Into Barra De Navidad

So first off i would like to say sorry for not posting for the last 2 weeks. Barra has been a whirlwind of entertainment, food, friends, waves, and smiles. To give you all an idea, ill try and explain what has happened to us the last couple of weeks.
We left san blas and headed south, to Punta Mita, rode a "chicken" bus around to la cruz gave ourselves a good scare with the bus driver on those roads and enjoyed some shopping. We left Punta Mita and headed around cabo corrientes and anchored off of Ipala. The anchorage was a little rough there, but we still managed to cook up a tempura feast of fresh red snapper, and all sorts of veggies. We used the leftover tempura and rolled a bunch of suhi rolls as well, which made for great meals on our trip down to Chemela the next day.
At Chemela we braved the dingy landing and got to shore through the waves, no problem. too easy it seemed.  we enjoyed a meal under a palapa, as well as a bucket of beers and watched the sun set. When it came time to get back out through the waves... well the waves won when the motor didn;t want to start when it was supposed to. We completely swamped the dink. 3 years ago while at Chemela we had done with same thing.... Chemela 2, us 0.
The trip from Chemela to the laguna in Barra de nadivad was great, we even hit 11 knots! we managed to get into the lagoon with only a minor running aground on the prevalent sand bars. Finally we are in barra again!
Barra greated us with a bang. We made it in time for Super bowl sunday and the semi famous PK's pig roast. we grilled a 85 kilo pig for 12 hours, and then opened up the bar to 70 happy superbol waters. all was free, and everything in the fully stocked bar was consumed by the end of the game. 20 cases of beer, and more or less 3 bottles of every kind of booze you can imagine, it made for a happening party and some wicked hangovers the next day. and so began the trip down the rabbit hole that is barra. we have reunited with old friends, made many more new friends and spend our days, walking the quiet pleasant streets, eating the amazing food, laying in the sun on the beach, or laying on our surfboards catching rides that take you all the way to the beach. So i have to go into the food here. It is the best. it is cheap and delicious. We have Liquados (fresh fruit smoothies) in the mornings when we get to town. Some mornings the French baker, who makes rounds of all the boats in the marina and laguna every day with fresh baguettes, chocolate croissants key lime pies etc, comes by to deliver anything we want and we happily hand over our pesos for breakfast delivered to the boat. when we are not at the beach, eating meals, or walking up and down the main drag, we go to the Sands Hotel and Pool where we keep our surfboards and tie up the dingy and lay around the pool, chat with friends, and use the internet. Barra comes alive at night. this daytime sleepy surf town has a nightlife that basically rocks! taco stands open up to serves food from 10-2 some earlier and some later. For those of you who have ever had taco bell after or during a night of drinking... then you might undersantd when i say that the food here is like having 15 different styled taco bells but cheaper and 100x better. and that just covers the taco stands! we have eaten so many $1 quessadillas and tacos cooked on bbqs made out of tire rims, many of which are hands down the best tacos we have all ever had. one place in particular, mariams.com as its called is worth mentioning as we have all agreed it is the best of the best.
Things are niot always good, and we finnally hit a bump when we woke up one morning and found our dingy floating off in the mangroves. we recovered the dink, but not our motor... someone decided to cut our painter and make off with our kicker.... @$$!0!$. what a bummer. Thankfully they have a great water taxi service here, so we can poay our 25 pesos for round trip tickets to the lagoon and back.
Our friend Tokkie on ata Marie came into town, and we have spent a bunch of time having afternoon cocktails aboard their boat in the marina. he has been kind enough to loan us passes to use the grand bay facilities. He went above and beyond on valentines day and took us all out for a group valentines day dinner at the grand bay restaurant, where we enjoyed a most excellent 8 course meal. Thanks Tokkie!
The day before valentines day we met another group of young cruisers, 5 seasonal firefighters from cal poly who are all on a 36 foot boat. We enjoyed spending a day out surfing with them, and sharing some stories and experiences, and really enjoying the fact that there were other young boaters out there! We all agreed to meet up on their boat fro drinks that night, and as it happened to be, there were 10 Norwegian girls in town visiting from the reality TV that they are filming in chemela. So it ended up that there were 20 people on board this 36 foot boat, all drinking and dancing and in general having the best party on the water the laguna has ever seen. I have never seen a better performance of 20 people from all over singing Coolios gangster paradise. What a fun time everyone had! We hope all the dudes from three sheets have a safe and surf filled journey northward. They were super cool and sold us a spare outboard motor, which after some TLC we got running and it is sooo good to have "wheels" again. We are looking forward to the next week, as we are taking friends out for a day sail, then throwing a rib dinner party for a fundraiser for the new motor.
On a different note, Luke and Jacqui will be departing the Gadfly II crew soon. They woke up one morning with the calling to go to Tailand, and so bought tickets and will be leaving to the other side of the world at then end of this month. We have all really enjoyed our time together, and it will be sad to see them go, but I wont lie, tailand sure does sound amazing. so that catches us up a bit here, and I will try to post more stories and tell you all about the water slide parks and other fun things we find ourselves doing here, as well as add more pictures. The internet is always on then off, so hopefully it will come back on so I can actually post this!