A PLACE CALLED ISLA NAVIDAD IN MANZANILLO MEXICO

After freezing through the winter in Patzcuaro, and the events of the past six months I needed a real vacation - so to Manzanillo to vacation, find a truck and look for rentals.

  Manzanillo is stretched along twin bays divided by a small finger of land called Santiago Peninsula.  The land is filled with date palms,  banana, and coconut plantations.  

The area was formed with volcanoes.  Coming here, I could not believe that I saw snow.  One of the volcanoes is year round covered with snow.  Because of the past volcanic nature of the land, the waters around Manzanillo feature underwater fissures and crevices and some have visible lava flows.

The sand has a high mineral content and that gives it a beautiful black-and gold appearance.  Manzanillo is known for the fishing and the diving.  The fish is the sailfish.  In November  sport fishermen from around the world come to compete for the biggest catch.

Where we are staying in Manzanillo is a town names Isla Navidad.  That's right Navidad as in Christmas.  (?)  Why Christmas.  Well that is when the Spanards came and discovered the land and when they did that it was on Christmas day.  Hence they renamed the place island of Christmas.

The Isla Navidad was nothing more than a bunch of small fishing villages.  Beautiful bay and sea inlets.  Then his man looked at the bay and saw how this could be a developed area for the very rich and famous.  He built this hotel that we are staying at called The Wyndham Grand Bay Hotel.  There are several swimming pools and a very exclusive marina for personal yachts.  Some are very large in size and since the bay is open to the ocean, they can come in for a refreshing stay off their ship at the hotel.

As you enter the area where the hotel is - you also enter a whole domain.  There is an entrance gate and the entire area is closed off to the public with a fence.  The entrance gate is guarded 24 hours a day.  After you enter the gate, this is where it gets confusing.  Many different roads going in all sorts of directions.  This is not only the entrance to the hotel but to a residential area and a golf course.

Your entrance road winds upward and more roads venture off into the hills.  You enter the hotel from the top.  Rather reversed from regular hotels where your lobby is on the ground level.  To get our room which was on the second floor, you go down.

To make this more confusing - you have several different hotel buildings that you have to walk from one to the other and then make sure your room is in that building.  Every time I left the room, I spent hours trying to find it again.  I got so tired of being lost that I cancelled our last night there and we will be moving to a different hotel tomorrow.

The hotel offers so many activities that they publish two pages a day with the list of who to call for what event.  There are water taxis to take you to other towns on the bay, basically fishing villages they still produce a night life away from the hotel  .

The water activities include diving, snorkeling, wave runners windsurfing, sunset cruises to name just a few.  The entire activities list is extensive as well as different tours of the area around the isla.

 A you can tell, this pool is right beside the salt water bay.

The marina that is part of the hotel.

The land around this hotel is very fertile and it seems to produce a large variety of fruits. 

Standing with the owner of one of the local fruit stands showing a small white fruit that has a black seed in the middle.  You open it - it is soft and not juicy, and easy to open.  You eat the white part.  Not real sweet with the texture of maybe a date?  

These are not apples but a type of mango.

coconuts and they are all over the place on the ground.  while the juice is also used they are produced for their oil.

This is one of the pools that is right off our room.

the sun rise 

Beautiful isn't it.
Well off to another hotel where hopefully after I leave my room, I will be able to find it again in less than an hour.  So until Manana 
Ken and I say adios