When we decided to continue down the Mexican coast south of Puerto Vallarta and Banderas Bay to check out of Manzanillo we were told, “Manzanillo doesn’t like cruisers. It’s Industrial there.” We wanted to see more of Mexico’s coast before jumping across the Pacific so we pushed on to find out more.
Well, there were a few hoops to jump through and we made it. While things may change next year we thought we’d put up this post in case any cruisers plan to depart from this port in future. Here are some of the things we wish we knew first. Would we do it again? Absolutely. If you haven’t made it to Barra de Navidad before, it is so worthwhile.
Fill up your fuel tanks before leaving Banderas Bay!
This is probably a given, but for some reason we were in a bit of a rush with a lot of errands and we also thought let’s just fill up once before our big jump. We had plenty of fuel to get down the coast. Well, we were in for a surprise.
The fuel dock at Barra de Navidad is linked to the nearby resort which has invested in putting in a dock so that boats can refuel. Beware that the posted fuel rates on the large sign out front are not what you actually pay. There is (as of March 2019) a 13 peso per litre surcharge on top of the regular fuel price. Okay, I understand, they want to recoup costs to pay for the dock. And I’m sure it’s a wash for most people who aren’t taking on so much fuel. But when we needed 600 litres of fuel that turned into about $500 CAD extra, on top of the regular fuel price, just to fill up.
Thank goodness I asked to confirm the price before filling up! And thank goodness I was able to speak enough Spanish (fuel dock worker only spoke Spanish) to understand that there was another option. Fuel dock worker was so friendly and understood our predicament. We learned that we could take our dingy to the nearby ramp, walk up the short distance to the fuel pump to obtain the diesel, then dingy back to our boat in the anchorage. No problem! Well, it turned into our project for the day. Many dinghy rides back and forth and siphoning into our tanks we were full. We have an automatic syphoner (thank goodness!) so at least we didn’t have to put up with mouth fulls of fuel or spilled diesel on the deck.
Check to confirm the correct Immigration Office for checking out boats in Manzanillo
Thankfully another cruiser Linda (SV Linda Marie) told us about “A Family Afloat” who had checked out of Barra de Navidad/ Manzanillo the year prior, before departing Mexico. I found their blog and devoured their fantastic post about how they had navigated the checkout procedure.
Checking out of the country in Mexico for boaters involves obtaining a Zarpe, essentially a Port Captain signing your vessel out of the Country along with a stamped crew list, plus clearing Immigration. Two steps. Sounds simple right!?
The immigration office in Melaque does not have the correct ‘stamp’ to check boaters out of the country. So this requires a trip to Manzanillo to visit immigration. This was all helpfully set out in A Family Afloat’s blog but we thought we’d check the office in Melaque just in case. Hey, it’s a year later. Nope – same situation. We needed to go to Manzanillo.
A Family Afloat had described difficulty in locating the correct immigration office – which is different from the immigration office that shows up on Google Maps. We rented a car in Barra de Navidad (from local worker at the Marina– an A+ experience) to drive the hour and 15 minutes to Manzanillo and visited the first office mentioned in A Family Afloat’s blog – the workers there smiled at us and escorted us (by car) to another larger office. This looked to be the main port office for the commercial freighters and other traffic. We waited there for a bit and spoke to folks who did not seem to know where we should go. We decided to go to the immigration office that shows up on Google Maps…
We arrived there to have the helpful smiling folks explain that there was another office we needed to go to. It was across from the bus station. Okay! Back to where we started. Good news for those of you if you want to take public transit. After a few wrong turns we made it to the bus station. Where is the immigration office?
We saw a building it looked somewhat modern, but no signage. None at all! We decided to try our luck and I asked a worker outside if this was immigration. “Yes!” he said. “Upstairs.” So we went up the nice but unmarked staircase into a nice modern office – still no signs at all, anywhere. Success! We made it. The nice folks were very helpful and we were out in half an hour. Whew!
My recommendation would be to rent a car, go early in the morning and be prepared that the office location may change. Once you find the right office- all is good and they were happy to check us out. They do need to physically see each person, so would not recommend one person doing this errand for everyone.
Then we went back to the port captains office. This time Gavin was able to go alone. He did this the next day as by the time we got through all the immigration paperwork and driving, the Port Captain in Barra de Navidad had closed.
Next day, Gavin goes to the Port Captain to collect the paper required to pay the checkout fee. Then he needed to take a bus to nearby Malaque to go to the bank to deposit the departure fee (not expensive, maybe 300 pesos). The Port Captains office cannot accept cash and this must be done at the bank. Good practice, I suppose. Assuming it is an attempt to control and prevent corruption?
The problem was that when Gavin went to deposit the fee, the bank machine was not working (bank machines for international card holders were down and not working for the entire town!!) and he could get any cash to pay. We had used our last pesos and were planning to depart imminently. So he got back on the bus to the port captain to see if he could pay be credit card. Nope! So then he realized he had some Canadian money in his wallet – back to the bank in Melaque (another bus trip) and then back to the Port Captain. Success. We received our Zarpe with the stamp checking us out of Mexico. We were ready to leave, or so we thought…..
Use good mosquito protection and precaution in Barra – Dengue Fever has been reported in the area (March 2019)
Meanwhile, Gill and the kids and I were enjoying ourselves by the pool at the resort. Except that Nathan complained of a headache, one of the worst he’d ever had and was laying in the shade, complaining of loud noise and that he was feeling shivery…. Uh Ohhh. We got Nathan back to the boat, he wanted to go to bed. I checked his temperature. He had a medium level fever. It was not horrible but what worried me was the headache. I hadn’t seen him suffer from a headache this bad before. This was the night before we were planning to leave. I did not have a good feeling.
A friend (thank you Melissa on SV Blue Heron) alerted me to the facebook page for Barra and there happened to mention some dengue fever cases in the area. I read the symptoms and decided that I wanted to have Nathan checked out before we left on the ocean for a few weeks!
I found out about a great English speaking doctor – Dr. Linda- and we went and found her first thing the next morning. Luckily Nathan woke up feeling much better- no fever, headache gone, and he was ramped up to leave.
Dr. Linda was an expert on Dengue. She had treated several folks in the area and knew what to look for. She listed to our plans and wishes to be safe and careful before the big trip and sent us off for bloodwork. She confirmed that what Nathan had could be dengue but she wasn’t certain. Ug.
We went to the lab in Malaque and had our results an hour later and went back to Dr. Laura that afternoon. She couldn’t confirm whether Nathan had Dengue or not but that she wanted to see his bloodwork in two more days to confirm it had improved before we left. While we all wanted to leave, it was a no-brainer to wait until Nathan was healthy. The hardest part was that after the initial headache and fever for one night, he was fine and felt healthy. He wanted to go now!
We enjoyed Mexico for another two nights then went back to get his bloodwork done, then back to Dr. Linda. We had a worried few moments once we saw the lab results (Dr., Linda had told us about platelet levels and what to look for, and in Mexico you receive your results directly so we were able to take a peak at Nathan’s levels. Low platelet levels and low white blood cell count can indicate dengue. Nathan’s platelet levels were actually down from the time before so we thought we couldn’t go. Nathan was very sad.) But when we showed Dr. Laura the results, she said his white blood cell count was rebounding and that he had remained happy and healthy for the previous two days which is what she wanted to see and declared, “You can go!” We were all so happy and breathed a sigh of relief.
In retrospect, I would have been more careful with mosquito repellent and protection in the area had I realized that dengue was present in the area. Lesson learned!
Barra is a wonderful place to visit and I would absolutely recommend it and suggest this a great port to ‘jump’ from. Hopefully some of the information in this post may help you if you are planning a similar route!
Thank you to A Family Afloat for their great blog post which helped us!
Amazing journey guys!!!! So glad you made it safely. What an incredible trip! Your pictures are gorgeous.. the colours are so vibrant. Keep up the fantastic journal of your trip… can’t wait to hear all about it when you are back (but again, sounds like that will be a while!!! 😉
xxoo,
kk….