And on to Acapulco

12-29-06 Friday
We are anchored in Acapulco Harbor, just off the Acapulco Yacht Club. We are a little reluctant to take a slip at the club since they want $145/night for the privilege. That buys a lot of groceries! We are thus far rather underwhelmed with Acapulco. It is big, crowded, and full of tourists (I know, we are pretending that we aren't tourists.) I'm sure that Acapulco would prefer the other kind of tourist because they are spending money like crazy. There are TWO cruise ships here and so thousands of happy consumers are supporting the local economy.
We are going out to dinner tonight with some friends we met who are also sailing South. He is 70-something and has already circumnavigated once. Now he is going back and seeing places that merit more time. The other night we were at a party on a boat in Ziwa which had two circumnavigators aboard. The other couple was from Ventura! Small world, eh?
So when we go to dinner, we will start to see the town. Right now we are anchored and waiting for a guy who has some moorings for $10/day. A mooring is a big heavy weight with chains coming to the surface and a big float so that you can pick up the end of the chain. You use it in place of an anchor. We don't really want to anchor here because 1) it is deep; 2) it is mud bottom; and 3) because there is all kinds of junk on the bottom that can foul your anchor. As I was typing this, the guy showed up so we are now moored and ready to go ashore and deal with the official paperwork, buying fuel, and then seeing the sights.
We just loved Ziwa! It is really charming. We recommend it entirely. We will upload some pictures as soon as we get them out of the camera.
Here is the Zocalo, the central square in Acapulco, during the New Years Eve celebration. We hung out here early and then went back to the boat for the midnight fireworks, which came from 8 locations all around the harbor. Pretty spectacular. The next morning, we left.
Here is a generic shot of the Acapulco harbor. Generally, we were not impressed with Acapulco. It was crowded, noisy, and had the kind of big city feel that makes you nervous. There were obvious people on drugs and just the kind of crazy that big cities tolerate, but little towns don´t (in the same way).