February 26, 2014 - Santiago Bay

We left the out-of-place architecture of Las Hadas and motored less than an hour to Bahia Santiago.  It is a spectacular bay with a beautiful sand beach that arcs in a gentle curve for several miles.  The Bay is protected from the typical NW winds and SW swell, so it's a great place to be this time of year.

The beach is lined with dozens of small Ramada/palapa restaurants.  We only ate one meal ashore, but it was good, the beer was cold, and the prices cheap.  This is far less touristy than most of our previous stops.  Very little English is spoken here.  I think we are now experiencing the genuine Mexico culture.  Almost all of the visitors are Mexican's, nobody seems to know English, prices are cheap, and the food is great.  The people are warm and friendly too....

The kids helping this solo trimaran gentleman get his dinghy back in the water.  
We are still working through the surf landings and exits, they are always a bit stressful.

You never know you will see next on a Mexican beach.
Hal, Kevin, Zoe, and Cindy check out the 3 horses.

Mexican Navy during some kind of training exercise.  Orange smoke signals, liferaft
in the water, and a smaller patrol boat too.  Our friends Tom and Annie on
sv Tappan Zee anchored out in front of the action.  One of many freighters coming in.

A Blue-Footed Booby perched on one of the last visible portions of a 300' freighter
that ran aground in the 1950's.  

The remains of the 300' steel freighter San Luciano which sank in 1959 during
a category 5 hurricane.  It is now home to thousands of sea creatures.
We were going to snorkel here but it was very murky water with terrible visibility.

The Playa de Boquita area of Bahia Santiago.  Shipwreck foreground.

We can only guess that this is some sort of monument to those lost at sea.
It is on a small, very rugged island, pretty far from town.

We did go snorkeling at the "aquarium" but the visibility was poor.  We didn't
see many fish this day.