Return(s) to Agua Verde

We set off from the S side of Isla Coronados to return to Agua Verde, where we had spent some time on the way up North in mid February (https://mvmissmiranda.com/2021/03/07/agua-verde/).  It was a calm and pleasant cruise of about 5 hours, with sunshine and rising temperatures.  By the time we arrived at Agua Verde it was 91 degrees.  There were already 4 sailboats anchored in the “Agua Verde Yacht Club” or AVYC, also known as the fisherman’s beach, in the Northwest corner, so we elected to drop the hook right off the beach in front of the village.  There was one other power boat anchored in the mouth of “Pyramid Bight”, and that was all.  We put out the flopper stopper as usual and were a bit surprised by some swell coming in from the NE, where the bay is open.  The afternoon heat drove us into the water, which was just under 70 degrees.  Gwen put on mask and snorkel and swam over to shore.  I took the more genteel approach of inflating a floaty toy and swinging on a line tied to the back of the boat.  The swell calmed down by bedtime, and we had a pleasant, if warm, night’s sleep.  When I awoke before dawn the next morning there was another power boat anchored not far from us, and two more heading in.  One was the gigantic Megayacht Ulysses that was anchored near our friends Ron and Nancy the day before in Bahia San Francisco.

It was a bit cooler in the morning, but overnight temperatures hovered around 80 degrees.  When Gwen got up we noticed that the yacht anchored behind us left… actually, it simply pulled up to Ulysses.  Why?  This 70 ft flybridge motor yacht was a tender (one of many) to the megayacht.  We watched for a while as the dual cranes dropped boat after boat from the foredeck, from a 20-some foot wakeboat to a 50 ft speedboat, along with the usual assortment of jet skis, landing dinghies, etc.  The capper was the giant slide set up off the upper deck on the port side.  I can tell you that some group was having big, expensive fun!

Soon we saw that the boat moved out of pyramid bight, so we moved over there and tucked into a very nice S wind cove with a great sandy beach and, we would find, good snorkeling out to Pyramid rock.  We went to the beach for the day and did do some snorkeling along the shallow reef on the W side of the cove.  We saw lots of starfish here, including one called a chocolate chip starfish, and a pretty good assortment of small tropical reef fish.  The water was warm enough to snorkel just with rash guards.

Late that afternoon, our friends on N50 Duet entered the anchorage.  We have been corresponding with them for months (mostly me complaining to Ron about various boat problems) and they were on their first extended cruise since the boat returned from Australia in 2019.  They were vaccinated before leaving San Diego, and we all had been out of human contact for a while, so we… gasp… had cocktails on their flybridge without wearing masks (though of course, Drs Gwen and Ron insist that we include that we maintained 6 ft of social distance).

The next day we visited the little tienda in the village and picked up some avocados, tomatoes and bananas.. we were running short on fresh produce.  Later, Nancy and Ron joined us for some snorkeling around Pyramid rock. 

We had a dinner of burgers, roasted cauliflower and baked beans, with some nice red wine, again on Duet’s fly bridge.  Notably… the burgers had CHEDDAR CHEESE, the most valuable food commodity in Mexico.  Nancy and Ron even made a gift of a chunk of cheddar as we left.  I’m sure they will regret their generosity at some point.

We love the pyramid bight anchorage.  Apparently, so do other boaters.  We wound up with three other boats in there close enough to exchange jars of Grey Poupon.  The weather is quite settled so not a big deal… but Agua Verde is HUGE… I’ll never understand why people feel that they must tuck in no matter what.

This has been an absolutely fantastic stop.  Sunny days, calm weather, warm temperatures and crystal clear water.  What more could you ask for?

Well, you could ask for… more.  After going back up to re-visit Marina Puerto Escondido and Loreto with Ron and Nancy, we headed back down to Agua Verde while Ron and Nancy headed North.  This time several other boats had found our preferred South cove, but we managed to squeeze in (having decided to act as others do). 

Our mission this time was to hike on the trail from the north beach over the hill, past the village cemetery and on to the beach on the other side.  The trail was a typical human/goat trail, a mix of compacted dirt and lots of loose rocks.  Some other boaters were investigating the cemetery so we went onward toward the beach.  Soon we found ourselves at the head of an estuary, surrounded by palm trees and looking into a brackish water pool.  It was low tide, so we could cross the stream.  Once we did, we could see the estuary opening to the beach, several hundred yards away.  We tried bushwacking along some goat trails that ran next to the estuary, but weren’t able to get there, so we gave up and headed back. 

We stopped in the “village cemetery” which is quite clearly abandoned and in a pretty advanced state of decay.  Most of the memorials that were still legible were from the 50s and 60s.  We assume that the descendants of those former residents have moved on and there is nobody left to care for the place.  Kinda sad, really.  We went back to the dinghy and then over to the main beach and the tienda.  Gwen was able to get some goat cheese, chips, and a couple of hours of very slow internet connectivity.  The goat cheese, while perfectly OK, was nowhere near as good as the stuff we had in San Juanico.

Late one afternoon, a large pod of dolphins came charging into our little cove and were very active, jumping and swimming rapidly back and forth.  They seemed to be feeding and kept sweeping in and out of the shallows on the W side of the cove… it was crazy and lasted for at least an hour or so.  Meanwhile, Gwen was looking out in the other direction out into the bay and spotted a pod of Orcas.  At first I didn’t believe her, thinking it was just more dolphins, but a careful look with the stabilized binoculars made it clear that they were, in fact, Orcas, and at least a half dozen of them.  Gwen said she thought she saw one flipping a small animal, maybe a seal or baby dolphin, out of the water… apparently not an uncommon trick.

We had more cool wildlife sightings.  Early one morning, Gwen saw a squadron of Mobula Rays (like mantas, but way smaller) cruising by the boat.  It was very cool to watch them slowly flying by just under the surface, in formation.  Later in the evening we saw an even bigger group come by, and saw a bunch of them trying to fly, without success.  They would launch themselves out of the water as if they believed that their wings worked in air, too, only to be disappointed when they fell back to the sea.

This time in Agua Verde, the water really was a deep green, and not at all as clear as it was on our previous visits, during which we could see our flopper stopper and the sandy bottom below.  This time we couldn’t even see the flopper stopper, not ideal for snorkeling but just fine for enjoying the sunny afternoons on our floaty toys behind the boat.

We spent a total of 11 nights over three visits to Agua Verde, making it our favorite anchorage in the Sea.