The cruising guides say good things about both Bahia del Sol and Barillas Marina Club, but Barillas charges $100 less just to go there, so that made our decision easy. After 96 hours at sea, we barely made it to the pilot waypoint by the 4 pm cut off time. It’s early because it takes another hour to go the 7 miles or so up the estuary and there are no lights along the way.
We got tied up to our mooring and our “guests” arrived about 6 pm: the Port Captain, Immigration and Customs Officials and a military guy to do a boat inspection. They completed our paperwork efficiently and made us feel very welcome. Then we went ashore to check in to the marina, they too were wonderful. It was Thursday evening and Friday is one of the two days they go in to town so we signed up to go. It was Christmas Eve so the town was crazy! We’d been so out of touch with the holiday rush.
Barillas Marina Club is a private club that many wealthy people in El Salvador belong to: many arrive by private airplane on a nearby landing strip. They have tight security, a nice pool, 20 or 30 palapas near the pool and scattered over the neatly landscaped grounds – all with power and wifi. Twice a week, at no extra charge, their van takes you to Usulatan, a nearby town with a vast range of stores and services. The mooring prices are very economical and we liked it so much we stayed for a week!
While they have many, many moorings, only about 6 boats, including ours, were in the marina. Two were long term tenants without their owners present. One had been there for 6 months, one got in a week before we did and the other the day before we arrived. We met the three other couples on the van and became fast friends.
We had Christmas Eve cocktails and hors d’orves on the Santorini and made plans for a Christmas Day Turkey and Potluck Dinner. The next day Jack cooked the turkey on the BBQ and we chipped in for the rest of the dinner. We ate under one of the palapas.
It was so much fun to connect and create an instant Cruiser Family. Joanie and Jack have been cruising for 17 years and were on their way home to Canada to complete their circumnavigation. Dick and Nancy have been cruising for 14 years and were on their way to Z-town to complete theirs. Both couples were headed north. Don and Judy had been at Barillas for 6 months doing repairs on damage sustained in Tropical Storm Agatha earlier in the year. They fell in love with the place and decide to stay a while. They were just about ready to continue south, so we ended up leaving together to head to Nicaragua.