Category Archives: Pacific

The Jungle of Marina Chiapas

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Saturday, December 28 – This morning Christi went out to scrub the bird poop shortly after sunrise, wanting to get it done before it was too hot out. She was horrified to see that the entire boat was covered with a strange ash. We’d noticed yesterday that directly north of us, possibly the next building over, there had been a steady stream of smoke. Apparently, it burned all night. We also found that more birds had come along and added to the collection. The newly deposited gifts were red in color. While they washed off easily, we were going to need to treat the spots with special cleaner to completely remove the discoloration. The baked-on older gifts took a fair amount of scrubbing to remove.  

Yesterday, Keith had wanted to order chilaquiles, but the restaurant was only serving lunch. This morning, Keith requested that we go back to the restaurant for breakfast today so he could get chilaquiles. 

There was no salsa service at breakfast. Instead, they brought out a slice of banana bread for each of us. Eric ordered what is a traditional breakfast food for this region: chicken tacos with the local mole sauce, which was served with rice and fried plantains. Mole is a savory sauce made with chocolate and chilis. Every region in Mexico has its own special spin on ingredients are used in the sauce, so there are many kinds of moles across Mexico. The menu indicated that this one was mildly spicy and had nuts. This mole was dark brown. The sauce was complex; Eric could identify peanuts and cinnamon, but he couldn’t figure out the other ingredients 

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Keith’s Perspective on Leaving Barra, the Passage from Barra to Chiapas, and Arriving in Chiapas/ Le point de vue de Keith sur le départ de Barra, le passage de Barra au Chiapas et l’arrivée au Chiapas

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This week wasn’t very exciting, but a lot happened. Saturday we went to the pool, and then we went to dinner. The restaurant had just two things that weren’t fish, but dad ordered me breaded shrimp. It was ok, but I wanted chicken. When we were waiting for the food, a bird stared at me. It was creepy. After that we left for Chiapas.

Cette semaine n’a pas été très excitante, mais il s’est passé beaucoup de choses. Samedi on est allé à la piscine, et après on est allé dîner. Le restaurant avait juste deux choses qui n’étaient pas du poisson, mais papa m’a commandé des crevette au pain. C’était ok, me je voulais du poulet. Quand on attendait pour la nourriture, un oiseau m’a fixé du regard. C’était flippant. Après ça nous sommes partis pour Chiapas. 

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Welcome to Puerto Chiapas, Chiapas, Mexico

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Friday December 27 — Continued from yesterday… At 0940, we turned into the channel into Puerto Chiapas/Puerto Madero. 

If our understanding is correct, Puerto Chiapas is the south side of the channel, which has a large navy base and the marina. Puerto Madero is the north side of the channel, which has a small fishing village. This is a photo of Puerto Madero taken from the main channel.

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Passage from Bahia de Navidad to Puerto Chiapas – Day 6

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Thursday December 26 — Last night, we officially entered Gulf of Tehuantepec. The Gulf of Tehuantepec is “lowest landform between Mexico and Northern Central America, allowing unhindered wind passage from the Gulf of Mexico.” What that means is that it’s a giant wind tunnel that is often extremely treacherous. 

Even though the weather forecasting model had predicted no wind, we’d learned the hard way that the adage “keep one foot on shore” was good advice for this Gulf. So, rather than cutting across the bay, we followed the shoreline. Had we cut across the bay, we could have reached our destination a half-day sooner, but we’d decided it wasn’t worth the risk. 

As promised, the wind was light, the seas were calm and the ride was smooth. We were amazed at how little motion there was. It felt more like we were in San Diego Bay than the open ocean! It was another overcast night with no visible moon, making it very dark. 

We neared Puerto Salinas around midnight, which is a busy shipping port. There was some kind of refinery in the port that made the air smell really smoky and dirty, so we had to keep the boat closed up until we were far away from the port.

By noon, the conditions were the same: very light wind and seas so calm that it was more like a lake than an ocean. It was 93.4 degrees Fahrenheit outside – the hottest day we’ve seen yet. With no wind, the heat was unbearable. We broke down and ran the AC.  

We broke up several more bird parties throughout the day:

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Passage from Bahia de Navidad to Puerto Chiapas – Day 5

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Wednesday, December 25 — The worsening of sea conditions that happened late on Tuesday night didn’t last long. During the wee hours of the morning, the wind calmed down, the lightning vanished, and the sea conditions began to slowly improve. By morning, the ride was calm and pleasant. The swells were probably about three feet with long intervals, coming from two directions, and almost no wind chop.  It was totally overcast with ominous grey clouds.

In the morning, another pod of dolphins came to play at the bow. This group stayed for quite a while and did a performance for us, frequently jumping out of the water. We saw them do three spins, and we caught the third one on video!

Eric also saw a turtle in the morning. We forgot to mention that Eric had also seen a turtle a few days ago, too. 

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