Barra de Navidad

We left Ajijic early on a Sunday morning. Lake Chapala had been dry and dusty, although sprinkled a couple times hinting at the rainy season to come. We were heading back to the Pacific Coast where it would be warm and humid. Descending to the coastal plain from 1,525 m (5,000 ft) on the paved road from Guadalajara to Manzanillo, we could feel the temperature and humidity increasing to 25°C (77°F) and 70% humidity. The air felt dense and heavy. What would summer be like at 35°C (95°F) and 90% humidity? 

Marlin-sailfish sculpture at the entrance to Barra de Navidad

We spent five weeks on the Costa Alegre (happy or cheerful coast), roughly 300 km (180 mi) of coast south of Puerto Vallarta to Manzanillo. A tropical environment, modest beach towns and uncrowded beaches attract Mexicans on weekends and holidays from as far as Guadalajara and Mexico City (link). American and Canadian tourists and snowbirds show up in the winter (November-April) when the temperatures are warm and it rarely rains, but their presence is not large like in Puerto Vallarta.

We spent over a week in Barra de Navidad (Christmas sandbar) on Bahia Navidad while we explored the area looking for a place for an extended stay.  Barra, as it is called by the locals, is a town of about 4,000 (link) on Bahía Navidad 60 km (37 mi) north of Manzanillo. The marlin and sailfish sculpture at the entrance to Barra pays homage to the town’s sportfishing tradition. It was made from fiberglass by Mazatlán artist Luis Zuniga Guerra (link).

Welcome to Barra de Navidad

Pedestrian street near the waterfront

While Barra may look modest, just across Laguna de Barra de Navidad is the Grand Bay Hotel Isla Navidad with three pools, three tennis courts, a spa and a fitness room, a private beach and private marina. The Isla Navidad Golf and Country Club features a 108-par, 27-hole course designed by Robert Von Hagge with views of the ocean, mountain and lagoon (estuary) (link). The course won a gold medal from Golf Magazine and was selected as one the best 100 courses in the world by golf critics (link).

Grand Bay Hotel Isla Navidad

Most of Barra is built on the sandbar between the lagoon and the bay and faces west, so it’s not surprising that hurricanes and large storms do a lot of damage. When Hurricane Lily hit the coast in 1971, people sought shelter in Parroquia de San Antonio (parish church) where there’s a statue on the alter known as Christ of the Fallen Arms. According to the story, when people in the church prayed during Lily, the arms of the statue fell and the winds stopped (link). In 2011, Hurricane Jova, a category 3 storm, destroyed many businesses along the Barra waterfront (link).

Beach at Barra de Navidad

The malecón was closed while we were in Barra because they were rebuilding its foundation as well as the beach in front of it. A small suction dredge pumped a slurry of seawater and sediments from Laguna de Navidad (Christmas Lagoon) over the malecón onto the beach.

Suction dredge in Laguna de Navidad

The beach was uncontrolled and people strolled down with their kids to see what was coming out of the pipe. Large plastic bags were submerged in front of the bulkhead that lines the waterfront and filled with sand to create a reef to protect the beach (link).

Sediments being pumped onto the beach at Barra de Navidad

We rented a guest house from a Canadian couple who lived on a canal off Laguna Navidad behind the sandbar. The commercial fishermen’s landing was on the opposite side of the canal and we watched pangas come and go at all hours.

Canal off Laguna de Navidad; commercial fishing pangas on the left

House that backs to a canal

Sportfishing is a serious business in Barra as the statue at the entrance to town suggests. Barra hosts international sportfishing tournaments. I spoke to a guy who runs a tackle shop near the waterfront on the lagoon side; he’s a sport fisherman and has been living in Barra for 30 years.

Sportfishing docks on Laguna de Navidad

Lures for gamefish

While we were in Barra, the best sportfishing was 70-80 km (40-50) miles offshore in waters over 28°C (82°F); water closer to the coast was in the low 20s C (high 70s F) and too cold for sailfish, marlin and dorado. He said the fishing gets better as warm water moves inshore. A good-sized sailfish is 60 kg (132 lbs) and they make good ceviche. A 360 kg (800 lb) blue marlin landed off Manzanillo in early 2014 was the largest fish ever caught there. The big fish often get cut up and appear in seafood (mariscos) restaurants in town.

Restaurant on Laguna de Navidad

Oysters (ostiones), mussels and clams (almejas) for sale on the street

He said most of the pangas in Barra are longlining offshore and maybe 600 people were involved. There are 30-40 pangas making bait (gillnetting) for the longliners in the estuary every night. Much of their catch is packed on ice in trucks and sent to Guadalajara. Thirty years ago, he saw groups of 20-30 sailfish finning at the surface; recently, he’s only seen groups of up to four.

Public launch ramp in Barra de Navidad

Sign tells boat owners to inform the port captain before they "hurl" their boats into the water

He said that longlining is illegal in Mexico, but that people look the other way. The only employment in the area is agriculture and fishing. If there was another way to earn a living, he said the fishermen would probably do it.

Commercial fishing pangas at the fish camp

I asked him about diving; he said he didn’t dive but knew a few places where the spearfishermen go. “The laboratory” is the pinnacles about 12 miles offshore. “There are lots of fish there swimming between the pinnacles.” He mentioned two places on the coast: “the aquarium” near Tenacatita and a point between Melaque and La Manzanilla. Three dive shops tried to make it in Barra, but he said they all eventually failed. There’s a dive shop in Manzanillo and they bring people up to the Barra area by boat to dive.

Mural commemorating the voyages of Legazpi and Urdaneta to the Philippine Islands

In the early 16^th Century, Spain used Puerto Xalisco in New Spain to build and repair ships sailing to Asia. Viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza changed the name to Barra de Navidad when he came ashore on December 25, 1540 to put down a rebellion by the indigenous (link). In November 1542, Ruy López de Villalobos sailed from Barra with six ships and 400 men for the “Islands of the West,” which he named Las Islas Filipinas (the Philippine Islands) in honor of Prince Felipe II (later king) of Spain (link). In November 1564, Miguel López de Legazpi and his navigation advisor, an Augustine friar named Andrés de Urdaneta, sailed from Barra with five ships and 500 soldiers for the Philippines; they arrived on February 13, 1565.  Legazpi founded the first Spanish settlement at Cebu (link). 

Mural commemorating the conquistadors

On the return voyage, Urdaneta sailed as navigator under captain Felipe de Salcedo, Legazpi‘s 18-year old grandson. They left on June 1 sailing north to the eastward-flowing Kuroshio Current where they caught the westerlies across the Pacific to the southward-flowing California Current. They passed southern California on September 18 and arrived in Acapulco on October 8. The voyage in a little over 100 days earned Urdaneta a place in nautical history. In the four decades after Magellan’s voyage to the Philippines (1521), several expeditions had tried and failed to find the west-to-east route. Urdaneta’s return voyage (el tornaviaje) opened the Spanish galleon trade between Manila and Acapulco that persisted until 1815 when Mexico’s War of Independence ended Spanish control of Mexican ports (link); Manila galleon Wikipedia-get link). Urdaneta’s voyage is commemorated by a rock monolith on the jetty.

Mural commemorating the Mexican Revolution

There are a half dozen murals painted by high school students on Veracruz Avenue commemorating important periods and events in Barra’s and Mexico’s history starting from pre-Hispanic times through the Mexican Revolution.

Fisherman returning to the dock (he passed our house every morning)

We were told that the best grocery store was in San Patricio-Melaque, a town of about 6,500 (link) on Bahia de Navidad 5 km (3 mi) west of Barra.

Entrance to Melaque; the plaza is on the left and the beach is straight ahead

Hammocks for sale in Melaque

Patricio is the business district and Melaque is the main tourist area. It’s a popular tourist destination for Mexicans from the interior, and to a lesser extent for gringos from the U.S. and Canada, with over 50 places to stay.

Beach at Melaque 

Mariachis getting ready for the lunch crowd

Banana "boats" pulled by pangas are popular with beach goers

Melaque is located on Laguna del Tule, a large estuary.

Looking across Laguna del Tule to Barra de Navidad

House on the Laguna del Tule

In October 1995, a magnitude 8.0 earthquake occurred off the coast of Jalisco and killed at least 49 people. The Colima-Jalisco earthquake triggered a tsunami up to 5.1 m that affected 200 km of coast. The Cihuatlan-Manzanillo area was most affected (link). Barra and Melaque are in this area.

Hotel in Melaque destroyed in the 1995 earthquake and tsunami

Hotel in Melaque destroyed in the 1995 earthquake and tsunami

Costa Alegre may be the happy coast most of the time, but hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis raise the question of truth in advertising.

Tsunami evacuation sign in Barra de Navidad