Happy Thanksgiving From Beautiful Costa Rica!

To say that the scenery here is stunning would be an understatement! The Costa Rican people have all been extremely helpful and pleasant. Supposedly 93 percent of Costa Ricans speak english. All the restaurant / store receipts show a US dollar and a Costa Rican Colony total and everyplace so far has given me the proper exchange rate when using dollars. I will tell you more about my experience here later...but for now enjoy some pictures that I have taken of this beautiful country. Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Telica Erupts!

The 3 day leg between Puerto Chiapas was notable for only 2 things.....we had to hug the coast line due to bad weather out to sea...it wasn't great where we were either...felt like I was in a washing machine for 3 days! However, if we would not have hugged the shore we would not have been able to witness the volcano on Mount Telica in Nicaragua erupt! It happened between 7am and 8 am in the morning. I estimate we were roughly 10-12 miles from it when it erupted. One minute the coastline looked like a bunch of mountains and when we looked out the next time wow! I took a lot of pictures and a video. Some are not so clear but hopefully you will get an idea of what it was like. Enjoy!

Mexico's Last Stop Puerto Chiapas

Puerto Chiapas was our last stop in Mexico. We stopped for one day to complete the immigration and customs paperwork to exit the country legally. The engineer changed the oil on the main engine and generator as well as the fuel filters. We stopped the leak from the fresh water swimming platform shower as well. While only there 1 day I found the marina to be very hospitable. It was very well kept and the people were very nice. Marina Chiapas is located about 15 miles from the Guatemala boarder. It is in a very secluded location down a small canal about a mile from the ocean. It has a nice palapa style restaurant right at the front next to the marina office. Guermo, the marine manager, was extremely helpful and fun to deal with....very "Suave". Here are a few pictures to give you an idea of the marina and things we saw heading up the canal. The palapa style restaurant

It's interesting how the weave the fronds onto the frame to make the roof.

The office and dedication plaque just outside

Guermo and I

Sights from around the marina

A long way from home...I would not have wanted to be on this boat for the journey here...probably a 30ft sportfisher!

Pictures of different things in the canal leading to the marina

We left Puerto Chiapas on Friday, November 20th for 3 day leg to our next country. ...Costa Rica.

Latest Leg Sights

We timed this leg to hit a good weather window going across the Gulf of Tehehuantepec. This area gets really bad weather because there is a break in the Sierra Madre mountain range. The break funnels wind and weather from the gulf of Mexico all the way to the Pacific Ocean. This area regularly gets 3 meter waves and 40 knot winds. Thankfully the captain's weather predictor program was dead on giving us a rare calm window to cross it. This leg was uneventful other than the discovery of a fresh water leak. This turned out to be poor repair job from the previous owner on the fresh water shower on the swim platform. The leak has been stopped but the shower will have to be repaired properly at a later date. Here are some pictures I took along the trip.

If you look closely at the picture below you can see a water spout.

A friend I made along the way

Mexican Navy welcoming escort!

The restaurant overlooking the marina

The official marina welcoming committee!

Good Bye Ixtapa

Ixtapa was a nice place to visit even though I was only there for 2 of the 14 days the boat docked. Ixtapa and Zihuatanejo share the same airport...if Zihuatanejo sounds familiar you might have seen the movie "The Shaw Shank Redemption". Ixtapa is a big resort town with high rise resorts lining the beach. "Zwhat" is more of the regular working class town with a few resort hotels. In Zwhat they actually have a 2 story Sam's Club. You park below and shop upstairs. One issue that we found in Ixtapa ( other than the broken stabilzer) was the stack was spewing carbon sprinkles all over the back of the boat everytime we started it up. This made for a nasty mess that was incredibly hard to clean up. The engineer came up with a great idea to put panty hose over the stack when we first start up to catch the carbon. It might sound crazy but it worked. The sight of that was pretty funny....take a look

We left Ixtapa about 2:30pm local on Monday, November 16 and arrived at our current location about 8am today...Thursday, November 19. We are only planning on being here for a day or so...just enough time to get fuel, take care of some preventive maintenance, and check out of Mexico. Here are some parting pictures of Ixtapa

Notice how narrow the entrance to the marina is...the channel was no more the 40 feet wide!