing to do with boats, sails, lines or waves. The first thing that struck me was not the difference between the poor and the rich in Mexico, what was so interesting was how very close both worlds exist next to one another.

Upon reflection, I have to say that Mexico is not unique in this particular regard. In my home town there was often no more than a freeway that separated a higher income area from a lower income district. Perhaps the extremes of wealth are more pronounced in Mexico but the theme is the same.

We also lived in the area for a few weeks and started really sampling the local food. This next video amazes me. I mean, I’m sure you’ve heard of and possibly even personally eaten “street tacos” but these people are way ahead of the power curve on the production and distribution of this fine culinary delicacy. I suppose relaxed health code laws can be helpful to some people and really, how often do you see a giant wheel of pork on a spit being roasted on the street? It is a sight that demands both reverence and a little personal introspection.

And where does all this pork and beef and assorted taco stuffing’s come from? Well from what I would like to think of as the “ultimate playing with your food experience”…

…which is naturally located in the dead center of downtown in the main city of the area. You know, right next to freaking Macys!?
I regret to report that my schedule and the bull fights never seemed to match up and know that a seed has been planted, a spark lit in my soul. I can only pray that little spark can meet some opportunity. I might look good in those bullfighter pants.

Continuing with our theme of foods south of the border, I encountered an interesting gastronomical dilemma and found myself shirking from the task. I ask, presented with the same dining opportunity, what would you do?

However, know that Mexico is not just questionable fish products, bullfights, street tacos and guys hiking around the countryside on 4 foot stilts. No my friends, not by a long shot. You see, Mexico has joined the community of nations in embracing the modern era and as always, it is to the little children we all look to bridge the gaps of language and culture that keep our peoples apart.

I do believe “Halo” is most assuredly guaranteed a place in the international lexicon.

-Greg

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