(Continued from previous post… Tahuata, French Polynesia)
Finally, Tiffany made the discovery that lead us down the path of our second great adventure for the day: six coconuts laying about on the island. Actually, they’re lying all over the place, you actually have to work to avoid tripping over them as you walk around. However, it was Tiffany’s idea to bring them back to the boat and attempt to open them. This next video illustrates a fairly simple Polynesian math equation:
1 coconut + 3 gringos + 1 dull machete = hilarity
I remind you all of that footage was from the first coconut. Now, being Americans, we decided that the best way to proceed with the other coconuts is to both increase the number of tools at our disposal and increase the amount of power those tools put out. This met with slightly better results…kind of.
Finally, we took a moment to regroup and figure out what we had learned. Drawing out lessons from our experience so far as: “use a sharp blade over a dull one” and “take the protective husk off first” we refined our process and found some success with the third coconut.
I want to convey to you our daily life. Have you ever had a personal montage? The underway life is a daily existence of extreme ritual, when you allow it to be, and that ritual allows you to focus on whatever you want with unprecedented clarity. For 30 days of my life I have the opportunity to dramatically increase any skill set I want to study. I describe it best to my mother when I emailed her:
I am spending my time sewing zippers on clothes and reading the Bible
(I feel like a monk)
…and learning French
(a Franciscan monk)
…and learning the ukulele
(a Franciscan monk with a toy guitar)
…and talking to Tiffany
(a Franciscan monk with a toy guitar and a wife….ok, fine, bad example)
This is my life for the next month…no Gregorian chanting though.
Allan spends his time developing his at sea tech support business …
… and getting an “A” for effort in his many attempts to land “the big one”.
Tiffany and Alison spend most of their personal time focused on the inspection of our cookie stores …
… and the restocking of our cookie stores (a chore in which I am sometimes impressed into service).
To give you an idea, I offer for your consideration this typical evening “crew ration”
Stuffed peppers, avocado, fresh tomato salad and hand-made garlic bread… All par for the course for our dining experience (trust me, were you here you would not dare to dishonor the glory of our consumption rituals by addressing them as “meals” either). Any fool who told you that people lose weight on long voyages was either a liar or someone who did not give proper respect to the culinary creation process. Translation: they did not have a duty cook, which is one of the major advantages of having more than 2 people on your boat.
In this sailor’s opinion, Allan probably made the best call of his ship captaining career when he took our advice of assigning a duty cook. He actually did it cunningly well. We have 2 duty rotations each 12 hours in length: Day watch and night watch. During night watch, each of us stands a 3 hour and during the day watch, three of us stand a 4 hour shift and the 4th person’s sole responsibility for the day is to make sure the rest of us eat meals that would make Bacchus envious. Tiffany and Alison typically take this burden on and they have done a fantastic job. The reason for this is that Allan and I have both stated that Ramen noodles and a can of coke every night sounds like a fun experiment. Alison agreed with this idea, however her idea of Ramen noodles is a travesty of college gourmet cooking.
Back to the duty cook thing. The real advantage here is that the cook easily spends 4 hours (the length of a watch) preparing lunch and dinner. Everyone realizes this, so none of the other watchstanders feel like the cook is shirking duty. Also, because the cook doesn’t have to worry about a watch during the day, they can spend a lot of time creating excellent meals, despite having to deal with problems straight out of Das Boat:
Also, this way no one gets overworked between standing watches and preparing meals.
The cooks almost got a fresh sushi reprieve when we landed our first fish of the trip until we realized it wasn’t a good “eating” fish (what the heck else are fish good for!?)
As I said, Tiffany and I spent a lot of time working on the docks in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle and Paradise Village in Puerto Vallarta getting involved in the local cruising community and looking for ships looking for crew. The La Cruz marina was an interesting place to be. First off, the marina was still undergoing construction so that meant we had some unusual ships to maneuver around while sailing.
They also had a major boat show while we were there that the president of Mexico attended. I didn’t get any footage of the “El Presidente” mostly because I also didn’t get any pictures of the military snipers hanging out on the rooftops of all the buildings or the multiple hummers that drove around pointing their .50 cal machine guns at my head for no apparent reason. Let’s simply leave it at I didn’t want to give them any additional motivation to point their high powered weapons at me for longer than they already were. I did get some footage of how the Mexican government throws a party:
The weather over the months we were there was unusual, to put it mildly. Hurricane force winds, “weather bombs” (what the heck is that supposed to even mean!?) hot rain, freezing sunny days, tornados ripping through the bay…it keeps you on your toes.
Aside from when the weather was trying to kill by ripping your ship apart it was actually quite pleasant.
So like I said, La Cruz was the first place where Tiffany and I got to really spend some time, meet some people and just live a little bit outside the US, which was a major goal of this trip in the first place. My previous assessment of La Cruz as a town in transition from small village to tourist mecca was pretty accurate and I’m really glad I got here and got to know people before the transition was complete. La Cruz is still the kind of place where, as long as you engage people, you will find your name remembered, your favorite dinner served to you a few minutes after you sit down and bar tenders who remember your favorite drink. There is a strong, close knit, gringo community that comprises the owners of the bars, some musicians and a bunch of people with interesting stories. Add to this mix the cruisers we came down the coast with and you can easily see why some people end up “swallowing the hook” here and don’t ever sail out of the Banderas Bay.
Living in La Cruz did present one major challenge for me though:
Now walking on dirt roads in 3rd world countries in your sandals may sound like fun, but by avoiding the dangers of the sidewalk, I opened myself up to a different hazard
Needless to say, after two infections, the local doctor and I were on good terms and I was very grateful that Mexico has massively cheap medications.
Children’s fundraisers, British pubs (with awesome fish and chips), salsa lessons, Irish pubs…a good time with some good people is never very hard to find in La Cruz, Here is what our evenings typically looked like:
As for eating, well, with Mexican pricing on all the food and a ton of variety, we basically ate every meal out. The dining scene was almost as interesting and varied as the nightlife
And for those of you following along my church explorations, I found a very neat Catholic church near Puerto Vallarta that had a very different take on crucifix we typically see at the front of most Catholic Churches.
Seemed like the carving was more focused on the risen Jesus than the crucified Jesus. I liked it, defiantly gave a different feel to the church.
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:
