Turtle to San Patricio - Melaque

It's been a very long day, turtling along a hilly, long and windy road.   We were told the drive could take one and half to three hours depending on whether or not you get behind a slow driver or a bus.   These folk passed us like we were standing still...so I think we were the slow drivers that people get stuck behind. 

 

After making the worst choice of campgrounds available to us in Punta Perula, we decided to stop at each of the campgrounds between Tenacatita and San Patricio before making up our minds where to stay.    Tenacatita has evidently had some land ownership issues, the scuttlebutt is the campgrounds were actually squatters, and the owners have decided they want their property back.   Whatever has actually happened, the campgrounds are not available, so our first stop was

Baco Beach.   

We weren't all that excited about this campground.   The beach is beautiful, but that is all there is.   The campground is huge...I imagine it will hold a couple hundred RV's.   For 280 pesos a night, plus hydro, we were pretty sure we wouldn't be coming back to it.    While we were there a fellow approached us and told us there was another campground, just around the corner, so we had a peak at the Baco Iguana.   Yikes!   Need I say more?  We didn't even take a picture.      

La Manzinillo was our second town to check out.   We stopped and took a walk around.    This is the church in the centre of town...it seems all the little towns have a center square with a church, so it is easy to find your way, all you have to do is look for a steeple or cross.    It's a quaint little village and we want to do at least one day trip to it, but we weren't excited about the campgrounds.    

After lunch we hopped into Myrtle and drove down to the other end of town where the campgrounds are and forgot to bring the camera.   The below picture is the beach in front of the little dutch restaurant we had lunch in.   

The campgrounds in La Manzanilla are directed at Mexican families down to the beach for the weekend, Christmas and Easter vacations.    They are lovely, on sand, but have no ammenities.   I think we are spoiled because the thought of not being able to use the air conditioner in this heat is less than appealing to us.   

The drive to San Patricio-Melaque took us up into the mountains and was extremely curvy.   Around each bend we had a quick glimpse of the land below.    

The Travellers Guide to Mexican Camping by the Church's said San Patricio would be easily recognizable by the dolphin statues at the road crossing Mex 200...yup, it was hard to miss, but we tried and almost succeeded.    

This is the town square

The street leading to the camp ground

We are waaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy too tired to check out all the campgrounds...the best laid plans of mice and men....we took the first campground in San Patricio.   Let's hope we have better luck this time.   We are putting down rubbery roots, like it or not.   We'll let you know how great/bad it is tomorrow. 

We got a pretty good spot we can see the Ocean from Myrtle

At the far end of the beach is another trailer park which is almost free.   We are told they have no electricity or water but it only cost 200 pesos a month.  They dig a hole in the sand and empty their septic and gray water.   It's not very eviromentally friendly....so we won't go there even though we could save a chunk of cash. 

There is an RV park at the other end of the beach but we are told it's too far from town.  So we are here a little bit pricey at 300 pesos a night.  The only problem that I hear about is every thing you leave out side at night grows legs and runs away.    We haven't had that problem anywhere else but both Church's book and the folk in the campground confirm the rumour of petty thieves in the area, so we will not leave anything outside overnight.    That's going to be a pain, but what the heck, what else do we have to do?     

We went for a walk into town and bought a frozen banana covered in chocolate and coconut, they are about half the cost here of what they are in Sayulita.   We also noticed things like shorts and dresses were much less expensive.    Perhaps we have found our place to shop.  We had the big discusion if one of these sinks would look good in our bathroom.They are about 40 dollars so the price was right.