Palarran

There were a bunch of reasons we stopped in Acapulco. For the sake of this blog post I have listed 4 of them below.

1. It’s god damn Acapulco. Not stopping would be like driving through South Dakota and not stopping at Wall Drug.

2. The Love boat went to Acapulco (so many wacky hi-jinks)

3. Just about every other cruiser we talked to told us NOT to go to Acapulco because we would be robbed!! OH GOD, the rampant thievery we would be subjected to.

4. ABC’s Wide World of Sports

Reason number 3 is the asshole/contrarian in me coming out. We had to go.

Reason number 4 is the main reason for this whole post.

Remember back in day. Before we had awesome internets. Before even Cable. Back when you would watch PBS, not because you donated 20 bucks and got a shitty tote bag, but because there was ABSOfuckingLUTLY nothing else on TV.

Back then, on the weekends there was a sports show called, ABC’s Wide World of Sports. They always had the oddest sporting events on. There was only two things I really remember about the show. One, that poor fucker in the opening credits eating shit on the Ski jump every weekend. And two, the Acapulco Cliff Divers!

I thought that was the craziest thing I had ever seen. And at the time it was. The internet has now numbed me of that.

But the cliff divers always stuck with me.

So as we headed down the coast of Mexico and got closer to Acapulco, we decided we had to stop in and check it out. In my mind, we would just go to some dusty cliff and look at the place where they did the Wide World of Sports thing.

Nope.

This is still a full on thing. We hooked up with another boat that got here at the same time we did and after a bit of a misadventure and a few wrong turns, grabbed a cab to La Quebrada! Which is the area of town where the cliff (Clavadiestas) divers are.

There were a couple options for seeing the divers.

1. Free. On the side of the road built in the the cliff on the other side of the little bay. Unfortunately, it was pretty far away and you could not really see anything

2. More expensive than free. Pay a small fee, a few pesos and you could walk down the stairs where the Clavadiestas walked down and jumped in to the water.

3. Pay $150 pesos (included two drinks) and get to set at the hotel patio and see the diver in the best spot possible.

We chose option 3. We also had more than 2 drinks.

Watching the divers in person was ridiculous. Something like 100 feet up and 20 feet out to clear the rocks and dive into the water that is not all that deep. Freaking crazy. And totally worth it.

And because I could not describe it very well. I give you a fairly shitty video of the action.

Acapulco cliff divers

Attention the rest of Mexico. You need to step it up. Seriously, Yelapa just took this shit to the next level!

I don’t often think about a place on land in a house I want to live. However, being one that believes in the mantra “never say never”(unless brussel sprouts are involved), if I were to live in a town there are a few requirments:

1: No roads. None big enough for cars to drive on anyway. 4-wheel ATVs are allowed encouraged.

2: The town has to be built on a fairly steep hill side on a water front. Ocean water front.

3: Donkeys. This requirement was just added after our visit here.

I imagine there are a number of places like this in the world. I have personally been to small handful of them. Refuge Cove in B.C. Canada. Some town I went to in Spain a long ass time ago. That crazy little town in that Robin Williams “Popeye” movie from the ’80s.

And now, Yelapa Mexico.

We had a blast in Yelapa. We chased waterfalls. I know, I know, we were not supposed to.

Shopped for Machetes. Ate one of the best breakfast’s I’ve ever had (I say this sort of thing alot.), but it was really good. Manchaca for the win!! Stepped in a lot of Donkey shit. This was not exactly so much fun, as it just sorta added to the experience. Swam under a waterfall after a hot ass hike.

The anchorage was a little rolly, but totally worth it. Didn’t even have to break out the dinghy, the water taxi would pick us up at the boat and drop us off at the “downtown pier”.