What a difference a week makes. Last week at this time we were on the Baja peninsula at Puerto Escondido getting ready to leave for Auga Verde and then on to La Paz. The Baja peninsula is a rather dry, dusty, barren place. Puerto Escondido is home to a kinda clicky group that call themselves the "Hidden Harbor Yacht Club". Although we sorta enjoyed our time at Puerto Escondido...even though the showers were cold, the internet didn't work and "Hidden Harbor Yacht Club" members weren't all that friendly.... we were happy to be moving on.
This week we are here at the mega resort of El Cid. El Cid is a 5 star resort with three different hotels spread throughout Mazatlan, there is a free shuttle that runs between the different hotels and as marina guests we are able to use ALL of the facilities at ALL of the hotels. Just at the Hotel Marina El Cid there are two pools (pic), five restaurants, a decent tienda, showers that are hot, there are beautiful lush gardens, a shuffleboard court and a miniature golf course. We can even....get this....order room service to our boat. Within the group of resorts there is a Country Club with a PGA-rated par 72 (whatever that means) which is home to the Canadian Tour and Mexican PGA, there is also a 5000 square foot gym, a beach club, tennis club and many stores and shops. The many bellmen wear fancy white uniforms and the maids are attired in sexy (???) little maid outfits. Each morning they put out the days activities list full of things like, poolside bingo, pool volleyball, water aerobics, poolside blackjack and on and on...very cruise ship like I would say. I always wait to give my full approval on places until we are leaving, but so far this appears to be a nice place to spend the next 1 1/2 months. Ohh and one other thing, the internet wifi actually works here.
We've already taken a couple of jaunts outside of the confines of the resort and Mazatlan also appears to be a neat place to explore. My kids are going to be visiting me here the week before Christmas and hopefully Russ and Frank will be booking their trip for early January later today. If you would like a nice getaway, this might be a good place to visit me, the air and hotel packages are cheap ($700 for 5 days from San Diego) and there are many GREAT "Hora Feliz's" through the resort and the town.
At this time the only real drawback I see is....I hope I don't become to comfortable here as it will be hard to get room service to Si Bon once we leave and head back to sea.