Visiting Punta Allen village

Sunday 27 Feb, Mexico day 39, Punta Allen: Exploring this unique village. Flying the drone. Getting lost in mangroves.

We wake to our calm pristine surroundings of Bahia de la Acension, tucked in behind Punta Allen. The night was wonderfully peaceful with stars ablaze in the unpolluted night sky and for the first time this year we could clearly see the Southern Cross on the southern horizon.
We have breakfast in the cockpit with the cooling breeze blowing through. It’s so nice to be back at anchor again, surrounded by uninterrupted turquoise water all around us. But by 9am, as we are preparing the dinghy and outboard, it’s not quite so peaceful. All across the bay there are small tourist boats dashing about in all directions. No doubt each in search of manatees, which are the highlight of this bay. We wonder how many of the poor things get run down by these boats, because their leisurely swimming style near to the surface is not the safest for this modern world.

By 10:30 am we are in the dinghy, heading ashore. It’s about a ½ mile run into the lee of the mangrove island then another ½ mile around to the village dock. These are the circumstances where a cruising yacht needs a substantial and fast dinghy.
The dock is a rickety wooden affair full of ex-fishing boats now all pristinely converted to tourist boats, each with exactly 6 seats and 6 lifejackets. They are all lined up waiting for customers while the drivers chill in a shady pagoda on the end of the jetty. The jetty then snakes its way through the mangroves and into the outskirts of the cute village with its unpaved dusty roads lined with palm trees and small simple dwellings. There are a few vehicles around but the only sound to be heard is the wind in the palms and birds screeching. Before the advent of tourism, this would have been a very sleepy fishing village and we wonder if this is what Key West would have resembled some 100 years ago before it was road-linked to the rest of the Florida Keys.

As we wander through the streets, we actually start to believe it still is just a sleepy village. There are no signs of tourism anywhere, until we reach the seaward side next to the beach that is. Here there are a few rustic restaurants and tourist accommodation ranging from extremely rustic (thatched huts) to some more modern, small but still simple hotels.
We stop for a drink and to grab a WiFi signal so we can catch up on the news from Europe. With Ukraine bordering our home country, Romania, we are naturally quite concerned with the invasion by Putin. While I read the international news, Oana is focused on several journalists that she is following from that part of the world. It seems the Romanian people are quickly organizing themselves to take in refugees. Note: I said Romanian people, not the Romanian government. The latter couldn’t organize a party in party-town unless it meant money in their pockets! Also, in the usual true Romanian humor, jokes are pouring onto the internet. One which really made us laugh was a suggestion that for every Ukrainian entering, Romania should send a gypsy in the opposite direction. They would first steel the fuel out the Russian tanks, then to tow them away for scrap-metal value!

While having a drink we are also tempted by the breakfast menu and we order 2 versions of “Mexican eggs”. One scrambled with herbs and chili, the other fried and laid on black beans and tortillas. Both really delicious.
From there we wander onto the jetty that pokes out into a beautiful pristine bay facing the Caribbean sea. The white sand beach is backed by palm trees as far as you can see. The sea is a beautiful blue, but the water’s edge is caked several feet deep in rotting Sargassum seaweed. Unlike the commercial tourist beaches further north, there are no gangs of workers clearing the weed here. It’s all au-naturel.
We then wander along the sandy track that runs behind the beach and come across a small hotel with large white Tee-pee type tents close to the beach. This is a glamping resort and there is a scattering of gringo tourists in hammocks and sunbeds. We enquire on the price to stay in the tents and are quite surprised by the $85 per night tariff. Our pilot guide was correct: “this is a sleepy fishing village with tourist prices”.
Having reached the end of the village, we settle into a larger restaurant which soon becomes very busy with tourists. Their boat tours are done, and it seems they all come here for a lunch before heading back up the long bumpy road to Tulum.

When the day gets too hot, we head back to Cloudy Bay, where we chill in the cool breeze and watch a large pod of dolphins playfully pass the boat. Then I fly the drone in an effort to capture the stunning turquoise waters and the mangrove island. As usual, the video colours don’t really do it justice. But as a highlight, from the air I spot the pod of dolphins and manage to get a wonderful aerial video of them swimming together. And from this view, we get to see 2 baby dolphins, each swimming so close to their mothers that they must be touching most of the time. This is how dolphins should be: in the wild, not caged performing animals.

As the heat goes out of the sun, we venture off in the dinghy. From the drone I have spotted a small channel through the dense mangroves which enters a large pond in the middle of the island. We tootle along the edge of the mangroves looking for that entrance. And it almost deludes us, if it wasn’t for a tourist boat which passes us then turns a sharp right and continuing at full speed it disappears into the mangrove. There’s the entrance!
The channel turns out to be only 20ft wide and covered overhead by the mangrove trees. It’s a bit daunting going in there, knowing the speed the tourist boat went through. If such a boat came the other way, there would hardly be time to react. So we gently motor in, stopping every now and then, listening for the sound of an engine.
After 200m we pop out into the open lake. Now we must find the next channel into the next lake, which I saw boats going into from the drone. We search up and down, but no channel to be found. Then finally we come across it. This one even narrower than the previous. In the next lake we run firmly aground. I lift the outboard and try reverse, but all it does is splatter the dinghy with the most obnoxious smelling mud! Lovely! So we have to get out the ores and punt our way back into deeper water. I absolutely would not want to get out and push. Not in this mud!
At that point we decide to give up our exploration and get out while we think we can still remember how to. It’s quite a maze of mangrove and easily imaginable that you could literally get lost in it. But we get out OK, this time going at full speed through the narrow channels, while I sing the James Bond theme tune. It feels like that movie when Sean Connery had an amazing boat chase through the Florida everglades. Thunderball was the movie, I think.

Back at the boat we sip our tea as the sun again sets into the clear western sky. This time we capture it with the drone. Then, covered head-to-foot with mosquito spray we head into the village just before the last light fades.
As it’s Sunday, we see various families all gathering in their small plots eating, drinking and chatting. Other than that, it’s very quiet. Not a tourist in sight. I think we see more dogs than people. That is, until we come across the same restaurant where we had drinks earlier. There are a few people there but it’s still quiet. We sit for dinner where we share 2 dishes. One grilled octopus, the other huge prawns in a creamy tequila source. Both delicious.
By the time we finish, we are the last in the restaurant and it’s only 9pm! Clearly things wrap up early in this sleepy place. So we head back to the dinghy.
There was not much light in the village, but by comparison, the jetty is pitch black. As we set off, we have one of those classic “oh dear” moments. We cannot see a thing! I have a head touch but it’s pretty useless for finding our way back to the boat. So we head off slowly, hoping we are at least going in the right direction, until we get some kind of dull night vision. Finally, we get around the corner and spot our anchor light. Then we are home dry. On the way, now with our full night vision, we can see an amazing phosphorescent glow in the water coming from the spinning propeller. And the bow wave and wake is also glowing white too. It feels like we are riding in the darkness on a phosphorescent cushion. The last time we saw such a phenomena was in the Spanish Virgin islands.

It was a wonderful day in this rather special place. We enjoyed it so much that we decide to stay one more day and depart for Honduras on Tuesday rather than Monday.