Necessity in in the middle of Golfo de Tehuantepec 16.april

Necessity
Eva and Jan Fr. Mack
Tue 19 Apr 2011 16:35
Our position is 16:06:40N 94:45:87W
So what, another bay in Mexico? Not quite! The bay is infamous. We have been sailing along the Sierra Madre for weeks. This is were they stop. 30 miles further south they start again. In between is a flat plain, a gap leading all the way to the Caribbean 160 km away. This is the closest you come to a natural wind tunnel. If it blows 30 knots from the north in the Gulf of Mexico, it blows 60 knots here. It happens frequently. A somewhat weaker version is expected later tonight. We will not stay around to find out how weak.
We did go to Oaxaca from Huatulco on very bad roads. We went there on the night bus, and surprisingly I did sleep. It was worth the effort. Oaxaca is the city of arts and cathedrals. Some of the cathedrals are both old and magnificent. The decorations are made of gold, and as grand as anything in Europe. The town itself gave me a flash-back to Santiago do Compostella. The town is otherwise marked by its artists and schools, and the Zocalo, the central plaza. Right outside of town is Monte Albans, one of the most magnificent archeological sites in Central America. The Zatopecs built this magnificent set of "pyramids" 800 BC and suddenly left them a thousand years later. From pressure from the Aztecs or Mixtecs? Nobody seems to know.
jfm 12.04.11