Tenacatita

[GPS: N 19° 17’ 56” W 104° 50’ 16”]
On Friday, we left for the 10 mile trip around the corner to Tenacatita Bay. As we entered the bay, we followed one rainstorm in, and just managed to miss the next one coming behind it. There were typically two dozen boats anchored in the main bay.

We stayed 10 nights in Tenacatita. It’s a beautiful spot. There’s a nice long beach with a relatively easy dinghy landing. The Blue Bay resort hotel is at the eastern end and a palapa restaurant at the western end where there is an entrance to a jungle river that goes to the backside of the next beach in Tenacatita Bay. There were a couple of overcast days, but mostly the sky was cloudless blue, and the temperatures typically ranged from lows in the upper 60’s to highs in the mid 80’s. The water was clear (we could see our anchor down through 25’ of water) and a perfect temperature – refreshing and not too cold. Snorkeling around the bay was good.


We ended up feeling like real cruising here - it’s hard to remember what happened one day vs. another. A typical day would start with breakfast while listening to the nets on the radio - Amigo net on SSB at 8am that essentially covers all of Pacific coast of Mexico and the local net for Tenacatita and Barra on VHF at 9am. Late morning we might take a trip up the jungle river and a walk around the beach there and a trip to the tienda for a few groceries – or we might stay on the boat for a few chores – or paddle our kayak over to the rocks near shore for some snorkeling. Most days at 1:30, Rita and Darrell on Overheated hosted a swim to shore. Swimmers would swim about ¼ mile to shore while Darrell would follow along in a dinghy to carry things for the beach and to fend off any pangas. After arriving at shore, we would take a walk along the beach up to the end where the resort hotel is, then walk back for a game of bocce ball on the beach or perhaps Mexican train (dominos). Then we would finish up with some drinks at the palapa restaurant, and get back out to the boats (sometimes swimming back) around 4 or 4:30. Then a couple hours of playing music or reading or internet (with cocktails), followed by dinner, and then a movie.

Robert on Harmony with his wife Virginia is the current “Mayor of Tenacatita”, and organizes/hosts a dinghy raft-up party every Friday afternoon. Each of the two Fridays there were 17 dinghies that came – everyone brought appetizers to share (enough for a meal!) and introduced themselves. The second Friday included a talent show, so Cathy and I played a tune on the button box and mandolin. We shared a couple delightful dinners with John & Jan on Jabiroo (another IP that we met on the Baja HaHa) and (re)learned how to play Rook.

The jungle river goes 2½ miles through some pretty dense mangroves overhanging the narrow river and comes out to a small lagoon, where you can leave your dinghy and take a short walk up to the road and the beach (Playa Tenacatita) which is around a point from our anchorage (still in Tenacatita Bay). There are several palapa restaurants on the beach, a couple hotels, and a small tienda where we stocked up on a few more essential groceries.



Just over a hill there is another beach on a small bay (still inside the main Tenacatita Bay) where there are a bunch of RVers who look like they’ve been there a while, and a short walk across to the Pacific side.


We kept our sunshades up most of the time – I promised a picture of them…