¡Te calmas septiembre!

After a 7.1 earthquake in Acapulco on September 7th, a Popocatépetl hiccup on September 11th and the rainy season at its peak, the Mexicans urge the month of September to calm down already. 

I thank the rain gods for being a pluviophile. My Captain is more of a bright-sunshiny-day type of person. He can get slightly “salty” in all that freshwater wetness, and he readily fleeces up below 30 degrees Celsius. 

But I love to watch it build and then come down with a vengeance. Which is not always the case. Despite the rumbling and flashing right overhead, the rain itself often falls up in the mountains. Too bad really, because the sound of rain on our deck – whether it is a soft pattering or a steady pounding- is soul soothing.  

Apparently, love of rain is an ancient universal feeling dating back to the Stone Age when our ancestors felt safe in their caves during downpours. The sable tiger and the other predatory megafauna in their dens were also sheltering from the rain before being out on the prowl again. 

But my dancing-in-the- rain act has lost its luster because -as we all know – “guilty feet have got no rhythm”. A lot of Mexicans do not have a waterproof cocoon. Whereas ours is a cozy dry dome which simply rises with the flood, theirs is a low lying construction that gets quite easily inundated by that very same flood. Apparently, this is turning into a planetary problem, as well.

So, let’s concentrate on the list of boat chores we have been ticking off. In between showers and steaming heat our outside dining table has been scrubbed clean twice (suds that came off it looked like liquid greenish seagull poop. It was quite disgusting) before receiving 2 layers of epoxy coating and 3 layers of varnish. It is now the welcoming centerpiece of our afterdeck, ready for our guests to arrive.

The industrial solar panel is still work in progress. It will be installed over the ship’s wheel by means of a sturdy stainless-steel contraption, designed by My Captain and it is being welded together by Salvador. This panel will add an extra 460 watt to our lithium batteries and sunshade to our helm. A Mexican sombrero “en guise de parasol” always comes in handy, but not at sea when the wind has a mind of its own.

It is because of that very same wind that we are now installing sturdy roller sunscreens on our afterdeck as well. When at anchor or docked in Marinas, we used to made do with clothes-pegs. More often than not, we had to jump-dive to the rescue whenever the wind took hold of our “ sunscreens”.

In between chores we made a trip to downtown Vallarta with its glorious Malecón and its down-to-earth backstreets.

On the way to Vallarta we checked out the other 2 marinas in Banderas Bay, just to make sure we weren’t missing out on something good. Marina Puerto Vallarta is a very commercial affair surrounded by touristy shops and caterers whose focus on us – though friendly and low key – made us feel like the gringos that we are.

Next stop was Marina Paradise Village. It is part of a fancy resort of the same name. The swimming pools are awesome and so is the Coconut Palm Drive that leads up to it. But the whole over-the-top set-up felt so tacky and fake that it immediately made us feel as depressed as the live tiger which was kept in a cage at the entrance.

So yes, we are very happy to stay where we are, in Marina Riviera Nayarit with the quaint and authentic fishing village La Cruz de Huanacaxtle in our backyard. 

La Cruz de Huanacaxtle is also one of the “Mural Cities” . ” Ciudad Mural” is a project of colectivotomate.org which brings local communities together in transforming their (poor) villages and towns through art and collaboration. We think it is a very cool initiative.

And now it is already mid September. Were it not for the flags and the online media, we would have been oblivious of Mexico’s Independence Day altogether. Covid is still putting a brake on “fiesta” time and the “Grito de Dolores” was rather subdued here in La Cruz.

With O2 getting ship shape above the waterline, all we need now is a 5-day weather prediction free of Named Storms to be able to heed the call of the hinterland. Meaning that we are ready to hit the road.