More Mazatlan
19 April 2011 | Mazatlan, Sinaloa
We have been busy while here in Marina Mazatlan. We spent a half a day cleaning the boat and another half a day doing minor maintenance. We serviced the batteries, changed the fuel filter, cleaned the raw water strainer, polished the stainless steel and put a coat of Semco on the exterior teak. In between chores, we have taken a bus into downtown Mazatlan to explore different areas of the city. We’ve spent parts of a couple of days exploring the Mercado…it’s such a fascinating place to see. And at the recommendation of a local vendor, we found a small neighborhood restaurant that caters mainly to the local residents in the area. We were the only gringos in the place. We had a wonderful late lunch, trying a dish that we have not had before. It’s called pozole and is similar to tortilla soup except that it has shredded pork and hominy and it’s quite good although we decided that we like tortilla soup better. On another day, we made a big goof getting on the wrong bus. But as I’ve said before, riding busses in Mexico is an adventure and we made the most of it by getting a tour of areas of the city that we had not seen before. So getting on the wrong bus is not that bad…we just wait until we come back to where we started, get off and look for the correct bus. Yesterday, we spent most of the day doing some provisioning for the boat. We visited a couple of different stores, doing our grocery shopping and getting everything back to the boat and stowed.
Today we made our way (by bus) to the Immigration office to pick up our new FM3 cards, our extended tourist visa that now allows us to stay in Mexico for up to a year. Also found another “local’s restaurant”….actually a Loncheria stall near another small Mercado (no T-shirts, no blankets, no jewelry, mostly produce and meat) more frequented by locals than tourists. In fact we saw no other gringos while we were there. In one stall, four guys were busy cutting up a beef carcass into smaller pieces and parts. For lunch, we had a whole baked fish, very tasty and bistek ranchera with rice and beans. Fresh, very good and inexpensive local fare!
Many cruisers use Marina Mazatlan as their home base and keep their boats here in the off season. The rest of the “fleet” are like us and are heading north, some to spend time in the Sea of Cortez and some to prep for heading back to the states. Boats are leaving every day but on Sunday there was a mass exodus as 14 boats left. Most were delayed leaving by fog as the port captain closed the port for awhile in the morning, although some chose to ignore the red flag that was posted, left anyway and risked a $5000 fine.
We’ve had a nice visit in Mazatlan but our time here is coming to an end. We plan on leaving in the morning for the 200 mile passage across the Sea of Cortez back to the Baja side. The trip will take 34-40 hours depending on wind and sea conditions.