We left on Tuesday evening at 6:45PM on a TAP bus, (fare 545 pesos or about $54.50 dollars). The bus was on time and everything went well. Roy snoozed a little bit on the bus overnight and we arrived in Mazatlan around 6 AM Wednesday. We grabbed a taxi and arrived at our Hotel expecting to have to store our luggage until the afternoon before we could get into our room. Lucky for us they had a room that we could get into right away. That was great. We were ready for coffee but the restaurant didn't open until 7 AM, so we decided to take a walk in the direction of the relatives hotel. We wandered along the quiet empty streets and almost the first thing we saw was the Dairy Queen. I laughed and told Roy that I had to take a photo of that just for Isla Gringo, so here you go Wayne. It wasn't open at that time of the day and I wouldn't have felt like ice cream then anyway.
We were sick of sitting so just kept walking and looking around. After about 20 minutes we arrived at the relatives hotel and phoned them from the lobby, intending to leave a message as that is what the desk clerk said would happen. Instead they answered the phone and as they were up and about we went up to their room for coffee. We sat and visited and then we are headed out for breakfast at a cafe about 10 minutes down the beach. The grand kids were just loving the ocean and the beach, it was fun to watch them. We had a good visit over a long breakfast and then headed back to their hotel. We visited some more and then we headed back to our hotel.
The return trip was certainly not as calm and quiet as the walk there. All of the tour operators and timeshare salesmen were out in force. What a nightmare, it was like walking a gauntlet and we were exhausted by the time we got back to our hotel. We sacked out for awhile in our room and then wandered over to the Canadian Consulate which is right close to the hotel we stayed in. We wanted to ask some questions about renewing our passports when the time comes and the lady there was very helpful.
We stayed at the Azteca Inn, in the Zona Dorado. The price was reasonable, the rooms were clean and decent and the restaurant was very good. We didn't use the pool or hot tub; but it all looked nice and clean. To me it was a bit chilly for swimming but all of the other tourists didn't seem to think so, they were all sweating and wearing shorts, (we got some funny comments from the relatives as we were wearing our jackets in the morning and they were already in shorts and sweating, pretty funny). All of the staff at the hotel seemed to speak/understand English and were very helpful with directions, etc.. We would definitely stay in this hotel if we ever go to Mazatlan again.
After some relaxing in our room we headed down the street and had a couple of beer and people watched. We decided we didn't want to run the timeshare gauntlet so thought we would try out the restaurant in our hotel for dinner. Good plan. Roy had enchiladas and I had breaded shrimp and boy was it good. I wanted to compare the Mazatlan shrimp to the Guaymas shrimp lol, and the comparison was good. I even got a baked potato, something that we don't ever see on the menu here in Guaymas, maybe in San Carlos they are on the menu but not here. It was really good. We were tired so didn't even look for any evening entertainment, we hit the bed early after not getting any sleep the night before on the bus.
The next morning Roy was up at his usual ungodly hour of 5 AM; but was nice enough to get dressed and head to OXXO for a coffee and then he went to use the computer in the hotel lobby. I went back to sleep for awhile before getting up. We again headed to the relatives hotel for a visit and breakfast with them.
After breakfast we caught a cab to the bus station to buy our return tickets for the next day. We wanted to pick our seats on the bus line that we had come down on; but unfortunately their bus wasn't leaving until 6 PM and we didn't want to hang around for so long with our bags after checking out of the hotel. We looked around and found another bus where we could get tickets to leave in the morning. This was a BIG mistake; but I will go into that on another post. After buying our tickets we started walking along the malecon Olas Atlas headed in the general direction of centro. After walking for awhile we grabbed a pulmonia taxi and went to Plaza Republica. More on this tomorrow.
