After we had found out the price of the marina, we had resolved to only spend one night and then move to the anchorage in the morning. But after talking to the cruising couple later in the afternoon, we had started to reconsider moving. The anchorage is naturally flat calm, but can get rocky from all the speed boats zipping around. The bottom is soft mud with poor holding, which means you have to put out a lot of chain. Bringing in a lot of very muddy chain didn’t sound good. That would make our anchor locker a gross mess. And, the water is shallow, so sometimes mud laden waves splash onto the sides of the boat, sometimes getting over the walls and on the decks, and getting mud everywhere. And mosquitoes can be a problem, though with the wind so strong probably won’t be. When we had gone to bed that night, we still hadn’t decided for sure whether we were moving or not.

That night was a restless one for Christi. She woke up often to blow her nose. In the morning, she felt absolutely miserable, too weak and tired to do much of anything. Christi waking up sick sort of made the decision about moving for us. We were staying. Life in a marina is so much easier than life at anchor, and when you aren’t feeling good, easy is definitely the way to go. Also, in this marina we are plugged into both power and water, so she was able to take very long, very hot showers to help clear her sinuses. Because of limited hot water, neither of us has been able to do that any of the other times we have had colds on this journey.

Christi slept most of the day. Eric puttered around the boat, not wanting to leave her alone in case she needed anything. Christi did get up long enough to go to lunch at one of the restaurants in the hotel. On the way out, we stopped by at the boat next to us to say hi to the people on board. It is an expensive sportfisher from San Diego. We introduced ourselves and the owner kind of blew us off. He wasn’t rude, he just made it clear with body language that he didn’t want to talk. A few boats down the dock there was a Kadey-Krogen (a trawler brand quite similar to Nordhavns), so we stopped to say hello to them. This owner was much friendlier and we had a nice chat for a few minutes. When we told him we have almost completed our world circumnavigation, he was pretty astounded. Of course, most people are.

These are pictures of Bahia Navidad from the restaurant. The photos aren’t taken from the same vantage point, but if you lay the photos side by side, you still get a good sense of the area. In the first photo, the Barra Navidad peninsula is to the left, where the glut of buildings are, and you can see how the lagoon expands behind it. In the second shot you can see the marina to the left and the anchorage off to the right. Obviously, the restaurant is on one of the upper floors of the hotel and has panoramic views.

Anyway, we didn’t do anything else all day. A solid day of rest seemed to do the trick, because Christi woke up this morning feeling much better. She’s still sick, but not nearly as bad as she was yesterday. Right after she got up, we went into town. We walked around the places we had missed the other day, including the sandbar and the pier. The first picture is of the fairway, taken from the pier at the tip of the sandbar. You can see the hotel on Isla Navidad to the right. The marina is on the backside of the hotel. The second photo is looking back down the sandbar from the same spot.

We didn’t mention this the other day, but we’ll bring it up now. Here in Barra, there are a few military personnel patrolling the streets, and there is one car checkpoint where every car is stopped. We asked the cruising couple about it the other day and they told us that there are normally never any military personnel here, but since we are in the middle of Santa Semana celebrations, the military was here to ensure order. (Mexicans celebrate Easter for two weeks, called Santa Semana, and many Mexicans take holidays during this time, similar to American’s Spring Break). So, now we are back to the theory that the military in Huatulco were doing practice drills. They are probably making every military person work these two weeks and were training them extra hard knowing that there was a real chance for drunken violence and disorderliness over the holidays.

When we were confident we had seen all of town, we went to a restaurant for lunch. For an appetizer, we got empanadas camarones, filled with shrimp, cheese and tomatoes. These empanadas are different than what we are used to. The crust was more like a thick corn tortilla than a pastry and they seemed to be baked instead of deep-fried. The filling was excellent.

We headed back to the boat and got our kayaks down. We saw a box or porcupine fish in the marina grazing on the growth on the docks near Kosmos. It is pretty cool to see. Christi was planning to go for a ride, but she backed out at the last second. The wind was gusting at 15 knots in the protected marina. Wisdom says you are supposed to paddle against the wind until you are tired, then turn around and glide back in with the wind. But, we had no choice but to go with the wind on the way out of the marina. Christi was still feeling a bit weak and wasn’t sure how much physical exertion she could handle. She felt like it would be too easy to get herself into trouble by going out too far and not being able to get back in.

So, Eric went for a ride by himself in the big lagoon. He stuck close to the shore of Isla Navidad for better wind protection. The whole island is hilly, just like the area where the hotel is. He passed the fuel dock located close to the marina.

He passed the small village of Colimilla. People on Barra like to take the water taxi over to Colimilla for lunch, and there were several restaurants along the water to choose from. There were also four or five houses scattered about up the hillside behind the restaurants. The hillside is covered in the same dry forest like in Ixtapa and the other places we have stopped lately.

He passed a big golf course that we believe is part of the hotel grounds, though it seems kind of far from the hotel. Beyond the golf course it becomes mud flats and mangroves. In there he saw a big iguana up in a tree, which he thought was pretty cool. He rounded the tiny satellite island in the lagoon off of Isla Navidad. Here is a shot where you can see the satellite island to the left, Isla Navidad to the right and the mud flats/mangroves up ahead.

On the other side of the satellite island, Eric got a good view of the lagoon and was surprised at how big it is. It was definitely larger than he expected. He stuck close to the satellite island’s shore for continued wind protection. There seems to be a single private home on the island with a slew of cute little guard dogs that barked like crazy at him. It was actually kind of hard to see the house amongst all the mangrove trees surrounding the island. He emerged in the anchorage area, which is more exposed to the wind. Unfortunately, the new friends we had met the other day weren’t on board, but he found some other cruisers who were around and chatted with them for a while.

He considered heading over to the other side of the lagoon to explore some more, but decided he should head back since the wind was progressively picking up. He paddled back over to the shore of Isla Navidad and followed the shore back to the marina. By the time he got back, the wind inside the protected marina was at 25 knots, and on the VHF we heard the wind in the anchorage was a full 40 knots. There were white caps in the normally flat lagoon. Because the kayaks are so low to the water, he didn’t find the wind resistance to be a problem, even in the most exposed areas. But he did get pretty wet from the wind chop.

When he got back, we laid the two kayaks on the dock and went over to the pool. At the pool, Christi watched something that horrified her. A boy who looked about 7 or 8 and spoke no English got into the pool. One of the kids tried to talk to him, and when he didn’t respond, an American boy that looked about 10 or 11 started tormenting him, calling him names like “stupid retard”, flipping him off, kicking him, etc. The American kid seemed to think that English speakers are superior beings and it is OK to be mean and violent to someone solely because they don’t speak English. After a few minutes, it was clear neither sets of parents were around to break this up and Christi screamed at the American kid. The American kid left the pool. It is people like that boy that give Americans a bad name. Seeing that boy has made Christi dread going back to the States and the ethnocentric mentality some Americans hold. Even though most Americans don’t think like that, it seems like the ones who do are usually the most vocal.

We were at the pool for only an hour. When we got back to Kosmos, we saw that one of the kayaks was gone. Oh no! Where did it go? Then we spotted it in the marina, over at another finger dock. It must have been blown into the water by the strong wind and floated off. For it to have floated such a short distance, it must have just happened within the last few minutes. Wait a minute. It wasn’t moving with the current. Hmmm”¦ Eric hopped in the other kayak and went to rescue it. It turns out it was tied up to the dock next to a mega yacht. The crew on the mega yacht had seen it floating off into the lagoon and they hopped in their dinghy and saved it for us. That was so nice of them. Christi had coincidentally just made cookies, so we delivered some to them as a thank you.

We decided to have dinner at the hotel. We went to their nicest restaurant. All the food was excellent, but the only thing that we found unique was the lobster cream soup. The menu said was made with cognac and crème, so we expected it to be like a bisque. It turned out to be nothing like a bisque in terms of texture or flavor, but was delicious none-the-less.

This restaurant is also up high with an excellent view of the ocean beyond Barra Navidad. The wind hasn’t let up at all and it was chock full of white caps in the ocean. It would definitely be a nightmare to be out in that! We are so glad to be in a calm marina right now. The server told us it isn’t normally this windy here.