hi

Hi all,We are in Acapulco. It's a big city. Like the
San Francisco of Mexico. When we were pulling in
yesterday we could see cliffs with stairways snaking
out to them that had platforms on top. We presume
they are for the famous cliff divers that we think of
when we hear the name of this city. As we were
pulling in Brian commented that it seems like a place
where alot of margaritas get consumed. Just has that
feel to it. There are steep cliffs, deep clear water,
and hotels that lining this natural harbor. It is
almost officially hurricane season (Doesn't mean that
instantly storms are everywhere, just increased
possibility- we are paying more attention to the
weather reports now). Nearly all the rest of the
cruising boats that haunt the Mexican waters all
winter long, the snowbirds, are gone. About a month
ago the last of them were madly bashing north to get
out of the "hurricane zone". We have only 5 days of
sailing to get to our marina, in Huatulco, Mexico,
where we'll leave the boat for the summer. However,
Puerto Escondido is in between here and there, we'll
stop there for Brian to get in more surfing. We are
looking for a new outboard motor for our dingy. Ours
is up the coast under water due to large surf and
being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In our
searching for a new one a guy named "Nacho Camacho"
has become our self appointed chaperone. He's got his
tentacles feeling around town for a used motor. He
will find one, then inflate the price in order to get
his finder's fee. He is currently aboard our
neighbor's boat showing him where to re anchor and
delivering some fuel filters (for which he collected a
finder's fee). That is how it goes down here. They
watch and wait for a gringo to walk down the street
and say, "What are you looking for?". As soon as you
let them know, the race is on. You follow them from
here, to there, to close, far, over, under, around,
in, behind, above, below, etc. The Finder's are
usually the semi-sleazy kind of guys you don't want to
hang out with, but you have to in order to get
anything done. They are the salesmen that never have
any product and don't work for anybody. They are in
the know and will find you anything you want. Nacho
was trying to hook our neighbor up with a 30 year old
hooker, he just could not understand why a single man
would not want to do that! This is our second city to
search for a motor. We figure there is a finder in
the next city down, same type, same thing. Hopefully
we can get a motor located and use our days in other
ways. We've had fun running all over the place on a
mission, but it will be nice to have mission
accomplished. We'll be flying home in mid-June to work
for 2 months and then come back and continue to
Central America. We'll see most of you within a month
or so!Brian and Megan