Hey y'all, we are in San Patricio Melaque now staying in Villa Obregon which is a short walk from Melaque towards Barra de Navidad, all set on a beautiful bay with a great laguna in between teeming with wildlife. Barra is more touristy than here and we are staying in a mexican neighborhood in a little casita that has a nice private palapa upstairs for hammocks and chillin. We had to secure this place a week ago because of the mexican holidays.In preparation for semana santa we have seen businesses and places to stay pop up out of nowhere, while under construction means that you can camp in the concrete shell. Camping on the beach is big for mexicans this time of year and you can pay for bathroom usage. Bahia de Navidad, the bay, is quite nice and has rock hills protruding from the sides of the bay. The waves are big sometimes but break too close to the shore with a strong undertow that messes up the end of the wave for surfing. This is a good place to go and get away but not as far away as Yelapa or Tenacatita. The beach is great, sunsets intense, cheap prices, non pushy salespeople, and totally mexicano.
We rented bikes for a week to take a bit of a break from walking and that's been fun. We tried to rent snorkel gear but it was faulty and we couldn't get our money back because the guy had spent it but he was wondering what we would sell the truck, kayak, and my frayed hat for. So we eventually struck a deal on some bikes that looked like they we from mardi gras in new orleans, pretty run down, I tweaked them a bit and they are ok now except for dueles in las nalgas.
Seems like spring break in Vallarta was a dud, but we go to bed too early anyway. Semana Santa seems to be the real deal, mexican style. We had a glimpse of what was to come a few weeks ago over a three day weekend in Sayulita/Bucerias. The beaches fill up with tents and all hotels are booked.
Another bay we checked out near here called Tenacatita is spectacular and undeveloped, smooth like glass for kayaking and with a good reef snorkel spot. We are going to try and camp there when we leave here next week but it may still be too busy because of the holiday.
We've been speaking lots of spanish here as no one really speaks english, or if they do they let you stumble before jumping in with english impatience. There's not much community here and no work to speak of. The work shortage is probably the same down the coast as urbanization is the trend like Vallarta, where there are more jobs in the area, but there's always the off season when a lot of people leave because of the dip in tourism and the oppressive heat. One observation is that there is a big anti litter campaign now in mexico, signs that say don't litter or sometimes don't contaminate or even don't burn plastic. Kind of like the 80's, and that's not all that's like the 80's....
