January 10, 2015 - La Pena

La Pena was a short stop.  We went into the Jaltemba/Guayabitos area and took a look at the three anchoring areas.  The ones on the mainland coast had ocean swell coming in so we decided to anchor off the island of La Pena, which would likely provide a little relief from the swell.  The island did indeed block the main swell so only a small bit of rocking was happening.  Steve put out the stern anchor so that no matter which way the wind tried to point us we would remain heading into the swell so we would rock like a hobby horse rather than a ...............

The beautiful island of La Pena  Palm trees, grasses, trees, and lots and
lots of birds.

Getting ready to snorkel.   Mainland coast and Adagio in background

The small and lovely beach

Snorkeling

Large school of fish.

We call this fish the "needle nose fish".  We catch them at night in nets from the boat.
We need to find a book on Mexico marine life at the next major town.

Kevin touching this friendly fish

Sea snake

Kevin going deep, perhaps 10 feet to the bottom.

Cindy and Kevin on the beach.  Adagio in background as is the mainland

Every night we turn on the underwater lights and find something new.  We turned them on here and found very large schools of small fish darting here and there and being eaten by bigger fish.  This video shows a clip of them.  Really interesting to watch in person.

Thunder cloud building over the mainland. 

Lightning in the above cloud at night.  Steve tried to capture it on

video, but never managed to get a big flash on video, despite

taking about thirty 5 second videos.

 Since the island has no human inhabitants, there are thousands of birds calling it home.   There are other species as well, but the pelicans seemed to be the most abundant.  They had flight paths that took them by our boat away from the island and then back a bit later.  I saw and photographed one bird (with a leg that did not quite tuck in) fly past our boat and return an hour later flying back toward the island.

Pelicans flying by at sunset

This little bird spent the night on our railing.  A bit of a mess to clean up in the morning!

We pulled the anchor right after sunrise and motored for 5 easy hours (smooth water, no wind) to Banderas Bay, home of Puerto Vallerta.  We will spend several nights anchored out at a few intriguing places other than P.V. first though.