Ixtapa Island (“Isla Grande” or “Isla Ixtapa”) – Great Spot!

Mid-December, 2010 - Our days in Manzanillo made us feel like our

cruising lifestyle was truly underway.  We basked in the warm weather,

pretty scenery, and exotic locale.  The only downside was the

persistently thick, smokey air.  Small fires burned every night.  Either

people were burning their trash or one rumor was that farmers were

burning off the remains of last year's crops.  The large power plant in

the downtown port area contributed its own steady plume of smoke too.

It made an eerily pretty sight in the morning sun as we sailed away.

We had planned to make

Manzanillo our southernmost

stop, but new friends talked us

into sailing another 180 miles

south to Zihuatanejo.  Most boats

do this passage in a single 30 hour run, but we took

four days to get there, stopping at each of the three

anchorages along the way.

Mark had dragged a hand fishing line for many hours on several days of our travels, with no

luck.  As we approached Cabeza Negra, our first night's anchorage, he pulled the hand line

in to stow it away and suddenly yelled, "I think I've got something!"  Sure enough, he had a

34" long yellowfin tuna.  It was a beautiful fish.  Feeling a weird mixture of excitement over

catching it and terrible sadness at the prospect of killing it, I burst into tears.  What a great

fishing companion I am!

Cabeza Negra is a tiny

anchorage cradled by a private,

gated, guarded community.

Listening to a band playing on

shore, Mark cleaned the fish.

We had a  delicious fish dinner

that night, and our freezer was

quickly stuffed with a month's

worth of meals.

There was no wind along this coast, so we motored most of

everyday.  The sea turtles were plentiful.  Our next

anchorage, Maruata, has a turtle sanctuary, and their

efforts must be working, because we passed at least ten to

twenty turtles on each of our day's passages.  One turtle

was even giving a bird a ride.

We had grown to love our chartplotter, as it makes navigating so easy,

but we soon learned to watch it with a weather eye.  Mexico's survey

data is ancient, and the chartplotter reflects that.  Coming into each

anchorage we used the radar and hand-entered accurate GPS

waypoints from our guidebooks to get the true lay of the land.  In

Maruata's case, the chartplotter drawing was half a mile off.  The

guidebook's GPS coordinates for dropping the anchor appeared to be

on land, and we sailed right through the chartplotter's inaccurately

drawn, rock-strewn coast on our way in.

Maruata's bay was slightly larger than our

previous night's anchorage at Cabeza

Negra.  The village has just a few

buildings and an old air strip.  We

watched some young men deftly

maneuver their panga in among  the surf-

pounded rocks.  In no time they had

caught something in the net they had

thrown off their bow.

On a nearby bluff the birds went crazy

squawking at each other as the sun set.

After the sophisticated air of Las Hadas

resort in Manzanillo, with its loud bands

playing all day and all night, this coastline

felt very remote and rugged.  We saw

nothing but sea, sky and occasional

creatures as we sailed during the day,

and all we could hear at anchor was the

surf on the beach and the birds in the

trees.

Michoacán, the state we were sailing through, is known as

a top producer of pot, and the route we were taking has

been a common drug running route.  However, other than

three enormous tankers we didn't see one other boat

during our entire four day jaunt, except for a small Navy

boat that might have been patrolling the area.

Underneath our boat, however, there was all kinds of activity.  Our depth gauge would read proper

depths as we left each night's anchorage in the morning and again as we approached our new

anchoring spot in the afternoon.  But all day in between it would read crazy shallow depths.

Sometimes it hovered around 10 feet, and sometimes around 25 feet or 50.  Schools of fish seemed

to find our shadow a pleasant place to hang out.  Our speed of 6.5 to 7.5 knots suited them just fine,

and they swam along beneath us.  At one point, when we stopped the motor and slowed to 3 knots to

sail for a while, they all disappeared (those fish didn't have time for 3 knots!).  Suddenly our depth

gauge showed three dashes, indicating it couldn't get a depth reading.  The true depth was a

thousand feet, too deep for it to measure.

Caleta Campos was our last overnight spot on our way to

Zihuatanejo.  We were using three guidebooks, cross referencing

them to find areas where the authors agreed and disagreed.  One

book, Charlie's Charts, was originally written 30 years ago, and

despite annual updates it gives the flavor of a different Mexico and

an era of cruising that is long gone.

His book warned that Caleta

Campos could easily be confused

with another anchorage,

Pechilinquillo, 23 miles further down

the coast, because the mountains

and coastal features are similar.

Unless your chartplotter died or the

satellites stopped transmitting, you could never be 23 miles off in your navigation these days.

But even if you were that far off, nowadays you couldn't possibly confuse these two

anchorages.  One has a huge radio tower and a giant white cross placed high on a hill along

with a sizeable town that lights up like a Christmas tree at night.  Its pricey looking villas cling

to the rocky cliffs.  The other anchorage has just a building or two on a deserted sand beach.

As with the two previous anchorages, we

debated getting off the boat to explore

ashore at Caleta Campos but opted not

to, as landing the kayak or dinghy on the

beach looked a little challenging.  But it

was delightful to view from a

distance.  Boatloads of

teenagers dashed about in

pangas, and the many beach

bars were jumping.

The next day we passed by

the huge industrial port of

Lázaro Cardenas.  This port

supports an oil refinery, and

huge tankers carry

cargo in and out.

We were five miles offshore, but we could smell the port long

before we could see it.  Suddenly we noticed tennis ball sized

balls of tar floating past us.  Just a few at first, but soon we were

engulfed.  Alarmed, we hung over the rail until we noticed we

were heading straight for a long line of congealed tar balls.  We

aimed for a narrow spot in what looked like a barrier wall and

motored through unscathed.  The jagged line of tar zig-zagged

as far as we could see in both directions.

A little later, just as we were remarking on the deep rich blue-green color of

the water (a welcome change after the murky grey-green we had been seeing

all along this coast), we spotted an enormous swath of mustard yellow water

ahead of us.  It looked like a cruise ship had dumped its holding tanks, but it

didn't smell.  We passed through it unharmed but unnerved, and wondered if it

had been an algae bloom.  Half an hour later, just as we approached our

destination of Isla Ixtapa, we motored through a mammoth patch of deep red-

brown.  This appeared to be a red tide, something we had heard about but

never seen.  During the next 10 days we watched two more red tides sweep

through the anchorage at Isla Ixtapa.

Red tide aside, Isla

Ixtapa (also known as

Isla Grande) was a

total delight.  Three

charming coves shape

the perimeter of the

island.  Two are ideal for swimming, strolling and kayaking and are

daytime hosts to a fleet of banana boats and jet skis that come over

from the large resorts on the mainland just a mile away.

After landing the kayak on one of these two beaches we made a

beeline along a little footpath across the island's interior for the third

cove.  We tromped through the thin woods, passing six foot tall

Christmas cactus that were in full bloom.  The leaves crunched under

our feet, surprising a deer who lept away at the sound.   Some time later, while

we lounged under the beach umbrellas, another deer bounded across the sand

at full speed, running along the water's edge the entire length of the beach until

he reached the protection of the woods at the far end.

Not only were there deer on the island, but

there were bunnies too.  Fortunately for us, the

beachside restaurants left the outer leaves of

their lettuce heads in a huge pile for the

animals.  Another day we watched four deer

standing amid the lettuce, munching away.  It

seemed they were in heaven.

We were too.  The third, southernmost cove is a great snorkeling area, filled with craggy

rocks and live, colorful coral.  No sooner did I put my head in the water than I found myself

surrounded by large schools of fish.  Tiny royal blue

fish with iridescent blue spots darted in and out of

the coral.  Big schools of large silver fish with bright

yellow tails cruised just under the surface, turning

and changing direction as one body.  Chubby grey

fish with long flowing fins hovered over the reef.

After the weird pollution and algae blooms it was a

thrill to see bright living coral and happy fish, despite

water visibility of just 8 feet.

This little island is a vacation paradise.  Tourists come out from the

mainland resorts a mile away in small water taxis, six or eight to a boat.

The day is whiled away with swimming, snorkeling, boat rides and bathing

suited beachside dining.  Then the water taxis take everyone back to

shore for the evening.

At night the island closes up and

all is quiet, as only a handful of

people live there.

Lots of kids and parents enjoyed

the island together.  Most tourists

were Mexicans, and while watching

the families playing together I got

chatting with Santos, one of the

restaurant workers, about how

important family is in Mexican

culture.

Comparing notes about remarriages

and step-kids and extended families,

he told me there is a saying in Mexico that

every Mexican knows:  "Si la vaca es tuya,

son tuyos los becerros," or "If the cow is

yours, the calves are yours."

No woman wants to be compared to

a cow, but this saying seemed to me

to be a very profound statement of

the level of commitment that is

expected and given.  I can't think of

an English expression about family

relationships that carries quite the

same weight.

There is a fourth beach on this

tiny island that is accessible

only by scrambling over some

rocks.  We wandered that way

and put the day's first footsteps in

the sand there.

Over on the mainland there are

several large beaches backed by

beautiful resorts.  We strolled the

beaches, peering into the resorts

to see how that half lived.

Mexican law keeps all beaches open for

public access, and down by the public

access area there is a fenced estuary that

is kept as a natural wildlife habitat.  Wading birds walked along the

outside of the fence, casually searching for goodies in the water.

Behind them a sign read, "No dar de comer a los crocodilos,"

"Don't feed the crocodiles!"

And there they were: on the other side of the fence were at least

20 crocodiles.  These guys are big!  They lolled around, looking

ever so docile, several of them resting with their mouths wide open.

To complete this exotic picture, a

group of iguanas crawled awkwardly

about.  Each one had a unique body

and face.  They swayed slowly,

surveying the scene around them.

We enjoyed Isla Ixtapa so much that 10 days slipped

by in an instant.  Rather waterlogged from days on end

of swimming and snorkeling, we finally pulled up the

anchor and moved the boat the last ten miles to

Zihuatanejo.

Find Isla Ixtapa on Mexico Maps

Visit Anchorages on Mexico's Southern Pacific Coast

to see more cruising posts from this area!