Surfing our brains out

We spent about a week anchored out at Punta Mita at the northwest end of Banderas Bay.  We only went ashore once the whole time.  The general routine was to load the boards into our dinghy in the morning and  go around the point to a really exposed surf spot and surf until about noon or so.  Then after lunch and a siesta, we'd take the dinghy to a different break or sometimes just paddle over to the break close to the anchorage.  We ended up seeing a lot of the same surfers every day and made friends with a few of them. We surfed with a guy named Jeff the most.  He's also from Ventura and he's on a sailboat called Journey (http://www.sailblogs.com/member/beller/).  We visited him and his wife Dory on their really nice Passport 40 to get some more information about the surf breaks to the south of us.  We ended up having a bit of boat envy after seeing all the space available on their newer, larger, and more expensive boat.  Jeff told us they have an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of what is located in the over 100 storage locations on the boat.  Oh well, that boat would cost about six times what ours cost so there's no way that we could be cruising on something like that at this point.

We kept up our twice a day surfing routine until Christine's birthday on the 8th.  Then we decided to head back to La Cruz to have some birthday dinner and get some shore based chores done. We ended up at Philo's for dinner due to our gringo craving for pizza. Had the pleasure of some more live entertainment while there since Philo's band was playing. Leon was the highlight of the night, with his washboard, cow bell, and charismatic disposition. There was a belly dance performance during the band's break to change it up a little. Barb would have loved it! Some old fart with a sweater tied over his shoulders got up to dance with her for a while. Very entertaining to say the least.





Yesterday we went on a mission to Bucerias to find some spare surf stuff. When none could be found, we wandered around and ended up at a bar on the beach called Sunset drinking delicious 2 for 1 margaritas. A live band started up shortly thereafter playing covers of the Dead and the Band to name a few. Wish the rest of the Donahues could have been there with us! They would have loved it. As I type right now, a band is playing across the street at Ana Banana's covering every famous classic rock song there ever was. Are you seeing the trend? With the overwhelming majority of gringos in town being over  50, it really isn't all that surprising I guess.

(Please note that all comments that might, in any way, appear at all complementary towards the Grateful Dead were written by Christine, not Jared)