Unintended Consequences

Part of the beauty of cruising is the flexibility that comes with carrying your home with you. When you like a place, you can stay put. When you feel like moving on, you move on.
​
But it’s not always that simple. Sometimes you get stuck - and that’s not always a bad thing.

In late February, we sailed into to La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, a small town with a good anchorage and a large marina just north of Puerto Vallarta on Banderas Bay. We planned to spend a couple weeks there.

The day we arrived in La Cruz, someone jokingly told me he called it La Stuck. I laughed that off. But sure enough, our intended two week visit ballooned into a six week stay.

Mainly, that was because we decided to take advantage of the talented labor in the marina and get the caulking on our teak decks redone. It was a long overdue job.

But La Cruz is also a Mexican Mecca for cruisers with an active community of sailors headed in all directions from that one port. This meant not only services for boat work, but lots of information being shared, activities such as outdoor movie nights, weekly markets, and many friends new and old for both the adults and the kids. In short, a great place to spend some time - especially for the kids who could (once school was done) run down the dock to play with friends, swim in the pool, or take the pesos from their allowance up to the store to buy chips and soda.

Six weeks passed quickly and it was time for us to head north. So we were soon saying goodbyes, getting our final ice cream and agua fresca from our favorite sweet shop, getting propane and fuel filled, paying marina bills, and hosting one last sleep over for the kids’ friends… then another last sleepover.

La Cruz ended up being the perfect place to spend six weeks, even though we never intended to.
​