Barra de Navidad (“Christmas Sandbar”) is a small farming and fishing community on the western coastline of the Mexican state of Jalisco.
We left Tenacatita and sailed South to Barra de Navidad. There’s a large beautiful resort and golf course here that seems to see little use. For cruisers like us, there’s a shallow lagoon (top of picture) that provides good shelter from the swell. Everywhere you go cruising is different and this place is no exception. There are a combination of factors that make this a fun place. The town is populated by LOTS of ex-pats and fun street restaurants. There aren’t large supermarkets but there are lots of tiendas and fruterias for provisioning.
Tenacatita is only 10 NM away so it’s a handy place to take a boat for boat hull cleaning or snorkeling trips because the water is so calm and beautiful. The warm, nutrient rich waters here in Mexico grow lots of sea life on the bottom of our boat such as barnacles, algae and everything you see growing on a pier. That needs to be scraped off every few weeks. Ugh! Guess who gets to do it? Kevin (with a snorkel). Occasionally, we will hire a diver to do it but a lot of places we visit don’t have much for services.
The lagoon anchorage here is connected to a large mangrove swamp with (apparently) crocodiles so no swimming here and we have to watch Riley closely when we take him to certain beaches. It also means we can’t make our own water. With that said, every few days we have to pull up the anchor and sail out into the ocean and float around and make water until our tanks are full. We make fresh water by using reverse osmosis. Sea water is filtered through our water maker system to remove salt and impurities and becomes fresh water. It is then pumped into our 2 water tanks and the remaining brine is returned to the sea.
During the night local fisherman circulate through the boats in the lagoon fishing for bait for their morning long-line set. In the morning, the French Bakery boat brings pastries to the anchorage. Kids in small boats stop by during the day and sell items they have made. Need a ride to shore and don’t want to take your dinghy? Hail a water taxi on Channel 23 and one will come and pick you up at your boat for a few pesos.
Walking down the street is striking because there are SO many Americans and Canadians. Most of these people are not staying in the resort across the bay. They seem to own homes or are staying in Airbnb’s and apartments. There are also some beautiful homes in man-made canals off the lagoon. Unlike Bucerias next to Puerto Vallarta, there doesn’t seem to be any high rise condos getting built which is a pleasant surprise. Along the Mexican coastline we’ve seen miles of mostly deserted beaches.
Our next destination is Zihuatanejo (Z-Town) to attend the International Guitar Festival.
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