We left Puerto Angel and had a quick sail to Jicaral, which is located in the Huatulco National Park area. The water was crystal clear. The beach was close enough to paddle board to and from Karuna, so we set off to explore the area. There were three small restaurants on the beach, which tourist visited during the day, however, once night fell, the anchorage became quite and peaceful with no other people or lights around.
We shared the bay with some of our friends, and were introduced to a new game of paddle board jump rope. It's a lot harder than one might think. The current record is 6. Doug's personal best is 4 and mine is 2. I can see this becoming one of our favorite past times.
Jicaral offered some nice snorkeling and it was great to be off the grid enjoying the national park. Within a few days, the swell grew insanely uncomfortable due to a Tehuantepecer wind event, which is a violent mountain-gap wind that travels through the Chivela Pass in southern Mexico. We coordinated with the other two boats in the anchorage and we all deployed a stern anchor to help our boats stay into the swell. The waves were big and were running on a short period. I wish we had some pictures, but it was like being on a roller coaster, so we just held on for the ride. We had a couple sleepless nights there with the swell.
Once the seastate calmed a bit we picked up the anchor and went a mile and a half down the coast to La India. As we were arriving the only boat in the anchorage was leaving, perfect timing! La India is a small cove with reefs on each side and had a beautiful sandy beach. This beach was frequented by tourist pangas throughout the day, but we claimed
a slice of the beach near some rocks and enjoyed a couple beach days.
While at La India, we worked on our jib sail as the sun-cover was unraveling at the edges. This meant we lowered the sail, hot knifed the edges and re-sewed them. We borrowed a zigzag Sailrite from our friends on Tantalus and it took two days to complete the project.
The swell found us on our third night in La India and the stern anchors started dragging around 11:30pm. We got up and got that issue situated, with the help from our friends on Tantalus and Aeolian. It's a tight anchorage, so we didn't get much sleep as we were checking the anchors every hour.
After a sleepless night, we picked up the anchor and went to Maguey in hopes of finding calmer water. When we arrived early in the morning, it was calm and quite, but soon after, the chaos began with the arrival of the tourist pangas. It was Semana Santa (Holy Week), which next to Christmas, is the second most widely celebrated holiday in Mexico. It takes place the week before Easter and brings TONS of people to the coastal towns. After an exciting day of fending off pangas from hitting Karuna, we headed to Huatulco where we had a slip reservation at Marina Chahue. We haven't been to a marina in a few months and we're actually looking forward to getting some quality sleep after having such rolly anchorages.
Next up, we are taking a few weeks to do some land based tours and activities, before we continue on.
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