Tenacatita

We arrived here on Friday by late afternoon and again after a lot hand wringing about landmarks and questions like "Is that the abandoned hotel over there that we are supposed to aim for?" we got safely anchored. There were over 30 boats here but it is a large anchorage and no one was crowding anyone else. Saturday we took a trip up the river to get to the outer anchorage and get a few provisions. The local resort runs "jungle cruises" up the river and it is pretty spectacular. It's hemmed in by mangroves for most of it's length and there are places where it is really only wide enough for one dinghy. We me the jungle tour panga a couple of times and had to crowd into the mangroves so they could get by. When we got to outer anchorage, we were a bit surprised by what we found. It's a long stretch of beach with maybe a down palapas (small restaurant bars). There is a small store (they call them Mini Super for some reason) and they had a decent selection of fruits and veggies and other basic provisions. We stocked up on the necessities, had a bit of lunch on the beach, watched the world drift by and practiced saying no gracias to all the vendors that ply their trade along the strip. It is basically a middle class Mexican vacation spot. Sunday and Monday were taken up with boat chores, walks on the beach, a bit of swimming. Yesterday we ventured over the resort with laptops to connect to their internet service. We had gone over the day before to ask if they would mind and they fell all over themselves to say yes, no problem. I think they were a bit taken aback that someone would actually ask permission.
It is a bit strange as we move through these anchorages. There is usually a local cruisers radio net on VHF 22 in the mornings. There's always someone trying to organize everyone else into doing group activities. Volleyball on the beach, bacci ball, group dinners at the local restaurant. The thing that people don't do is interact with the locals at all. Everything is about staying in the group of boaters. It gets a bit surreal at times. It seems that people come down here and want to recreate the neighbourhoods they left behind at home. Not what Cathy and I are looking for. We are happier finding a few close friends to share experiences with and try to see some of what makes each place unique. Here it has been the river trip and the outer anchorage. It's good to see a developing middle class in Mexico. There is still a tremendous amount of poverty and corruption and nothing ever seems to get quite finished but there is hope. Some of the cruisers point to all the resorts that are springing up and say that that's a sure sign of improvement. It could be except the resorts are mostly foreign owned and the staff are paid whopping great salaries of maybe 100 peso's a day (around 10 USD). It doesn't buy much.

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