Emerald Star

We were in Chacala for over a week. It's a little town. The streets are cobblestone and there are a bunch of cute houses. It's a great spot. The weather is nice. There are NO bugs (San Blas is famous for their bugs which are jejenes). Clean water is in the anchorage. Several good palapa restaurants are on the beach. The village has some "mini-supers". A mini-super is a food market that is about a quarter of the size of a 7/11 store but at least some basic groceries are available. The surprise was that the only coffee was instant. So when we ran out of whole bean coffee we had to decide if it was time to go or not. We stayed and learned to drink instant. Diane found out later that since coffee is grown locally, you just go to someone you know that sells it. We stayed until we ran out of clean clothes.

The palapa restaurants

 Camping by the beach

The "Banana Rides" -  Sometimes they'd come real close to the boat and the dogs would just go crazy. Lots of fun and noise. 

 The beach and anchorage

We were here the holiday week between Christmas and New Years. The town was packed and several hundred people were camping near the beach. It was pretty hectic and rather fun to watch all the activity.

Most of the winter there isn't much going on in Chacala.  Around Easter it starts to get busy again.

It was hard to leave. Every time the topic of when to move came up Ray would say "this is paradise, how can we go?" and I had to agree. We plan to stop here for at least a few days, maybe a week or more, when we head north. Next time we'll bring clean clothes and coffee with us - no worries then.