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| We left Careyes heading south. It is about 15 miles to Tenacatita bay. We were lucky enough to see several pairs of whales, surfacing, breaching, flapping their tails, but I couldn't get any good pictures. This picture is the best I have, trust me, it's a whale.
One of the highlights of Tenacatita bay is the Jungle River Trip. The Jungle River Trip is a narrow lagoon that is bordered by mangrove trees. The trees come so close in places, they form an arch over the lagoon and block out the sun. We went with Ted and Sue from Blue Bell in our dingy. The lagoon is four or five miles long. We went slow, idling our engine, just fast enough to steer. The local tour boats had a different idea - they think it is a race/obstacle course. We were lucky enough to get out of the way whenever they came by. A few even slowed down. At the beginning of the lagoon is a now deserted building. It was a French restaurant and cruisers hangout. At some point it was used as the set for the movie McHale's Navy (I don't know the spelling). As we were trying to make our boat skinny to avoid the racing tour boats, Sue was pulling us in by the root of a mangrove. I saw these large, hairy legs near her hand and told her she should move it. As it turned out, they were tree crabs, not big spiders, but we all had a scare for a minute. We saw many birds, herons, egrets, pelicans, and cormorants. They nest in the trees. We also saw huge nests of ants or termites, we're not sure which. They are about 1 to 1 1/2 feet across, and from 2 to 4 feet long, built on a tree branch. There are trails radiating out from the nest in every direction on all the branches. I was told there were crocodiles or alligators in the lagoon, and was anticipating meeting one, but we were not that lucky. Either the fast boats scared them away, or they weren't there in the first place. The lagoon wraps around and ends just behind the beach at a little resort area. We walked around and had a very good lunch at one of the restaurants. We all even broke down and bought a tee shirt from one of the vendor ladies walking the beach. It was a first for all of us, but she gave us a good deal.
Tenacatita was nice enough to be able to go swimming in the ocean for the first time in a long time - no red tide. The water was silty, and there was a big break on the beach - it took some timing to surf in with the dingy. Ted and Sue had to sail to Barra Navidad to meet a friend. This is a resort marina in the next bay. We decided to try to meet them there, but we would take the dingy and a bus. We drove the dingy about 4 miles across Tenacatita bay to La Manzania, a cute little back pack resort town. We walked through town and caught a bus to San Patrico/Malarque. This town has some Irish history, Saint Patrick is their patron saint. It is a trailer park/motel tourist area. A long, nice beach, gift shops, restaurants, mobile home parks, and motels. The Mexican part of town was very nice, the tourist part of town was economical. We then caught another bus to Barra Navidad, the upper class beach resort in the same bay. All tourist shops and restaurants, hardly any Mexican area at all. The highlight of the trip was the sunset, it was beautiful. Larry and I were probably both sad that we were there with each other instead of someone else.
We then took the bus back to Melarque, and back to La Manzania, where we did a little shopping and had a late dinner. We then had to launch the dingy in the dark into what we thought were huge crashing waves. After we got all prepared for the worst, we took the dingy out into what were large waves, but not the monster waves we were fearing. We had a dark dingy ride home, managing not to hit the big rock in the middle of the bay. We never did find Ted and Sue. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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