Pacific anchorages in the land of the Maya

The Maya were an ancient Mesoamerican people honored today for their advanced writing techniques, an accurate calendar, and astonishing, elaborate stone pyramid structures. The dominant culture for more than 1,000 years in an area that extended from the Yucatan peninsula and Chiapas in southern Mexico, through Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and northwestern Honduras, these intelligent, artistic people appear to have abandoned their large cities about 900 A.D. But travelers can still meet the Mayan descendants of the folks who built those grand pyramids that rise so unexpectedly in the midst of tropical jungle. 

In Guatemala, more than 50 per-cent of the inhabitants claim Mayan ancestry and many still practice the arts and crafts of their forebears. I read of the weaving techniques and patterns handed down by generations of villagers, and RG taught the Mayan creation myth, Popul Vuh, in his college mythology classes. We were looking forward to spending time among these intriguing people. 

For many years, in order to cruise among the Maya the only safe alternative was along Mesoamerica's Caribbean coast, which offers generally secure hurricane protection in the quiet waters of Guatemala's Rio Dulce. A scarcity of desirable anchorages along the Pacific side was one problem, but the main drawback was civil war. The bloody conflicts in Central America from the mid-1970s through 1996 were often encouraged and armed by competing sides in the Cold War. Cautious cruisers were advised to sail directly from Acapulco, Mexico, to Costa Rica (or vice versa), well offshore. Political conditions in the region generally are stable now and new anchorage possibilities are opening. We wanted to explore Pacific Mesoamerica aboard Avaiki, our Bruce Bingham-designed Fantasia 35 sloop, and find a secure haven to leave her during extended land travel.

EASILY SEDUCED
Weeks prior to sailing into Guatemala, a very comfortable haulout at Acapulco's Club de Yates allowed Avaiki's freshly painted bottom to slide us quickly 225 nautical miles southeast to Mexico's Huatulco area, where we prepared to cross the Golfo de Tehuantepec. But the wild beauty of the isolated bays along Huatulco's short stretch of coast reminded us of our favorite aspects of cruising: remote, uninhabited anchorages, quiet whitesand beaches and some of the best reef snorkeling we'd enjoyed since the Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia. Colorful, abundant sea creatures amid coral in clear 90-degree Fahrenheit water and daily sightings of unfamiliar wildlife demanded our attention. Easily seduced, manana grabbed us again. 

The Huatulco area is a series of eight charted bays along a 12-mile stretch of Pacific coastline. In the 1980s, the Mexican government declared it a tourist development area. like Cancun or Ixtapa, but manana slows everything. In the spring of 2001, only two eastern bays were fringed with high-rise tourist hotels. Huatulco's undeveloped anchor-ages are mostly inaccessible by land vehicles, although sometimes tourists arrive via launch to spend a few hours on an isolated beach or to snorkel a pristine reef. Mostly, Avaiki swung alone, anchored in firm sand, enjoying solitude in crescent-shaped bays. We knew there were other sailboats in the area, and eventually we discovered 18 of them anchored in Huatulco Harbor, bobbing wildly in dirty water as tourist boats and fishermen rudely sped out to sea at full throttle kicking up turbulent wakes. The skippers of five boats warned us about the harborside disco that blared nightly until 5:30 a.m. "Then why do you stay here when so much freedom and quiet beauty is so close?" RG asked. "Well," was the inevitably sheepish response, "there's La Crucecita:" Newly built for tourists in the old-Spanish-plaza style, the village of La Crucecita is charming. After weeks of idyll, it was the only place in the area to resupply Avaiki's rapidly emptying larder and to fill up with fuel before traversing the Tehauntepec. La Crucecita provided a gloriously diverse open-air mercado, an adequate super-market, an Internet ice cream parlor, lots of restaurant choices and the ability to jerry jug fuel to the dinghy dock two miles away for a US$1 taxi ride. We don't like filthy harbors or loud discos, so we only stayed in Huatulco Harbor a single day, morning to evening, making several "topping up" trips from Avaiki into town. By sunset's toddy time we were back delighting in lovely, little, clearwater La India, only five miles northwest. "One foot on the beach" 

Wilderness isolation is seductive, but experiences among the Maya beckoned. When the SSB net next predicted a weather window, we were ready to go. The strategy favored by most cruisers traversing the notorious Golfo de Tehuantepec is to wait for a cessation of the Caribbean-initiated northeast winds that blow across Mexico's nar-row isthmus and kick up a furiously rough fetch in the shallow gulf. Then, prudent skippers suggest, make the quickest passage possible by motoring with "one foot on the beach." Journey a mile offshore until past Salina Cruz and then follow the coastal contours along the 10-fathom line.

 We'd planned to act on this advice, but a brisk southwest breeze preceded our weather window. We left from our favorite Huatulco area anchorage, one we'd discovered and named Osprey Cove (an uncharted beach around the southeast corner from Isla Sacraficio), the evening before the boats waiting in Huatulco Harbor, and were rewarded with glorious sailing in calm seas. We dared to cut all the corners of the U-shaped gulf, plus we encountered a cur-rent that sometimes ran as much as two knots in our favor. Four anticipated nights at sea were reduced to three and instead of the expected 420 coastline miles to Guatemala's Puerto Quetzal, Avaiki recorded only 363 miles on the log. Unlike our comrades who departed 15 hours later, she performed gloriously as a sailboat rather than a floating RV. 

Puerto Quetzal is Guatemala's only protected Pacific coast port. We threaded Avaiki slowly between fishing boats, past docked tankers and navy vessels underway, and carefully timed our turn into the quiet waters of the small-boat anchorage to avoid a dredge that industriously works the harbor en-trance from dawn to dusk. With the anchor well set in a mud bottom at 25 feet and our yellow quarantine flag fluttering in the afternoon breeze, we called Capitan del Puerto Quetzal on VHF Channel 16. Soon a small launch disembarked Lieutenant Alvarado S., who sat with regal formality in Avaiki's cock-pit to check us into his country. 

After three years of trudging from office to office, then bank to office (and sometimes back again) as we cruised the Pacific coast of Mexico, our entrance to Guatemala seemed effortless. The ever-proper but extremely helpful lieutenant spoke excellent English, acted as both Port Captain and Customs, and then drove us, in a car filled with his family, to Immigration. We paid the expected fees: $10 for each person plus the boat and 5100 for up to five days at Puerto Quetzal (S 10 per day thereafter). He returned us to the dinghy dock. explained the checkout pro-cedure (12-hours notice and another $10 each would supply us with the necessary exit zarpe), and we went free to relax and watch the sunset firm the quiet waters of the landlocked harbor. Puerto Quetzal is Guatemala’s sate solution to the open-road-stead former anchorage at neighboring Puerto San Jose. The new harbor is a bustling commercial, military and in-dustrial port, and while onboard Avaiki the varied activities so captured our attention that they seriously cut into our time for reading and boat projects. Military parachutists performed jumps a dozen at a time. jets practiced touch-and-goes. and we learned that the swooping helicopters sometimes carried Guatemala's president. whose beach house was on the military base. Nearby, under the watchful eyes of armed guards, was a rickety craft with several Ecuadorians interred for illegally venturing into Guatemalan waters and another boat beached when its Chinese occupants were deported.  

The entire Guatemalan Pacific fishing fleet was on hiatus. waiting for the start of the new season. A sportfishing boat. homeport Colorado, posted a  “Q” flag and was completely searched including drug-sniffing Doberman pinschers while the gringo skipper and local crew watched impatiently. 

Walking through the heavily guarded entrance of the navy base. we caught a local bus, to the town of San Jose. Local transportation in Guatemala is old U.S. school buses. often painted in bright psychedelic patterns, stuffed with people, produce and livestock. Imagine three small adults clutching clothtied bundles on a seat designed for two school children. and then squeeze in more people along with a couple of chickens and a piglet. The three-mile experience cost one quatzale (about seven cents). San Jose proved to be the second-rate beach Destination and military town- our guidebook had promised: sleezy bars with women in low-cut. Long velvet Dresses lounging in the doorways, the steep black-sand beach unappealing for swimming. "Candace. you vo become a giant:' RG said with a laugh. Wandindering through the bustling produce market. my stocky five-foot frame towered over the dimuative Maya people.

Local English-speaking driver "Taxi Mike” Pena took, us on a daylong outing to Antegua the 17th-century-colional  Spanish town that is the center of Guatemala’s prosperous tourist industry. Wed like to travel via Highway 14 RG told Mike."But the toll road is much quicker." he insisted."We’d "rather see the countryside:' He reluctantly agreed. Mlike so enjoyed driving us by sugarcane fields and processing plants while pointing out the many people dressed in bright Mayan skirts and blouses walking along the unpaved unpaved road with jugs of water or huge bundles of sticks for their cooking fires fires balanced on their heads. He bought a map for the next time." We quickly realized an afternoon in Antigua would not quench our appetite for Juatemala's treasures.

ANCHORING HAVENS
We've spoken with several cruisers who confidently left their boats at anchor in Puerto Quetzal while enjoying prolonged travel in Guatemala. The quiet, landlocked waters and strict security of the navy base were appealing, but we are hesitant to leave Avaiki unattended on the hook. Consequently, we sailed on to El Salvador, where wed heard there were a couple of new anchoring havens. We hoped that from there we could explore more Maya country. 

An easy 24-hour, 120-mile south-east sail under a full moon found Avaiki off the frothing entrance to Bahia del Sol, El Salvador. The year before, buddy boats on an anticipated nonstop coast-lining voyage from Puerto Quetzal to Costa Rica were chatting on VHF. A Salvadoran interrupted and offered to send "his boys" out in a launch to guide them into the estuary. Several skippers took advantage of the invitation and enjoyed legendary hospitality. We hailed Bahia del Sol on VHF Channel 16 and were told a guide would be out at slack water.

During the wait, Avaiki was invaded by thousands of bees, which seemed to think our boom would make a fine new home for their queen. "Swarming bees don't sting," RG valiantly proclaimed as he fought his way forward, armed with swatter and spray, to raise sail. I powered full throttle away from shore, and we discovered that bees dislike a flailing mainsail as much as we do. Our battlefed adrenaline was still pumping rapidly when the runabout arrived to lead us across the uninviting sandbar. Knuckles tightened to white as the first swell Iifted Avaiki's stem and she surfed wildly before the wave passed underneath. The second roller tried to spin us around but RG deftly straightened her. "Three-feet under the keel," I gasped in the swell's trough. The third wave was smaller, but in heightened anxiety we were startled when the VHF radio crackled and the launch pilot offered congratulations on safe passage across del Sol's sandbar. 

The launch led us two smooth-water miles around a lush green, wide, or bend and through a fleet of six sailboats anchored in front of a resort hotel. We dropped Avaiki's 44-pound Bruce on all chain in about 20 feet of water with enough scope to accommodate the 10-plus-foot tidal range. Checking into A Salvador was simple. Eager for cruising sailors' bar business, Hotel Bahia del Sol brings Customs officials out to visiting boats, and Immigration personnel meet skippers at the hotel. There is no charge for check-in or anchorage in the estuary, but El Salvador does impose a $10 per per-son fee on all foreign visitors. We quickly realized the folly of rowing ashore-at peak tidal flow the current can reach eight knots. We found no dingy landing, but the friendly hotel staff directed us to a concrete jetty and held our painter while we scrambled up tire fenders and over railings. At low tide we spied exposed rebar and concrete chunks capable of piercing an inflatable surrounding our mud-stranded tender. Still, we happily languished in the swimming pools and rinsed off in the open-air shower. The hotel grounds traverse the half-mile wide peninsula, so after mornings spent on boat projects we could watch estuary traffic from one poolside bar or walk through the manicured grounds and frolic in 90-degree ocean surf. 

In El Salvador people are hesitant to claim their Mayan ancestry. In 1932, a soothsayer told military dictator General Martinez he would be killed by a Mayan peasant. The result was La Matanza: Soldiers massacred 50,000 indigenous people and the persecution continued for years. We talked for hours with Jamie, a Peace Corps volunteer nearing the end of her two years in El Salvador. "There is more than 50 percent unemployment here," she told us earnestly. "One percent of the population (the 14 families who owned all the land before the civil war) controls more than 95 percent of the wealth." 

MANGROVE AVENUES
We love exploring mangroves in our sport boat. We like to get lost in tiny tributaries, turn off the outboard, work our way in between the reaching prehensile fingers of water-groping man-grove branches and pull ourselves along while animals roost and rustle around us. Bahia del Sol's mangrove avenues are broad and busy. We quickly tired of relentlessly speeding sportfishing boats, of jet skis and tourist pangas whizzing in circles around Avaiki. Although we could catch a local bus in front of the hotel and travel anywhere, it was 17 miles to a grocery store. Plus, here we were at anchor in a swift current, and land travel in Mayan country continued to beckon. 

As soon as the weather was calm (boats had been trapped for days because of high waves closing the entrance to Bahia del Sol), and the ocean promised dawn slack water after high tide, we pulled up Avaiki's muddy ground tackle. The high-tide exit proved less intimidating than our low-tide entrance, and Avaiki powered smartly over the tall, swollen rollers. We were soon settled into a pleasant east-southeast sail. The low-lying coast showed no charted offshore hazards for the 30-mile sail. However, shallow water runoff from El Salvador's deeply cut estuaries provided only 30-foot water depth at four miles out. This day we caught our first Pacific permit (a species of pompano), a 25-pound, delicious white-skinned flat fish with a large, dome-shaped brow.

By 3:30 p.m. we were within an hour of Bahia de Jiquilisco and the designated waypoint 13° 07'N 88° 24'W, so we raised Barillas Marina Club on VHF Channel 16. Expert panga driver Luis met us in 50 minutes to lead Avaiki through smooth water, sometimes between boiling waves and washboard seas, 10 circuitous estuary miles, and smiled broadly while securing her to a mooring buoy near a palapa-roofed clubhouse. "That sure was a lot easier than del Sol!" RG called to familiar sailboat crews. Another panga came alongside transporting a gracious and well-spoken Heriberto Pineda, Barillas Marina Club manager, the Port Captain and a Customs officer who briefly inspected Avaiki. "You did not obtain the required travel visa before departing Bahia del Sol?" Heriberto asked. "No," I replied with a smile, "but we have a copy of our Guatemalan zarpe stamped by the authorities at del Sol."

Heriberto and the Port Captain spoke rapidly in Spanish. "Excellent," Heriberto beamed, "you will not need immigration again." The significance of this became clear when a vessel arrived from Bahia del Sol without either document. The skipper was required to travel 35 land miles to San Miguel and pay a $60 fine before the boat could depart El Salvador.

"Please," Heriberto said as he spread his arms and smiled. "Come to shore and enjoy the pleasures of Barillas Marina Club." Catching a ride aboard a club panga on its hourly meander through the moored fleet, we disembarked at attractively landscaped grounds, fenced amid mangrove tropics and sugarcane fields. We discovered a lovely double swimming pool, open-air restaurant/bar, a small store, laundry service, several rental bungalows, airconditioned rooms with new computers, little thatched-roof palapa tables with electrical and phone outlets for laptops and spacious private showers. The club's remote location, 10 dirt-road miles from a paved highway, prevents walking out the gate and catching a bus, but twice-weekly cruisers are chauffeured in an air-conditioned van to Usulutan, a non-touristy town of 60,000 residents with two American-style supermarkets, bus connections and a large open-air farmers' market.

INDOLENT AND RELAXED
We'd found our safe haven to leave Avaiki while exploring the lands of the Maya. An easy five-hour ride on a luxurious Kings Quality bus took us from San Salvador to Guatemala City, a $32 round-trip. We traveled for two glorious weeks amid Guatemala's highlands, particularly enjoying Lake Atitlan and Antigua, and then returned to Avails to plan adventures amid archeological ruins. Life back at Barillas Marina Club was indolent and relaxed. The parklike setting was beautiful, quiet and without surge. 

The mangrove estuaries around Bahia de Jiquilisco afforded us hours of isolated exploration in the sport boat. Dawn and dusk in Avails's cockpit were always enchanting. Birdsongs whistled as the changing estuary light played on mangrove tendrils, and crocodiles sometimes scouted a dawn snack. Coa-timundi (Central American raccoons) pranced in low-tide mud, and turtle beaks poked the water's surface at dusk. Once an iguana spent several hours perched on the wind-vane trim tab, presumably confusing Avaiki with a rocky outcropping. We never saw a jet ski, but daily a dugout canoe from a nearby village glided slowly along the channel, piled high with empty jugs. Later it would return, weighted down with water from Barillas' artesian well, revealing only an inch or two of freeboard. Occasionally a cruising boat visited the club's dock to fill tanks with clean fuel and potable water, and to scrub decks and sails. Friendly Salvadoran club members spent a weekend day or two, but during the week cruisers had the place to themselves. And the cheerful staff was always available to respond quickly and efficiently to requests.

 When a family emergency suddenly called us Stateside, knowing that we would be far away from our floating home we felt confident leaving Avaiki chained to her mooring at Barillas Ma-rina Club. The knowledge that Pacific hurricanes originate at higher latitudes than in the Caribbean, generally around the Golfo de Tehuantepec, also helped calm our doubts. We returned, months later, to find Avaiki intact and secure. However, the 24-hour security patrol was unable to prevent onboard visitors: A family of bats took up residence under the cloth cover protecting the outboard motor locked to the stern davits. 

Pacific Central America is no longer off-limits to adventurous sailors. We found interesting, beautiful, off-the-beaten-path anchorages. And in El Salvador, we discovered the piece of mind and security that Guatemala's Rio Dulce has offered Caribbean sailors for decades. Central America provides opportunities and surprises for any sailor seeking Pacific anchorages from which to explore this fascinating land and meet the enchanting Maya.

Richard Guches and Candace Cave, authors of "Pacific anchorages in the land of the Maya". Have sailed their Bruce Bingham designed Fantasia 35 sloop Avaiki more than 30,000 Pacific Ocean miles over 22 years. They've enjoyed extended cruises in Eastern Polynesia, Hawaii,  Mexico. the Sea of Cortez, and the entire coast of California. Richard and Candace are currently exploring Pacific Central America and will soon be heading back to the South Pacific.