La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Nayarit, Mexico
Just playing tourists...
We have taken the bus into Puerto Vallarta a couple of times, to see life in the big city. The buses and collectivo taxis run up and down the road from Punta de Mita to Puerto Vallarta, passing through La Cruz and Bucerias along the way, almost continuously - the most we have had to wait has been about 2 minutes. For 16 pesos (about $1.25 CDN) you can catch a ride to or from La Cruz to PV, a trip of about an hour (it would be quicker but the buses do tend to stop a lot.)
Puerto Vallarta, unlike Mazatlan, seems very busy - tourism is still thriving here. We are not really used to crowds any more and could only stand it for a few hours before retreating to the much quieter streets of La Cruz.
As usual, we walked a lot of the town, from Marina Puerto Vallarta all the way through El Centro to the South Side - a total of over 15 kms on the one day. Along the way, we found the local Honda dealer, who handles mostly motorcycles but also deals in Honda generators. They had one of the small EU10i generators in stock and I was tempted, but I really wanted the larger EU20i version. As luck would have it, there was a Honda EU20i generator at their store in Tepic, about 170 kms away, and they were more than happy to transfer it to the PV store for us. Thus we ended up buying ourselves a Christmas present.Note: A lot of the boats around here have these generators but we have resisted the temptation up till now, preferring to rely on our main engine and our solar panels for our power requirements. However, with our current plans to head south, we may be facing more extended periods at anchor with potentially overcast skies and less ready access to diesel to refill our tanks, so we thought it was prudent to have a backup power source for charging our batteries. Time will tell if we actually use it or not.
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| View of the whale statue at the entrance to Marina Puerto Vallarta, as seen from the Starbucks on the corner. Does it get any more touristy than this? |
While we were in the area of Marina Puerto Vallarta, we stopped by the only significant marine chandlery in the area. They have a pretty good selection of items and I am happy to say that we found very little that we needed. Is it possible that we have finally got everything we could possibly want? No, not really - it is just that we cannot figure out where to cram any more stuff on this little tiny boat. Of course, as I am typing this, Susanne is making up a list of items that we may go back to the chandler for next week. Sigh!
Other than our exciting trips into PV, our time here in La Cruz has been pretty laid back. We quite often go out for breakfast at YaYa's or Ana Banana's, sometimes getting into discussions with other cruisers, which has a tendency to extend breakfast to about noon. Then maybe a walk down the beach, or a short trip into the nearby town of Bucerias (they have banks and a Mega grocery store there), dinner at any of the variety of small restaurants, then maybe watch a movie or read a book, then go to bed and repeat it all the next day.
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| View from the marina restaurant, La Cruz |
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| Entrance to the marina at La Cruz |
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| Panga dock, in front of the fish market, Marina Riviera Nayarit, La Cruz |
Our current plan is to be out of here around the 3rd of January. Really, the only thing holding us here is that we want to get some laundry done before we leave, and a lot of stuff is closed today and tomorrow for New Years. As for New Years for us, we will probably just go out for supper at a little fancier place and be home long before midnight. If we are really ambitious I guess we could go up to the Sky Bar at the marina office, where they get a view of the entire Banderas Bay and will be able to see all the fireworks from Nuevo Vallarta and Puerto Vallarta across the water.
Anyway, we hope everyone had a great Christmas and we wish you all the best in the coming year.
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| Marina Puerto Vallarta |
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