View of old Mazatlan from El Faro

Mazatlan doesn’t have any good close anchorages except in the old harbour which has the sewage treatment plant  in front of it, with predicable results.  Most of the boats head for the Marina’s just north of town where a dredged harbour is home to numerous facilities.  We stayed at the El Cid Hotel marina which gave us among other things swimming pools to play and lounge in.  For 5 days we were in with the docker cruising set, who could always be caught drinking cocktails by the pool.  Actually even though we did a little of that our boat needed a clean, re-provision and we had a mission to check out Mazatlan’s old town.  Needless to say we were busy!!!  Provisioning was easy because large stores were a quick bus ride away and here we found our favourite Mexican beer, Pacifico for 167 peso’s a flat (24 beers), this coverts to about 75 cents a beer Canadian, so we filled Josh’s closet!!

We hit the old market which was a hub of activity and then wandered around this very beautiful old city.  Lots of the old building was now being restored as homes and small businesses.  The other amazing thing about Mazatlan is the size of their malecon was many miles long.  It ran from the Golden Zone all the way to the lighthouse at the harbour entrance call El Faro.  We were tourists for a few days hiking around town to get a feel of this older tourist destination, ate some of the best gourmet tacos we have ever had, climbed El Faro and ….   With our window for crossing the Sea narrowing we headed out thinking that a little more time in that city would have been great, but the call of the Baja peninsula lured us away.