Manzanillo comes alive Sunday evening
Sowell Family's Travels on Gijima
Skipper: Tim Sowell Admiral Tracy Crew Sean & Alex
Mon 15 Mar 2010 04:41
as this is a classic hotel with history. The marina as you dinghy in is all
done with a MED style tie ups where you have a bow anchor and pull your aft
into the dock. So as you come in you are not sure if you are in Mexico or
Europe, with the towers white rising above you and the honeycomb effect of
the units and rooms hugging the contours of the hill and bay, and the small
stalls, restaurants on the cobble streets.
In the afternoon we headed into old town, catching a taxi we went up through
the point/ headland Las Hadras is mounted on, the cobbled streets are steep
and this is nice area, it reminds me abit of Pittwater in Sydney, with the
houses hanging onto the headland, and the magnificent views out over the
bay. But then you are down and onto the main road into town and yes it is
Mexico, with their crazy turn left idea that you pull off to the right and
then wait until the light tells you to pull from the right hand side across
the traffic to do a turn left. As we went into town we past what is now
considered the busiest port in Mexico, it well sorted and very busy, (I hope
it has a lot of Wonderware running in it!!!). I suspect the engineer never
leaves you as I sat there looking at cranes and thinking of the controls,
and how you could improve the overall yard of 1000s of containers tracking
system, how could put Archestra in here and change the face of this port,
and I certain that there is huge opportunity. To me this was a good sign, as
I wanted to understand how to apply a change to this operation and how could
improve operation excellence, and I was excited, nice feeling, this time
away is doing me good.
On arriving in the old town we were greeted with a huge statue of a "Sail
fish" (Manzanillo is the sail fish capital of the world), we use to catch a
lot of these fish in Kenya so I was well aware of fun and the fish. It is
Sunday about 6 pm the sun is still well out just fading behind the headland
which surround the old town on the other side of bay from where we are
anchored. Sean, Alex and I tested out the local ice creams and then some
stalls were being set up with people bringing their local home cooking down,
so I decided we needed to taste the rice pudding. This is an old favorite of
mine and Alex liked it as well, we then tried a portion of homemade custard/
milk pie, we were under the 100 foot high statue and looking out over the
bay in the main square. The area was coming alive you got that feeling with
a lot of senior people out, but families appearing (we had heard that it is
tradition to come out to square on a Sunday evening), the kids rode a toy
train, and we had dinner by which time the night had arrived. The street was
jammed with cars, and the square had people playing music the statue of the
sailfish was now lit up in a blue, and the trees all alight with colors and
music came out from all corners. Families were out with what looked like 3
generations at least, and our two blond boys where fast coming star
attractions as walked back to the square. Speaking with a local what happens
is the family meets in the morning for church and then in the evening on
Sunday they all meet as family outside in the square meeting friends but a
very social way to finish a weekend, and I thought it was very civilized, we
could learn from this, certainly the family bond here is strong.
I am now back the boat looking up at well lit up headland which is a lot
quieter than last night where the party went till 3 or 4 and I had to get up
at midnight to a fireworks display over the anchorage so I had the hose out
as the fallout was coming down on the boats, we only got one small piece due
to the wind but others were covered. No9w there is gentle breeze off the
land I can see the active port lights to my starboard side on the other side
of the bay, but on the port side we have the towers and white of Las Hadras
illuminating the sky line a couple of luxury yachts have dropped anchor not
far from us they are like a lit up cake on water. With the breeze the
temperature is very pleasant and only a gentle rock which has put the boys
to sleep very quickly.
Tonight we will get more sleep.