Punta Allen, Quintana Roo, Mexico

March 3, 2015

On seeing the cut in the reef to Bahia Ascension ...I am thinking, oh boy, won't be long to anchor.  Wrong...it took us over 2+ hours to get to the anchorage which was tucked in behind the land.  Unfortunately we had to go way in and turn back up due to shallow water.  After getting the anchor down, we noticed a lot of boats ferrying people, with orange life vests on, back and forth to a cut in the coast line.  We knew this had to be tourists, as no Mexican fisherman wear life vests.  But, it was time to settle in for the evening...again we were exhausted and couldn't wait to get in bed.

The elementary school

Day 2...we went ashore and realized that these boats were indeed shuttling tourists (all Italian, which blew my mind) around Sian Kiai ("Birth of the Sky") Natural Reserve.  Punta All was a much larger town than Rausher's guide depicted, but as we have seen many changes have occurred since the last edition of her book 7 years ago.  The town is very neat with well kept yards and nicely appointed gardens.  There is a school for the younger children and another larger school for the older students.  And, to our amazement a local library...yeah for Punta Allen.  There is also a wonderful basketball court, soccer field and playground near the central zocalo.  We found what seemed to be a local bar/restaurant and settled in to the shade of the building and ordered our 1st round of beers.  We decided to eat after the proprietor showed us some red snapper and lobster (frozen) - it seemed a little pricy so we all settled on shrimp.  We finally got some good tortillas, only in Mexico.  It has been our experience that Guatemalans, Belizeans, and Hondurans just can not make a decent corn tortilla - but I guess it is just our Texan taste.

We visited 2 "supermarkets" in search of avacados, but none were found.  This was our first store since leaving the Rio Dulce (Feb. 24) and our fresh produce was gone, except for a lime and an onion.  We were so excited to also find tortilla chips as they do not exist in Guatemala...at least in the Rio.

March 4....Today we went back to town, still on a quest for the elusive avacado.  Lo and behold our second store had some and we bought them all.