Jungle Tour in San Blas (Mantanchen Bay)

These are some of the pictures from our Jungle Tour trip we took in San Blas. It was about a mile walk from where we were anchored in Mantanchen Bay... The boys loved the panga ride. The driver putted up the river, but flew back down - generating the smiles on the boys faces!!


One of the stops was at an alligator preserve. This was one of the bigger guys!! The boys were very impressed with all the alligators there. They had hundreds of tiny ones and 12-14 big ones...
Our driver. He didn't speak much english and we don't speak much spanish, but we were able to get we were able to understand each other pretty well....

Marina Costa Baja - NICE!!!!

How can anyone argue with this place!!! We pulled in this morning, tied up to the fuel dock and filled up then moved over to a slip (which will be home for the next week). We went out for lunch then wandered over to the pool. They have lounge chairs in the pool, an infinity pool, kids pools, etc.... That's all we've seen so far, except for.... Our old boat. Yep, our Endeavour is parked about two docks down!!! The owners are coming over for cocktails tonight. They are the same folks we saw when we saw the boat in San Diego a couple of years ago. Since then, they sailed it back to Portland, up to Skagway, back to Portland, and back down here. Wow - the old girl still gets around!!!

Carolyn/Carson - this is one of the marinas for the Moorings boats - we're going to check it out.... a spring break down here would be great!!!!

Anchored in Los Muertos

We made it across the sea and are anchored in Los Muertos. Our passage took just over 34 hours - our second longest yet... After school this morning we spent the day at the beach (what else??) and are now getting ready to head ashore for dinner at some swanky resort Rich walked down to earlier. Our crossing was very uneventfull. We saw pods of whales, dolphins, a few turtles (with the obligatory bird on them) and a bunch of jumping bat rays. The water on this side of the sea is so blue... we can't wait to go up north more and see how it continues to change colors.

Crossing the Sea of Cortez

We left Mazatlan Harbor this morning with anchor up at 8:25 am and are now heading West across the Sea of Cortez. We have just over 140 more miles to go, we are heading to Bahia de Los Muertos on the Baja side. The winds are actually out of the south at around 10 knots, so it's a great beam reach sail. We should arrive there in time to hit the Giggling Marlin restaurant for dinner tomorrow night.

Monday was Ryan's 5th birthday! We had a party of him on shore with some of the other cruisers anchored in Mazatlan. He had such a great time!!! As we were blowing up balloons etc, he couldn't wait for his party to start... He got a Hot Wheels car, a poster of dinosaurs and $100 pesos.... I'll post some pictures of the party when we get to Muertos.

Our current position is: 23 degrees; 23.10' N; 107 degrees; 20.2'W

Rich, Deb, Kyle & Ryan
S/V Oasis

PS - If you reply please delete the original e-mail first.

Mazatlan Harbor

Well we started off on Thursday morning for an approx. 8 hour trip to Isla Isabella where we would spend the night and then leave early the next morning for Mazatlan. We had a very nice sail out to Isla Isabella. When we got there, there were already 3 powerboats there and the fishermen where setting nets everywhere. We dropped the anchor and it wouldn't hook - it just kept skimming over the rocks/coral. We pulled it back up and decided to just head to Mazatlan. If we had hooked, it would have
been really hard to get out the next morning in the dark with all the nets around. The trip to Mazatlan was a little bumpy. We had 15-18 knots pretty much on the nose the entire night. The boys slept back in our room (as they do anytime we do an overnight), and they slept great. The wind started to die down just as we approached the Mazatlan harbor. When we pulled in we were happily surprised to see our friends Dick & Jan on Zephrus from SWYC already anchored there. After resting for a little
bit, we took the bus up to a great pizza place for lunch then another bus to the grocery store - we are ALWAYS running out of food!!! We've been invited up to the pool at El Cid today by "A Cappella" - so we are definitely going to do that... Kyle can't wait (he remembers the pool from when we were there in December). It doesn't look like we have access to the internet from here, so pictures and regular email will have to wait until we make it to the Baja side late next week.

Rich, Deb, Kyle & Ryan
S/V Oasis

PS - If you reply, please delete the original message first.

Happy Birthday Mom!!

"Blog" <svoasisgoessouth.goingtosd@blogger.com>Today is my Mom's birthday!!!! We sent her some flowers and gave her a call on the sat. phone. She'd probably kill me if I told you how old she is - so I won't!!! We left Chacala this morning and came up a whopping 20 miles to Mantanchen Bay. There is only one other boat in this huge bay!!! One of the special things about this area is the great homemade banana and pineapple bread. You can get a fresh loaf for $2.00 each - and boy are they fantastic!!
Tomorrow we are going to take the Jungle River trip - apparently you go up a river in a panga for about an hour, look for crocodiles, then you arrive at a safe secluded swimming hole - then back down the river. We'll let you know how it all goes. We'll leave here on Thursday afternoon and head to Mazatlan. It should take us about 20 hours. We will anchor in the old harbor there when we arrive.

Our current position is: 21 degrees 31.07'N; 105 degrees 14.45' W

Happy Birthday Mom - Love You!!!

Rich, Deb, Kyle & Ryan
S/V Oasis

PS - If you reply, please delete the original message and don't send any attachments (they don't come thru anyway..)

Beach Day in Chacala!

Here's Kyle with his boogie board with Oasis anchored in the background...
Ryan loves the beach, and brings lots of it home with him each day!!
Kyle like to showoff. He met a couple of Mexican girls on the beach today and was giving them rides in on his back...

Chacala - Internet Access!!

Ahhh - sunset in Chacala. We arrived here yesterday after leaving La Cruz about 8 hours earlier. We even got to sail a good portion of it!!! One thing that is new since we were here in December is getting internet access from the boat - what a bonus!
We've been hanging out with Tequila Rose and Rosita the past few days. Jerry from Rosita bought the boys ice cream today at the beach - he sure didn't have to ask them to go get the sand of their hands twice!!
What a way to spend your day - life's tough on the beach!!!

One of the boys favorite places... Philo's

Philo's is a bar here in La Cruz that is really enjoyed by ALL the cruisers - no matter what age! When you ask Kyle what he likes best about La Cruz - he'll tell you Philo's. They love to take their allowance and go play a game or two of pool then watch cartoons. Philo has food, a small pool, a pool table, Internet access, and a shower if you really need one...
Today is our last whole day here so you can guess where we'll be going for dinner tonight! It's open mike night also, so maybe we can stick around for some music too....
We may not have much in the way of Internet access after today, so we'll post items via our SSB radio. We're leaving for Chacala tomorrow morning - more surfing for the boys!!!

Music Everywhere

One thing we've noticed since we've been in Mexico is that we've probably listened to more diverse and live music in the past 6 months than we have in the past 6 years. There are so many great musicians that are just hanging out down here and are looking for a place to play. In La Cruz alone, you can go somewhere every night to listen to live music. The picture above is of a couple that plays Latin gypsy music, called Latcho and Andrea - http://www.latchoandrea.com/. They play every Friday night at a restaurant called the Black Forest. The Black Forest is a german restaurant with incredible food!http://www.blackforestpv.com/

These are some of our friends who also were enjoying the music and food at the Black Forest last Friday night. On the left are Steve & Jamie from Reba and on the right are Jim and Sheilagh from Aurora (I'm not real sure who the guy in the middle is).

Some Wheels in PV!!

We rented a car here in PV for a few days. It sure makes hitting Costco and the grocery store much easier. We also took some time and did a little sightseeing...
This is Chico's Paradise. It's on the main road out of PV about 30 miles southeast. Some of the local kids were diving off the huge boulders into the river below. A mini version of cliff diving. It was all very exciting to watch, especially when the oldest blindfolded himself before taking a running start and doing a flip into the water below..
The boys enjoyed their lunch at Chico's.
We did some walking around on the boulders after lunch - no diving for us!!!

Traveling Pictures

As we've traveled along the Mexican Riviera - we've seen so many turtles. They look like floating coconuts! At first we tried to count how many, then we tried to count how many had birds on them - then we tried to get a picture of a bird on a turtle. Rich finally succeeded with the picture. Double click on the picture above to see it better.

This is approaching Cabo Corrientes from the South. Our next "major cape" to round will be Cabo Falso just after leaving Cabo San Lucas in a few months. As we approached Corrientes, the sun was setting and the winds were building. When we finally rounded it we said goodbye (for now) to the southern cross and had about 20 knots of wind right on our nose. Five hours later we were safely anchored in La Cruz and promptly dropped into bed.

Back above 20 degrees North

This is the entrance to the Zihuat yacht club. It's actually really only a restaurant - but it has great food and a fantastic view of the bay! We are now currently in La Cruz in Banderas Bay (near Puerto Vallarta). We left Tenacatita on Tuesday morning at 5:30am and arrived here 19.5 hours later. We will be here until mid next week - cleaning the boat, getting some school days in, etc. Then we will head up the Chacala to let the boys do some more surfing, etc... We will be making our way north and cross the sea of cortez from Mazatlan to Las Frailes towards the middle to the end of the month.
Look who we found when we entered Santiago Bay in Manzanillo!!! You can see our boat anchored in the background. We're really glad we got to catch up with John & Renee before they headed out to cross the pacific. They came over one evening for cocktails, etc - it was great to see them again!! We just got an e-mail from them and they are now South of the equator making their way to the Marqueses!!

Test

This is a test to see if I can post directly from our SSB to our blog...