Sunrise on Friday, February 24

On Friday, we stayed aboard all days and did chores. All three boats took us up on our offer to come over, and we had a lovely time visiting with the other cruisers in between chores.

The only chore of interest to report on (beyond the mundane regular chores such as cooking, cleaning, school work, etc) was that Eric changed the belt on the main alternator. We’d mentioned that when we were in Puerto Don Juan, Eric had removed one of the alternator belts. He did this to stop the vibration issues that was caused by using belts made by different manufacturers. The alternator has been running great with only one belt. Even though it wasn’t supposed to be time to change the belt yet, Eric was concerned that the belt was making too much dust (and thus deteriorating too fast), so he swapped it out with the other belt.

On Saturday, we went to shore with the crew of two of the other boats. Enrique picked up all of us from our respective boats and took us to shore at once. We had no real goal; we just wanted to wander around and see what the town had to offer. We started by walking north up the main drag, Calle Benito Juarez, until the pavement ended and it became a smaller dirt road. We even followed the dirt road for a ways until we realized it was going to dead end. We then followed random streets back towards the water.

Along the way, we passed a tiny police station, a nice looking community center, a couple of hardware stores, a primary school, a few churches, a couple of gas stations, a playground, a couple more small grocery stores that were also well stocked, an office supply store, a gym, a motel, a small government office of some sort, several restaurants that looked out of business, and many homes. This was the biggest, nicest building that we saw; we weren’t sure what it was.

We did pass two restaurants that appeared to be open for business, so apparently Jesus hadn’t been totally honest with us. One looked like it was just take-away, and we didn’t stop there. The second restaurant was a small sit-down restaurant with only a few tables. Upon entering, we were greeted by the owner, a tall woman with masculine features wearing extremely heavy make-up. The heavy make-up indicated to us that she was probably a trans-sexual.

The owner of the restaurant sat down and talked to us while we ate. She said that she was originally from Bahia de Tortugas, the restaurant had been open for a year now, and that the locals refused to eat here because they were opposed to her changing genders. The owner said her customers were 100% tourists. She said that the restaurant was doing well despite the local boycott. Apparently, Bahia Tortuga had a fairly large amount of tourist business, especially from the off-roaders.

Back at the pier, we called Enrique and got no response. While we waited for him, we wandered around near the shore.

Here is a close-up of the cathedral along the coast

Eventually, a fisherman pulled up to the pier in a panga, and Eric asked him to taxi us to our respective boats for what we would have paid Enrique. Much to our relief, he agreed.

Our overall assessment of Bahia de Tortugas: It seemed to be a fully functional small town. While there were several very nice and beautifully maintained buildings near the water, and there were a few crumbling buildings farther inland, generally speaking, the buildings farther inland appeared to be newer, there were more high end buildings, and the buildings were generally better maintained than closer in to the water. The town lacked greenery — not even cactus were growing in the wild — and it was very dusty and dry.

Here was a family photo with the Bahia Tortugas sign.

View of the town from Kosmos shortly after sunset on Saturday evening.