I’ll start with the good stuff… As we were getting off a standing room only bus in the town of Bucerias, Theresa was in front of me. As soon as she stepped off, the door started to close. I threw my left arm out to hold it open and tried to hurry because that is usually accompanied by the engine roaring as the bus drivers always take off before the door closes (if they even bother to close it.) Would’ve been fine except that the middle step was missing the entire left half! So I stepped into oblivion and ended up in the dirt on my arse. No major injuries but what the hell? Literally half the step was missing!
T went back to the states last week to attend to business matters and I took an excursion with friends to the top of monkey mountain. Unfortunately, it doesn’t actually have monkeys but is named for the mono statues the indigenous people used to leave all over the mountain. Mono does not mean monkey in Mexico even though that is the Spanish word… Don’t get me started! (It’s the left peak under the arch in the pictures). 8 mile hike round-trip. Not terribly high, but the last several hundred yards was literally clambering over good size boulders. Yes, on the way down I managed to slip and fall and destroy my shirt. But I had a cool view of the road through the floor of the bus….
T missed an excellent whale watching dinghy ride. I went out with the other Theresa because we could see the whales breaching right in front of the anchorage while I was up the mast reinstalling our jib sail. At first, the whales (mamas and babies) were near a commercial boat and we were 150 feet away but then they came over to us and seemed very interested as they made repeated passes under the dinghy and surfaced all around us. At one point the mother appeared to be waving at us. One of them blew as it surfaced right next to us and we got sprayed pretty good with whale snot! No smell, just seemed to be saltwater. Incredible encounter, though I did wonder if they might accidentally flip the dinghy over with an inadvertent fluke. Best whale encounter yet!
Ran into one of our favorite YouTube sailors, Colin from Parlay Revival. As nice in person as he appears on TV. He’s also a regular on the TV show Below Deck.
On the maintenance front, we blew a 100 amp fuse and also have to replace our bow thruster/windless batteries. $$$ Easy enough to get here and not much more than they would’ve cost in the states.
Tess and I went for a 9 mile walk on the beach yesterday (it’s possible to go probably 25 miles in one direction). We came back into the marina this morning as Sarah is coming (passport pending) in the next day or two. When she leaves, we will start heading south again as we need to be in Panama by July.
The last picture is a dried up baby stingray. We thought the barb was quite impressive.
