Zihuantengo

AKA Z-town. We’ve been in the Z-town and Ixtapa area for near a week now. Zhuatenejo is where the closing scene in the Shaw Shank Redemption occurs. Ixtapa is the typical big beach hotel al-la Cancun type place.  Z-town is much more kicked back with a really friendly, walking Centro section. Lots of good music and restaurants with a large central market.
The first night we got in here we got rolled up with a cruisers dinner out with the crews from Varuna, Rocinante, Sweetie and Sound Effect(1/2). OK food, but great beer and conversation.
The dinghy landing in Z-town with the locals playing soccer. Most of the time you show up here with your dink and a local is there to grab it and guide it through the surf --- for 10 pesos. Worth the investment to cover the parking insurance.
Heading down here we were seeing a fair number of large ships with their AIS (Automatic Identification System) on. Then on the horizon was a big guy coming our way with no AIS on – strange. Turned out to be Mexican Navy Ship 412, the Usumacinta. Formerly the USS Frederick, built in San Diego in 1968. A Newport Class tank landing ship that made it into Vietnam and Desert Storm. Now doing patrols of the Pacific for the Mexican navy.
Coming down the way we had some intermittent issues with our speed log. These get grunged up with marine growth and the paddle wheels stop turning. So I decided to pull the inch and half plug out. This is always exciting as an inch half of water starts flooding the boat till you replace it with the dummy plug. This time the paddle wheel was really grimed up with some ugly growth. I stuck it in some white vinegar to clean out the hard stuff and then picked out the remaining live matter.
I like the right-of-way instructions posted on the pier at Z-town. The Capitania de Puerto making sure the fishing pangas know the rules. The bottom left one says watch your distance from sailboats and give sailboats under sail right-of-way. Nice thought.
  There are Tortilleria’s in every town in Mexico. Some don’t have as modern a machine as the one above. Giant balls of corn based dough goes in the hopper, out comes flat tortillias to be baked.
A couple of important pictures that I missed posting while we were in Manzanillo.

Giant blue sailfish overwhelming the waterfront.

 

Looking down on the central market from the second floor.

We are off tomorrow heading to Bahias de Huatulco. This should be a 3 or 4 day trip. We may stop at Acapulco for a day or two on the way.

Paul