So I slowly trucked my way down the coast. The ocean was choc full of turtles. I bet I saw 200-300 during one day alone!
My parents hadn't yet been introduced to the glory of Mexican roadside roasted chickens, so we rustled up one of those for dinner after some snorkling. The next morning, we woke up fairly early to sail down to Huatulco. The weather didn't quite match the forecast, and the wind was coming from exactly the direction we were hoping to go. We did some tacking, some motorsailing, and zigged and zagged our way towards Huatulco. Normally I'll average about 6-8 fish a day while I'm cruising and trolling a line, but on this day, when we were all really hoping to catch fish, we didn't get a single bite on the trolling line. Around midday, we saw a big school of tuna feeding on a bait ball and the wind had fallen silent, so my Dad and I sped off in the superhighway to see if we could manage to hook one. I'm not sure what hit the line, but it hit hard and immediately broke the lure off. It must've been a shark or something very large, but we'll never know.
They were great sports about it and while I'm sure it was a bit of a scary experience for them, I think it also reinforced what a great sea-boat the Rascal is. She rose to all of the waves like a duck, with gentle motion and a minimum of drama. They were the biggest seas I've seen since I got to Mexico, and a good reminder of the ugly situations the can quickly occur in the Tehuantepec. We checked into the marina and took a cab to an absolutely gorgeous condo where we spent the rest of our stay in Huatulco.
So we got a bunch of tacos to share, and because of their enthusiasm for Oaxaca cheese from earlier in the day, we also got a bowl of queso fundido with al pastor mixed in. It was just as decadent and glorious as I had imagined and my parents were in seventh heaven. My only gripe with this great restaurant was a bit of trickery they play to entice people in from the street.
Beers in Mexico are basically always 12-15 pesos in a gas station or a convenience store. A little less than a dollar in most cases. At pretty much any restaurant, beers are 20-25 pesos - perhaps $1.50 on average. Its quite rare to see a beer for as much as 30 pesos and you almost never see a beer for less than 20. This al pastor restaurant, however, was advertising 15 peso beers!!! "What an incredible deal," we thought! "We better head on in there and drink our weight in those things," we thought. But when these 15 peso beers arrived, we were totally crestfallen. They were tiny beers. They were just 6-8 OZs and we felt like we had been totally duped. In retrospect, this trick had been played on me before with similar amounts of consternation.
Our stroll continued until we came upon a place advertising "Argentine Tortas". This piqued my interest and a big wood-fired grill out front with lumps of sizzling steak sealed the deal. It was a tiny little restaurant, decorated with pictures of various world leaders eating big sandwiches, and we decided on an arrachera torta and a "mixed" torta that had two types of sausage, steak, and pork leg on it. We were expecting a lot based on the grill and the decor, but when they arrived, we were blown away. They were absolutely DELICIOUS. They even had chimichurri as a condiment. The grillmaster came by our table as we were finishing up and he was impressed to learn that this was our second dinner (our desert, we decided) and we realized that this wouldn't be our last torta of the week.
The next day was dedicated to more snorkeling, some beaching, and lots more eating - in true Haney fashion. We covered some really interesting territory up and down the coast and searched out a few beaches that were a little more secluded than others. Heck, we might've even enjoyed a few beers.
Porter volunteered to take care of weather and routing for my next few long passages, so we poured over pilot charts and weather models and decided how I wanted to route my way through. I'll be sending him location updates as I cruise along and he will send weather updates each morning so nothing catches me by surprise. We went out drinking and carousing that night and got into some more delicious food in Crucecita. Porter also managed to lose another few cribbage games and I'm finally ahead of him in our overall lifetime tally.