Wednesday, December 11, 2013.

Well everything is harder in the tropics. Even something as simple as grocery shopping. If the heat and humidity, crowed Mexican buses (did not have to share a seat with chickens), and the language barrier wasn’t enough, there is the crocodiles. What do crocodiles have to do with grocery shopping? Well I’ll tell ya.

 We had just returned to Maiatla, soaked in perspiration after trudging through a bodega in Zihuatanejo.  Jan jumped into the cockpit to receive the packages as I unloaded them from the cart. Just as the last box of Tacate was hoisted aboard, a freak gust of wind (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!) blew our well used but expensive shopping cart right off the dock into the water. As I stood on the dock watching our card disappear into the 4 meters of brackish mire, I paused. Under normal circumstances I would not have hesitated to have dived right in after it, snatching hold long before it had a chance to settle on the bottom. But I could not dive in, all I could do was watch in silence the fading trail of bubbles that marked its watery grave. I was not afraid of the dark waters, no! but I was afraid of what may be lurking below. As we were informed upon arrival, that the marina was home to crocodiles and apparently some really big ones. We were told not to let our pets wander near the water. For fear of being eaten.  Good advice if we had actual a pet aboard.

So anyway, I had a new dilemma, one was to find a way to get our cart back, and two was to tell Jan that the cart that had accompanied us down the coast of North America and to Hawaii was now gone and that I had somehow lost her.  So instead of sacrificing myself to some hungry gator, I pulled my fishing rod out and began trolling. Almost an hour later I manage to salvage the cart.  Of course I had to get Jan to take a pic of my latest catch. That’s how crocodiles and shopping for groceries can converge.