We ended up spending a third night in Zihuatanejo because our laundry place decided to close long before we were supposed to pick it up. No big deal as we decided this is the nicest and most cruiser friendly beach town we have encountered yet. It has the most attractive malecon, the walkways are all covered, and every meal was outstanding. And best blended margarita ever! While here I finally installed our solar powered mast lights. Other boats all seem to go with blue so we are doing green, at least for now. Looks nice but also makes the boat much easier to find at night.
We sailed to Papanoa next, one of the very few places you can stop between Zihua, Acapulco and Huatulco which are each rather far apart. Nice breakwater and the tiny town is incredibly water oriented. All of the restaurants hung out over the water and almost all of them had at least one water slide into the ocean and stairs coming up. They had huge water toys anchored in the middle to create a lengthy obstacle course for the kids.
We left at 4 AM for Acapulco and were expecting to anchor in one of the several anchorages that are supposedly here, however, they have installed so many mooring balls that the anchorages are no mas. Being after hours we were happy to get ahold of one of the marinas that had a great little end tie for us. Very attractive city, looks a lot like Waikiki. We spent a couple days touring the markets, and the old star-shaped Spanish Fort (1616, rebuilt 1778). Note how the portcullis in the fort does not come down vertically but actually swings into place. Never seen that before.
Had an interesting time refilling our jerry cans as the walkway from the fuel dock required a massive step up onto a crooked, dangling and very unsteady walkway with the heavy cans of fuel.
We had dinner at the El Mirador hotel that was built in 1934 specifically to take advantage of the cliff diving attraction. Cool place with all the signatures of the old time movie stars and celebrities that have been there. The divers are as young as age 7 and swim across that very rough water and then have to climb up to their designated perch on the cliffs. The older the diver the higher up his/her spot with the top being 135 feet! (In over 100 years of diving, no one has ever died.) The last couple divers at the end of the night dive with torches. Really, really cool experience. Totally worth the visit. Interestingly, it is a family thing and you have to literally be born into it to be a diver and then they start you at age 7.
Acapulco is listed in many articles as being the second most dangerous city in the world. Seems crazy given all the high-rise hotel resorts but I guess the tourists just don’t leave the properties. Most cruise ships do not come here anymore. About 3 o’clock this afternoon we were walking back from lunch, about two blocks from the marina, and had just passed a little restaurant when a big bus pulled up and we heard the driver hollering to someone in the restaurant. Seemed like a friendly conversation but about 30 seconds later we heard six gunshots from inside. We were right next to a construction worker on the sidewalk and he motioned for us to hide behind the dump truck and huge tree – he didn’t really need to as we were already there! When nothing else seemed to happen he started to apologize profusely and encouraged us to GTFO! Don’t know for certain what happened but we have a pretty good idea. Before we got to the marina entrance two army pick up trucks full of heavily armed soldiers passed us and turned up the street.
