An ongoing theme of this trip has been the quest to meet other “kid boats”. For the first few months we met so few kids that I thought we’d have to rename the blog. Raising Sociopaths in Exotic Locations has a nice ring to it.

Other boat parents we’ve met along the way commiserate, providing social interactions for sailing kids is a challenge which requires extraordinary measures. You stalk families online, you make cold calls, you change your plans if you think it might increase your odds of a meetup. You play matchmaker for other boats, and when you find a compatible family, you don’t let them out of your sight. Maybe you sabotage their fridge so they have to use yours, no creative solution is off the table.

One father lamented to us that he’d been denied access to the sailing families Facebook group that everyone uses to meet other kids. A grown man who created a brand new Facebook account with zero friends for the express purpose of stalking kids online, and he was denied entry? I get it, but I felt bad for him.

After six months of living in relative kid scarcity, we arrived in the Peurto Vallarta area to find it swarming with families! There were so many kids at La Cruz that we didn’t even meet them all, and from there we heard legends of Tenacatita, which was rumoured to be an even greater kid paradise.

The rumours were true, Tenacatita is incredible. We found a ton of boats with kids here, and met up with several other friends that we’ve made travelling down the coast. The kids have made new friends and likely won’t become sociopaths in the near future. Whew! Beyond that, there is surfing, swimming, and snorkelling. There’s a palapa bar on the beach. There’s a beautiful mangrove patch. We’ve heard whales singing underwater and swam in the brightest phosphorescence we’ve ever seen. There’s even a couple of playful dolphins that regularly frolic through the anchorage. It might be our favourite place thus far.

The sailing community in Mexico has a much greater sense of community and solidarity than we’ve seen before. In many anchorages, including this one, there will be a morning VHF net, where all the boats in the anchorage check in via radio, organize events, and have a chance to ask for assistance or offer advice.

Every Friday the boats here do a thing called a “raft-up”, where you can go and tie your dinghy to a bunch of other dinghies and everyone shares snacks, introduces themselves, and answers a themed question. It felt a little like a floating version of an AA meeting that you might see on TV. “Hello, my name is Doug and this is my daughter Nyah. We haven’t touched land in 7 months.” Welcome Doug and Nyah! The theme question for this meetup was “wildlife encounters”. A shocking number of people in the group had collided with a whale! Yikes. We were the only family to have been attacked by a seal.

We often have the opportunity to laugh at the minor inconveniences of boat life. The other day, our friend Angie wanted to make a sandwich. Their fridge is broken -cough-, so she got in the dinghy and came over to retrieve some cheese she had stored in our fridge. She misjudged the approach slightly, leaned in to grab our boat, overextended just a pinch and… splash! She found herself laughing in the bay collecting her belongings. Back on land, there was virtually no risk of finding yourself unexpectedly bobbing in the ocean while trying to make a sandwich.

Across the bay from Tenacatita is the quaint town of La Manzanilla. We made a day trip from the anchorage one day to visit the crocodile sanctuary there. It was interesting getting up close to these beasts, without the annoying “functional safety barriers” that can be so cumbersome at other zoos. Below is a photo we took of a crocodile eyeing up her escape.

Below is the same scene a little later. Notice the guys and their quad have been devoured, and a croc has now proceeded into the pond next to the tourist beach. Thankfully, the final pond has some caution tape around it which should send a stern warning to that crocodile about proceeding any further.

Since we regularly swim in the ocean here this approach to crocodile containment seemed a little worrisome. Upon further research we discovered the fence didn’t really matter because crocodiles live in the wild here anyway. The sanctuary is more of a resort and less of a prison.

The crocodiles in this area are mostly the “American Crocodile”, which are much more benign than the man-eating saltwater crocodiles of Australia. They do occasionally nibble on a tourist, but it tends to happen after dark, in likely cases of mistaken identity. So, nothing to worry about?

This will be tough place to leave!

Some photos…