Quick Winter

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Just a quick note to assure our faithful readers that we have survived over 2 weeks in the frozen wasteland that is Edmonton and vicinity.

Our bodies were obviously not happy with the change in climate.  Both Sue and I have had nasty colds the entire time here and the extremely dry air does not seem to help much.  When we arrived, winter was in full swing, lots of snow and cold temperatures - the type of weather that makes all Canadian kids dream of hockey stardom.  It did warm up considerably during our visit and peaked early this week with high temperatures around 17 or 18 degrees (just about as warm as the overnight lows in Mazatlan).  By today, even though it has cooled off a bit, the snow has virtually disappeared in the city - just leaving behind the dirty sand and gravel covered streets.

Because of the our poor health, we have not ventured very far afield; just enough to buy the things on our ever-expanding shopping list.  We did spend some time with Susanne's family and a few days with some good friends on their anchorage just outside of Edmonton.  Fun to watch the deer traipsing around in the back yard.  Of course, now everyone we have met is at risk to contract our deadly diseases - we sincerely hope that that has been avoided.
Now, we just have to get all of our new purchases back to Mazatlan.  For some insane reason, among other things, we purchased a new kayak - inflatable so it will theoretically will become a simple piece of luggage for the journey south.  Tomorrow we embark on that journey and by nightfall should be safely back home on Sine Timore.

Sixteen days makes this the shortest winter we have ever had, and that is all good.

{GMST}53|35.3868|N|113|32.3568|W|Edmonton, Alberta, Canada|Edmonton, Alberta, Canada{GEND}

Last Resort

Nuevo Vallarta, Nayarit, Mexico

Paradise Village Resort and Marina: Our room, while pretty ordinary as resort hotels go, is about twice the floor space as our entire boat. It has a huge stand-up refrigerator and freezer, electric stove and a microwave.  A totally separate shower stall in the bathroom, a huge satellite-fed TV, and a queen-sized bed.  Those of you who do not live on a boat probably don't understand what this feels like - this is true luxury living for us.  This picture, by the way, is where we would have been in the marina, if we had managed to sail this far this season; That guy with the helicopter is probably in our spot!

Our short stay here has been pretty exciting.  We have laid by the pool, laid on the beach, had a leisurely walk down the block past a few of the other resorts, sipped cocktails by the ocean, ate far too much food, etc.  You know, just generally leading a high-energy active lifestyle.  You can check out the facilities here at http://www.paradisevillage.com/  if you so desire.

They have a bit of a zoo here - mostly just tigers.  This fellow seems to have figured out how to beat the heat - does that look comfy or what?

Tomorrow all of this ends as we head north for Edmonton.  Sometimes life is really unfair.

{GMST}20|39.5|N|105|14.95|W|Paradise Village|Paradise Village{GEND}
 

Northward bound via PV

Nuevo Vallarta, Nayarit, Mexico

Those regular and exceptionally astute readers will notice that it does not say Mazatlan above.

For the last week in Mazatlan we have been experiencing some foggy mornings, sometimes persisting until noon. Everyone assures us that this is very unusual for this area and especially for this time of year - probably global warming in action (or fallout from the disaster in Japan). Regardless of why, it does make for some cooler days. Not to worry though, it is still shorts and tee-shirts, just may need a cozy in the early morning and after dark in the evening - not that hard to take. The girls have been taking this opportunity to go on shopping expeditions, sometimes going all the way downtown to the main market. Since the costs are starting to mount up, it is clearly time for us to be moving on.

We have a flight booked back to Edmonton on Thursday from Puerto Vallarta (plans made when we actually thought we might sail further south than Mazatlan this season). Rather than change the booking, we decided to make a sort of mini-break holiday out of it by taking a bus to PV and spending a few days at an upscale resort before flying home to the frozen north. We have a flight back to Mazatlan on April 30th, so we will be gone from Maz for a total of about 3 weeks. This meant that a lot of the people we have been hanging around with are not going to be there when we get back, either flying home for the summer or heading for the Sea of Cortez. Chances are we might not run into them again, at least not for a while.

This called for one last farewell dinner out, ending up on David and Gitte's gorgeous Norseman 447, which the rest of us had been dying to see. So we said good-bye to some great friends in what is likely to be the first in a series of such touching scenes as we continue this cruising life. In the end, one of the couples had decided at the last minute to accompany us on the bus to PV, getting off a little earlier at La Cruz to visit some other friends for a few days - so we did have their company for another day.

Like the true vagabonds we have become, we walked out of the marina this morning, waited for a local bus to take us to the main bus depot, caught the first-class luxury long-distance bus to PV, followed by a short taxi ride to our current location at Paradise Village in Nuevo Vallarta. This turns the 200 mile journey into an all-day affair. We left the marina at 8:30 AM and arrived at the resort around 6 PM (although it was actually 7 PM since we had slipped into the Central time zone somewhere along the way), In fact it was a very pleasant trip through some parts of Mexico we had not seen before and the price is right - the local bus was 6 pesos each, the luxury bus was 380 pesos each and the taxi to the hotel was 150 pesos. Current exchange rate to Canadian dollar is about 12.2 pesos, so you can figure it out if so inclined.

The view from our balcony at Paradise Village.

Notice that taking the cheapest room they have going, does NOT get you an ocean view. This is not much of a problem for us as we see our share of ocean most of the time.

{GMST}20|41.8|N|105|17.51|W|Nuevo Vallarta, Nayarit, Mexico|Nuevo Vallarta, Nayarit, Mexico{GEND}

Culture Galore

Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico

One way that Mazatlan sucks you in is to present you with a seemingly non-stop series of cultural activities to keep you occupied, making it difficult to get the various boat related projects done.  At least, that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Case in point: Yesterday, as I am putting the finishing touches on my new water heater installation, I am informed that I am the designated guide and chaperon for a bevy of women determined to finish off the "Art Walk" that we started a few weeks ago.  Somehow the other husbands all had convenient excuses why they could not possibly leave their boats just now - waiting for parts, emergency repairs needed, bad knees, etc.

So it came to be that I found myself escorting Sue and couple of friends through the streets of Old Mazatlan, visiting most of the little art galleries that we had missed on the last go-around.  Probably just as well that I was there as I am sure they would have been completely lost without me.

The art walk is pretty cool.  In fact, I think we saw some even more interesting sites this time than last time..  Several of the exhibits are actually held in the artist's homes, which they open to the public only for these art walks, on the first Friday of each month during the winter (this is the next to last one for this season).  A couple of the homes were quite spectacular.  And several of them were kind enough (or foolish enough) to serve wine and cheese and other goodies, which was quite a hit with my group.  Note: Can you find the vicious guard dog on duty in this picture?

We ended up back at the Plazuela Machado for supper before heading off for the 2nd half of our cultural immersion.  In the evening, we walked past the many enticing looking bars and open-air stages, playing music that ranged from hard rock to smoky jazz, to arrive at the "Museo de Arte de Mazatlan", in time to take in a Flamenco dance presentation that started around 8:45PM.  Surprisingly it wasn't half bad - lots of energetic dancing and some great guitar playing and singing, all with a multimedia background, called appropriately "Mis Andares Espectaculo Flamenco Multimedia".

Upon leaving the Flamenco dancing, around 10:30PM, our group had grown with the addition of a few other strays from the Marina, so we had enough to make it worthwhile to hire one of the "little red trucks" for 20 pesos a head, to take us all back to the marina.  For people from Alberta, riding in the back of a pickup truck just comes naturally.

Oh yeah, the water heater did arrive after only 2 weeks (not really much worse than back in Nanaimo at times), and it is now installed and making copious amounts of hot water.  Of course, nothing is ever totally straight forward.

After all my careful measuring, the heater turned out to be 1/4" too tall to fit under the cockpit drain that had forced me to cut the old heater into pieces to get out.  In spite of this heater being significantly smaller than the old one (6 gallons instead of 10), it still would not fit!  So, I was forced to remove the offending drain fitting from the cockpit before I could wedge the heater in (Note that this drain is now back in position in the accompanying photo).  Just par for the course when you live on a boat.  All in all, it went pretty smoothly as boat projects go.

As I am writing this, Sue is off to a cut-throat game of Train Dominoes up at the Gus y Gus restaurant (they let them use a table there for the price of a glass of orange juice - or other more high-octane beverages).

We really have to get out of Mazatlan soon.  There is just so much perfect weather and good company we can take!

{GMST}23|16.25|N|106|27.2833|W|Marina Mazatlan|Marina Mazatlan{GEND}