December 13, 2021 - December 23, 2021
Monday and Tuesday were taken up with preparations for our trip to Mazatlan on Wednesday morning. We stopped at La Comer to purchase the duck we were planning to have for Christmas dinner and some other items we needed for our trip. As we packed for the trip Lola became more and more agitated. She has come to know the meaning of packing. She doesn’t like change. Kali was completely oblivious to what was going on.
On Wednesday we got up early only to discover that our electricity was out. After contacting our land lady we found out that the electricity was out on the entire block. Not wanting to open the fridge or the freezer any more than absolutely necessary I walked to OXXO (a 7-eleven type store) to buy ice for our cooler. We quickly grabbed everything we needed to put in the cooler and continued packing up the car (without coffee or breakfast). We wrestled the cats into their carriers and left the apartment at 9:45 hoping the electricity would come on soon, but who knows. Our first stop was La Comer’s cafe to get some coffee and breakfast before continuing on our trip. The first part of the trip was on roads that went thru every small towns on our way to a major toll road. Not only was it slow going, but the towns all have giant speed bumps (totally unmarked) about every block or so to keep the traffic speed down. The car scraped bottom on many of these bumps which made for a stressful start to the trip. Finally we reached a toll road and the trip went more smoothly. We were in the mountains going up and down and all around for the rest of the day until we got to the outskirts of Guadalajara. We were booked in to a small hotel for the night in a quiet neighborhood in Guadalajara called Tlaquepaque. Unfortunately our GPS took us to the exact same address except not in Tlaquepaque. Some very helpful guys working nearby finally found the correct spot in our Google maps app and we found our hotel. It was a lovely spot, quaint and colorful, but we had a bit of a problem communicating with the hostess. Under stress, unfortunately, my Spanish is not good.
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| Our hostess recommended the restaurant next door which was excellent. |
In our original plan our entire trip to Mazatlan was to take about eight hours, but our first day took six and our second day took another six. After we got out of the unbelievable traffic in Guadalajara (almost two hours) and onto the toll road the day went smoothly until we got to Mazatlan and couldn’t locate our apartment. We contacted our host and he talked us through getting to the apartment and getting the car parked inside the gate in front of our apartment. The apartment is great with lots of windows, a large modern bathroom, a comfortable king size bed and a small kitchen. After settling in Bob located a great nearby restaurant. We walked down our hill and made a left turn and we were right on the ocean. Beautiful!
It was overcast in the morning when I got out for my walk along the Malecon along the ocean. I was enjoying the atmosphere so much I walked more than usual (over 7,000 steps).
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| This was a part of my view on my morning walk. |
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| Fishing boats on the beach |
Unfortunately, my photos app on my laptop is acting up and I haven’t been able to download my photos or edit them. Consequently, I will not be able to include many photos of Mazatlan in this blog post. I hope to correct the problem so I can add the photos to future blog posts. My computer would not log onto the internet while in Mazatlan so I will continue my trip to Mazatlan in a later post.
Thank you for reading my blog.
