My little corner of the world: Mexico......Road Trip South----Part 2

That last post was cut short a little bit!!! :-)

This is Mexico and the internet is not always working, so ya gotta take what you can get.....I cannot always get the pics to upload, so I'll just post more later.....

So.....onward south.....

Alongside the road are fields, fields, fields. There are Bananas, Papayas, Limes, Oranges, Pineapple, Sugar Cane, Agave, and the Coconut Palms grow above all of them - 2 crops at once. The pictures do not even show how spectacular it looks. They put a bag of some kind over the bananas when they are small I think to keep the birds away, and then I guess when they are the correct size they can just cut the whole branch off and the bananas are already bagged!!!

Welcome to Michoacan

finally arrived at La Ticla......

This is a well known surf spot, but not too much happening here this day..... we decided to keep going south to our final destination - Maruata.

If I had more time I would've loved to keep going, but it took 2 days to get this far, so 2 days to get back, plus time to surf if we ever found any waves. Maruata is supposed to be a decent surf spot, and a good spot for beginners....

Well, no surf here either.....

Maruata was a spectacular place though for other reasons........This is one of the beaches where the turtles come up to lay their eggs. It looks like a freeway of sorts with all the turtle tracks up and down the beach.

You can kind of see the holes in the sand where they have been. These holes are the result of her eggs being dug up.

There used to be a huge number of the eggs being dug up by poachers, but in the last several years they have realized the importance of these eggs being allowed to hatch. There is now a "nursery" of sorts where the eggs are collected and buried and labeled with a date tag and when the babies hatch they are kept for a little longer to let them get bigger so their chance of survival is greater......

Most of the accomodations at Maruata are tenting under a palapa.....

There is a family home on the beach with a large palapa extending out towards the beach.

Some of them also have a restaurant of sorts. We pitched the tent, enjoyed the sunset,

got a wonderful fish fillet meal from "our" family, then were curious if we could find any of the tutles coming up to lay their eggs......I think it was about 10:30pm and we were just walking along and heard a faint noise. I thought it sounded like digging.....

Whoa....we found a turtle digging her nest....

We sat down and watched for at least an hour....This is a very slow process, she gets tired and needs to rest. Didn't know how long it would take, so we headed down the beach a little farther to see if maybe there was one getting ready to lay her eggs. It was very dark and we could barely see where we were walking, plus we could hear people, and not knowing who they were, we decided we better head back.....we were quite a ways from the tent. We were able to find "our" turtle again, but she had not moved.......on the way back we did spot 1 more turtle that was just heading up to find her spot in the sand.......

About 1:30 in the morning the tenters next to us called out that there was a turtle right outside their tent.....sure enough, she came right up under the palapa. She didn't stay.

That was such an awesome experience!!!!!

The next morning we packed everything up and we were gonna head back to La Ticla for some surfing, but one of the local kids told us to go up the road another 5 minutes to a great surf beach called Paso de Noria........we thought we would check it out before heading back to La Ticla.

What a beautiful beach......with waves!!!!!

We ended up spending the entire day here!!!!

Completely ALONE!!!!

That is another turtle egg nursery on the left.......

The day flew by and we didn't have time to get to La Ticla so we decided we would go back to our palapa and spend another night.........had a great shrimp dinner. (Oh, you need to specify that you want the shell and "feet" taken off the shrimp) - I went ahead and ate them the way they were served, except the larger ones, I just couldn't do it, but I know the locals eat them shell and all, so I tried it....

That night a turtle came up right in front of our tent and when we realized she was there she was done laying her eggs, but she was packing them down. We stood and watched for an hour at least.

When she was finished she was trying to get back to the water, but there are lights under the palapas and she was getting confused. She kept heading away from the water and she ran into the neighboring house. They heard her and turned off the lights. She immediately turned around and headed towards the water. We watched until she disappeard in the waves. Then the guy from the house came out with his flashlight and a bucket. He knew exactly where her eggs were, even though she had covered them up. He proceeded to dig them up and put them in the bucket. He said he was going to turn them in to the nursery, but who knows!!!!! The eggs are about the size of a golf ball and I think she lays about 100 eggs.

I am soo glad I got to experience this.....

The next day, we packed everything up again and headed back north to La Ticla. There were waves here, but too big for me........it was fun to watch everyone else surf though. I relaxed in the sun and watched all the hermit crabs....... hee hee

I didn't have my camera with me when the waves got really big and there were surfers on them. I think they were at least 8-9 feet.....The guys who were out there were good surfers!!!! and CRAZY!!!! This whole area is shallow with rocks just a few feet deep and we were told the rocks were full of urchins!!!!

Couldn't stay long in La Ticla, we had to head back.

Here is a view of one of the many beautiful beaches in Michoacan........

We got stopped at the border going into Colima and had to have the car searched. They were very nice and put everything exactly how they found it. I think we were there for about 10 minutes..... a bit scarey at first, but it all was fine.....

As you cross the border into Jalisco, this church greets you....GORGEOUS!!!!