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The village
of Barra de Navidad has come into its own in recent years. A large resort, The Grand Bahia, has been built, complete with expensive ($1 per foot) marina and a fuel dock. It sits on the western side of the river that flows from the lagoon behind the village, and pangas carry resort guests to and from the village day and night.
A movie company filming McHale's Navy dredged the lagoon, which was just a marsh in 1988. They kept the boats used in the motion picture in that lagoon while doing the major filming six miles north in Bahia Tenacatita.
These days, cruisers use the Barra de Navidad lagoon as an anchorage while visiting Barra de Navidad. The water is very shallow with an average of 10 feet and a mud bottom. The channel into the main lagoon, once you get past the marina entrance and the channel leading to the fuel docks, is dicey at best and unmarked. However, the marina has marked the channel to the fuel docks quite well, but there is only one way in and out. This has caused several trusting cruisers new to the area to go astray and get stranded on the mud shelf beyond the fuel dock.
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The lagoon anchorage is generally calm and well-protected from wave action, but during the winter months the winds typically pick up in the afternoon to about 25 knots from the southwest, and the daily dragging races begin. Those who don't put out enough scope, and even sometimes those who do, take a chance when they leave their boats to venture ashore for the afternoon. When the winter winds are blowing, the wind chop makes the dinghy ride into town pretty wet, which is usually okay because the water temperature is in the high 70s and low 80swe are all waterproof, anyway. The fun part is surfing back to the boat later.
There's a really nice, typically Mexican hotel that overlooks the small bight just prior to the lagoon entrance—the Hotel Sands. It's older and appears to need an outer paint job, but the lush, verdant garden in the interior patio transports you to the tropics instantly. They encourage cruisers to tie their dinghies at the sea wall and to use their swimming pool for only 30 pesos (and, of course, enjoy their fully-stocked bar).
Farther into town from the Hotel Sands we found a wonderful ambience of cobbled streets and palm trees, modest living quarters where laundry strung between two ficus trees hangs outside above the sidewalk while salsa music blares from an open window down the street. Mixed in with the residences are taco stands, walk-in-sit-down restaurants, art displays, crafts, small convenience stores, butcher shops, and even a free book exchange started by a now land-bound cruiser.
The book exchange store hours are whatever the owner feels like. His open/closed sign says in English, "Open Hours When I'm here." His store holds thousands of books, hardback and soft cover, in several languages, but primarily English.
Not feeling well? There is also a very good doctor available. Want to send e-mail? You can go to Barra de Navidad, or you can choose from two or three locations in Melaqué. But be prepared to wait patiently, for the computers are very, v-e-r-y s-l-o-w. If you feel homesick or prefer a really good American-style hamburger and fries, you can mosey on over to Tessa's, a restaurant owned and operated by a young American man, who named the restaurant after his Rottweiler dog. His stuff is better by far than McDonald's or Burger King.
Provisioning is a matter of choices for the cruiser. We can go to Melaqué and shop in slightly larger stores and a food warehouse or stay in Barra de Navidad and select fruits and vegetables from one of the local tiendas (stores) or from the mobile vendors, who come around with pickup trucks loaded with fresh produce.
Or, if you like, you can go out to the lagoon and wander up the hill behind one of the restaurants and go to Maria's. Maria gets new things in from Sam's Club in Guadalajara twice a week, including such delicacies as large, fresh, globe artichokes. You can put in an order with Maria for anything Sam's Club carries. She will even deliver your larger orders to your boat in a panga.
Good butcher shops abound in both communities, but if you just HAVE to have your prepackaged meats, hop the bus to Manzanillo and go to the huge supermarket, Comercial Mexicana. It's an hour's ride and costs 39 pesos one way (that's about $4.33 at today's exchange rates of nine pesos to the dollar.)
Both Melaqué and Barra de Navidad have central bus stations that provide transportation locally or to farther flung destinations such as Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta or even, with lots of transfers, up to the United States. Local fares are four pesos one way. A trip up to Guadalajara will cost around 130 pesos one way. It's still the best way to travel since gasoline and diesel in Mexico is running about $2.45.
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The village of Barra de Navidad has become an enclave for ex-patriot Americans, Canadians, and Europeans, who have purchased property and built homes or who lease housing for the winter months. It absolutely crawls with tourists in the months of December through April. Anywhere you look you can see them in their straw hats and odd ideas of appropriate beach town dress for holiday ventures with most of the men strolling around in shorts and black ankle socks and sturdy brogans. The yachtie uniform consists basically of shorts, T-shirt, and backpack slung over one shoulder; baseball hats for the guys, straw hats for the gals.
The large influx of gringos doesn't seem to have spoiled Barra. The community seems to retain its Mexican culture where sniggering at oddly dressed people is simply not done. Store and restaurant owners smile and greet us as old friends when we return to the area each winter. They remember we live on a boat and that we try to speak Spanish and give them help with their English. It feels like coming home.
In Mexico the cruising community ebbs and flows with the times. We come and go and remark on changes, think fondly of old friends and former haunts, help each other out in any way we can, and look forward to the next adventure of getting to know another place or roll with the punches delivered by governments. We seek the quiet anchorages and the good provisioning ports, and we get to know even better a people who are warm and friendly and courteous to all. This is THE life.
The reports on the travels of Anne and Mike Kelty aboard their Whitby 42 Michaelanne will continue as they head south into Central America. Longtime readers of Southwinds will recall the Kelty's stories and artwork as they cruised south from Florida into the Bahamas and Caribbean in the mid-1990s.
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- Local News for Southern Sailors - April 2002 Next Story
