The Mexican Riviera

We have now moved down the coast a short way and are anchored in Santiago Bay, which is just across from Manzanillo. This is a nice anchorage with a lovely sandy beach.
After Tenacatita we had a short sail down to Barra de Navidad and made our way through the narrow and unmarked channel to anchor in the lagoon. The lagoon is huge but only a portion is deep enough to anchor, even the deep part is not very deep. It is very odd for us Northwest sailors to anchor in 10 ft of water, but with only a 4 ft tide change it can be done. We were careful and kept off the bottom, but several other boats went aground and needed to be helped off. Normally this is no big problem,
but one boat got stuck hard and had to wait 24 hours for the next high tide to get loose. The town of Barra is a tourist town but mainly for Mexican tourists not gringos, and id very friendly towards cruisers. One of the hotels has space to tie up dinghies and lets us use the pool and wifi as long as we also use the bar! Not a bad deal! A favorite thing here is the "French Baker", he has a shop in town where you can get croissants and baguettes, etc... However he also makes deliveries each morning
to the anchorage. People can call on the radio and request items to be brought over the their boat! He seems to have a pretty good customer base in the lagoon.
From Barra we came down to Santiago bay. There are several anchorages in the Manzanillo area that we want to check out, so we may be here a while. The weather has been very pleasant with nice warm days in the mid 80's and cooler nights. I can understand why so many people spend the winter down in this part of Mexico.