Susan, Sequoia, and Todd go sailing

Around here, the prevailing winds are from the northwest, which makes sailing to the northwest challenging. All in all we had a great passage from San Blas to Mazatlan. It took us 33 hours, but we put only 14 hours on the motor, so we were quite pleased.

We anchored in the Old Harbor, which is very conveniently located near Mazatlan’s lovely historic district. What’s not so lovely about the Old Harbor is that it is also the home to the city’s sewage treatment plant. Depending on the wind angle, this can make for some odoriferous evenings! But even this stinky cloud has a silver lining: whenever we take one of the little red taxi trucks back here, we don’t even have to watch for our stop. We can just take a quick sniff and know when we’re back!

Mazatlan is a big city (500K people), and at first we were a bit overwhelmed by all the hustle and bustle. We didn’t realize that we’d become country bumpkins! On our first trip into town, we took a pulmonia (a sort of golf-cart taxi) to the central market, where we were besieged by vendors. It was a Tuesday, and there were no cruise ships in town, so they were working hard to make some sales. We made a beeline for the exit and found a quiet cafe instead.

The cafe americano jolted us out of our bumpkin-ness, and soon we were right back in the swing of city life. We strolled from plaza to plaza, pausing for a snack here, an ice cream there. I happily devoured a bag of mango, covered with chili, salt and lime juice. (Lest anyone think that mole poblano is a fluke, Mexicans have proven themselves as culinary experts by demonstrating that you can put chili and lime on anything: mango, peanuts, coconut. Mmm, mmm, mmm!)

Mazatlan has a fabulous old restored theater called Teatro Angela Peralta. One night we went with the crew of Theophilus to see the Youth Symphony perform. Todd and I enjoyed the night out so much that we went back a couple of nights later for a performance of Tosca. The tickets were only $5, and it was fantastic! Capn Culture vowed to see more opera when we’re back in the states; I didn’t tell him that a comparable performance would cost us at least 5 times the price!

Lest you think we’ve completely abandoned our sea-faring ways, let me just say that some pirate activity may have been reported in the Old Harbor, and that the crews of Sugata and Theophilus may have some knowledge of said activity. I’m not saying any more!

I can confirm that we hiked up to the lighthouse, and have spent a couple of afternoons at Playa Olas Altas, which is a great little beach just a few blocks from the historic center of the city. The kids loved the waves, while the adults enjoyed the cold 10 peso beers from the mini-mart right across the street.

We also visited the Bosque de la Ciudad, which has a little zoo with local cats including a jaguar. Nearby is the Acuario, which has a fun sea lion show. It was neat to see the fish in the aquarium; a number of the species are ones we’ve seen while snorkeling, while others we are still hoping to see.

In other news, Toro has been strutting around the boat with his shirt off lately. He claims that it’s because of the warmer temperatures, but I think he’s really just proud of his slimmed-down physique. If anyone wants to try his weight loss program, here are the simple rules:

• Don’t eat dinner.
• Do drink beer. At least 2, and preferably 4 cans a day.
• In addition to beer, make sure you drink your fill of beverages further up the alcohol pyramid: tequila, rum, and bourbon.
• Keep a stash of Snickers and Milky Way bars. Sneak one whenever you can.
• Sleep 11 or 12 hours a day.
• Engage in heavy exercise (like pulling up the anchor) about once a week. The rest of the time, lounge around and complain about how hard it is to do that heavy exercise. Apparently, whining burns calories.

It’s worked for Toro; it can work for you!

See all of our Mazatlan photos here:

20080415Mazatlan

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 10:44 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.