Boy howdy do we love us some Precolumbian ruins. Tony Alfaro delivered us to the Olmec/Mayan ruins of Izapa just a few kilometers outside Tapachula proper (more like in the Tapachula suburbs) and near the Mexico-Guatemala border. It was great. Andrew Coe, in his book Archaeological Mexico, explains that the Izapa ruins comprise about 80…
A cruiser does not have to expend much effort looking for things to do in and around Puerto Chiapas while waiting, one might say, for a weather window to take one's boat south or north. We hung around – intentionally, mind you – for almost 2 months because of the lavish exploration opportunities. Please, I…
Marina Chiapas has a lot going for it, including a small habitat around back of the restaurant, in which volunteers rehabilitate and then release back in to the wild the 2 species of turtles found in the estuary. Here we see (1) their fenced enclosure on the marina grounds – complete with its very own…
So. About earthquakes in southernmost Pacific Mexico: They haz them. During the summer that The Fox rested on jackstands in the boat yard at Mariana Chiapas, there was a spot of bother: an earthquake of 6.9 magnitude occurred just offshore of Tapachula, Mexico, at about 37 miles deep in the Earth's crust. There is nothing…
I have decided to describe where The Fox has been, by tracing a roughly NW to SE path that starts at the northern half of Eleuthera Island in the Far Bahamas, and will end at the islands and cays in the SE Bahamas just above the Turks and Caicos islands. First stop: one of our…
A few miles northeast of downtown Jacksonville, Florida, located along the banks of the Ft. George River, is the old Kingsley Plantation. It grew cotton and indigo during the late 18th through the 19th Centuries, and had a slave population that resided in 32 tabby cabins located about 1/8 mile from the plantation's main house…
It stands to reason that when one leaves and returns to one's boat in Green Cove Springs, Florida, one departs and arrives via commercial aircraft at the nearest international airport in Jacksonville. If one chooses to stay in a mo-tel or ho-tel instead of aboard the boat, one's best accommodations are likewise in the Jacksonville/Orange…
Green Cove Springs isn't all about boat yards and marinas. A few decades ago when the Navy had a presence here, I imagine it was a thriving community with all kinds of businesses along the main highway through town. When the Navy left, so did most of the jobs. Like other small cities and towns…
Animals really crack me up. Take Mr. Peacock over here, for instance. He lives in the Fountain of Youth park grounds. Sometimes he flies up to sit on one rooftop or another; other times he tries to impress the ladies, like I caught him doing here. There is nothing funnier than watching the backside of…
It was my sewing machine's fault. Just as we were winding up our projects in preparation to leave Brunswick, Georgia, the last piece of on-board equipment to break down was my trusty Pfaff 1525 sewing machine. It got shaky, couldn't loop thread properly, gave some ominous clicks, and then spat out a couple tiny bits…