Wanderings in Mazatlan

It’s been a minute since our last update. This will be an uncharacteristically short one to document our time in Mazatlan. While there it was cool and breezy. Additionally, the water in the harbor isn’t clean enough for our preferences, so we still haven’t been swimming in salt water yet. But we really enjoy Mazatlán for other reasons.

This is Martin (pronounced Marteen), self-proclaimed “amigo de cruisers”. He has been here ever since we have been sailing here. His English is no better than our Spanish, but we are able to communicate effectively. He is most helpful and would do anything he can to help—a friend indeed. I would also call him an amigo de animals as he always has plenty of dogs and cats that he takes care of.

We have always felt safe to anchor in the old harbor and tie up the dinghy at the dinghy dock (an ever-changing piece of floating crap old panga laid over with scrap and re-purposed wood attached to shore—but it serves its purpose just fine). A fee is no longer required to tie up here, but we continue to “tip” Martin 50 pesos as a appreciation for his service and to help him keep his animals well fed. Our typical day in Mazatlán is to go to shore after breakfast and coffee.

Lily leads the way

Near the dock are some circles of buoys that typically has a great heron or two standing nearby. We have always wondered if it was nets or cages and what they were. This year we learned that a university professor is breeding red snapper. Mmmm…I’d like to go fishing there too Mr. Heron!

From the dock we take long walks either to run errands or just for exercise/fun. Some days we put in nearly 10 miles of walking which is quite pleasant due to the cooler weather. So join us if you will on a few of our wandering through town. At many red lights throughout Mexico you can be entertained while waiting for the light to turn green. There are many different street performances that are necessarily short as the actors need to have time to gather pesos from car windows of any generous motorists before the light returns to green. On this particular walk through town we saw a few acts that we have not seen before. One was a middle-aged, slightly overweight woman in a hot-pink leotard and mini-skirt using a hoola-hoop. Sadly, she wasn’t a very talented hoola-hoopist (is that a word?). More sadly, no one spared any pesos for her efforts. While juggling and unicycles and combining the two are common acts, this guy added a dangerous twist we had never seen before--juggling machetes while on a very tall unicycle! By the time I got my camera out he had dropped a machete. Don’t worry, no blood was spilled. I wonder if he got any pesos?? I wonder if blood would make a difference in whether or not he gets pesos??

Something else new this year in Mazatlán, zip lining. My long-time readers may (or may not), remember when we took the long and winding uphill path to el Faro or the lighthouse. At that time the big attraction at the top was the glass bridge where we walked out over the cliff. Now, you can apparently zip line from the top across the water to the land. We didn’t take this adventure, but maybe on our way back North.

The lighthouse is on top of the hill. This is the water you go across. If you zoom in, you may notice that the initial drop is quite steep!

Here is the land where you end up.

Unfortunately, the design was sightly flawed. Where you see the zipliner on the previous picture is as far as gravity will take you. We watched as someone (presumably a trained employee),  pulls themselves out to the stalled customer, wraps their legs around the zipliner, then pulls her hand-over-hand to the safety of the landing exit. Hmmmm…seems like poor design. I’m not sure how much I’d be willing to pay to have my personal space invaded by a stranger wrapping his legs around me, crotch in my face while he pulls me to the end of the “ride”.

On another big walking day we traversed the whole length of the malecón. The city had just put up the monigotes for Carnival. How exciting. This year’s theme is La Perla.

We had so much fun the year we went to Carnival in Mazatlan (Second largest worldwide next to Brazil), that we wished we were going to still be there for this year’s. But it is not meant to be, so we are content in enjoying the monigotes while planning for Carnival in the future.

Since the malecón is ,,,,, long, we stopped along the way to enjoy a beer on the beach to rest. Lily didn’t seem to mind. We do love this girl and it seems like a shameless excuse to throw in some cute pics of her.

While the malecón is a beautiful walk along the oceanfront, it is very noisy. I guess all the high-rise buildings on the other side of the street amplifies the noise of the steady stream of traffic. So, on most walks, we cut over to the next street in about half-way down to walk on a wonderful path along the lagoon. Not sure where these folks came from?

But here are my favorite pics of the natural inhabitants from the path one street over. (Yes, I wish there wasn’t litter in these pics too!)

On the walk from the old harbor to town we walk by several walls with drainage holes built in them. We have to take our time because Lily has to peek her nose in nearly all of them. We used to laugh at our little huntress saying that she needed to check them all to “make sure”, until one day when we realized that she may know something that we don’t about the possible inhabitants of these holes.

While in Mazatlán, our legendary sailing compadres Frank and Patsy from the sailing vessel Rogue came to town, and we were able to spend some together.

Frank and Patsy invited us to join them for an evening of live country music. He said that if we don’t like country music (Jim definitely does not), it will be like having a root canal. Once he said the drinks would be two for the price of one, we said that a root canal with alcohol and good friends sounded great!

Two for one happy hour requires a double-fisted “cheers”!

Jim wasn’t enjoying the music as much as the rest of us…

Then the song “Tequila” was played with a conga-line to direct pour tequila shots. We drank then danced back to the end of the line several times.

That’s exactly what Jim needed to enjoy country music!

Two days later we hauled up the anchor and set a southerly course to Isla Isabella…and I can’t wait to share our pics from there! Until then, fair winds.