I love this town! Mazatlan has everything I like about a town and it’s all stuff right near my RV park. It is a surprise to me since I hate big cities. But Mazatlan is something special. I’m really comfortable here. And I really like all the places I can ride my bike. Especially like the lack of insects, and the cool breeze that seems to always be available to cool me off after a nice long bike ride. Then there are my favorite restaurants, and my favorite bars in Mexico are here. The first full day I was here, I rode my bike around visiting all my favorite places making sure they were still in business (they were) and also spent some time trying to find a shop that might have some nick-nacks for friends. Didn’t find any of that kind of stuff this trip, and allot of the stuff was way over priced this time, with so few tourists, most shops raised their prices. A couple years ago, the sidewalks would be crowded with tourists, this trip, not so much. Which made it more comfortable for me. So I’m not complaining.
Late in the day, the mechanic I had asked the office gal to arrange for showed up. He and I discussed my problem with the starting system in the rig and decided to take the starting motor in for a preventative maintenance inspection. At the Cummins shop in town. The motor has 147,000+ miles on it and yet, they said it was fine. Didn’t even need new brushes. That cost me $650 pesos, or $50 US. I was hoping they would find something wrong, so it would be fixed and I wouldn’t have to worry about it. No such luck. Well, maybe jogging it around or removing then reinstalling the wiring did something to make it right. I don’t know, but it’s worked fine since then.
After that repair guy left, my neighbor proceeded to tell me that hardly anyone in the park used him, because he overcharged and sometimes tried to bluff his way through a repair…like he really was not all that well versed in mechanics. But he didn’t always do the work either. It seemed to me that he was a contractor who got the jobs around RV parks mainly because he speaks English, then he farmed it out to someone who knew what they were doing and collected both for the real mechanic and himself. I had no complaints about how the job on my rig was done but I did suspect that I paid more then ordinary in Mexico. An older mechanic did the actual work and was there working while I was off bike riding. I just saw him finish up.
Anyway, after that was finished I met with the more favorable mechanic and told him I wanted my front bearings repacked. Since he’d had his car, with all his tools in the trunk, stolen, it took him awhile to borrow the appropriate tools to get the lug nuts and then the wheels off the rig. I have a nice leveling system in the rig so getting the tires off the ground was no trouble. After the wheel was off, we took a look at the brake pads…oh, oh, time to replace them. We ran all over town before finding the right ones.
After the bearings were packed and the brake pads replaced, he also did some body work for me, I was free to wander around in Mazatlan. The job only cost around $160 including parts. What a bargain.
It was 75°F but a little cloudy.
Some of the islands off of Mazatlan's shore.
One of many public works of art.
Old town off in the distance.
Where are all the tourists? Looking back to northern Maz.
Nice just to sit and watch.
More shoreline. This portion is well beyond where I usually hang out...
An incredible statue.
Brass dolphins.
Way away from my hang out area now...
One of the islands is white, the other one dark.
Naked people.
That white thing there, left of middle, is a staircase. Just to give you an ocean view from the top of that pinnacle.
I walked over to that staircase and climbed up while thinking, “I wonder why there aren’t any hand rails?” Going up wasn’t too bad, but damn, coming back down a steep, narrow staircase, damp from dew, without a handrail, was a sweat inducer. I couldn’t just hop and skip down the thing. Had to sit down and crab crawl back down. All 50 feet. I dropped my glasses case while crawling and it tumbled toward the edge causing me some anxiety, but it stopped so I could grab it before it jumped off the side and into the ocean.
The view from atop the staircase.
This hotel has been going up for 3 years that I know of...slowly. All the for sale signs were in English so this is going to be a condo for gringos. It's a little farther along then what I remember so they must have stopped work for a while due to the bad economy. They are back at work now.
Around that corner is the old Mazatlan. Old town. The part of Mazatlan that has a 300 year history. Most of that history involved tourists.
Into old town.
Old town's central plaza.
A neat old building downtown. Apartments.
There are many of these older buildings that have been converted to apartments or they were built as apartments or hotels. This one is right on the central plaza. Lot’s of activities here in this area. Very classy restaurants, the live theater, symphony, etc. I’ve heard of some nice places going for a mere $300 per month in downtown. It might not be the most attractive area for gringos to rent or buy because it’s far from the tourist haunts…but look at that place. I would love to live there. And with taxis being so inexpensive here, you can get anywhere for just a few bucks. There were lots of small stores, restaurants and bars around the area as well. All the creature comforts within easy reach.
A government building with shops in the lower sections.
I rode my bike this whole distance and it was an adventure. I’d been downtown back in ’07 a couple times but I had a taxi driver friend that ferried me around so ridding my bike around gave me a better sense of the place. I like it, old town that is, particularly because it was uncrowded and quiet. The streets are narrow but you can drive your car around it without trouble. I might have a bit of trouble with the RV but can’t see why I’d need to go downtown in that. After spending an hour wandering around, I headed back to my home base in the golden zone. The weather looks dicey in these pictures but it was very mild with a light breeze. Never rained. Never smelled like rain. Excellent bike riding weather because the locals think of weather like this as cold, wintery. So they stay home. The tourist tend to gather in bars or stay home too. Leaves the whole remarkable place to me. And a few thousand others.
And back near my RV park after that long ride.
More from Maz the next issue.