Watch Out for Those 2 for 1 Specials

In the touristy areas of Mexico, like Cabo and Puerto Vallarta you will often see the 2 for 1 special. 2 beers or 2 mixed drinks for the price of one. Being from the states where 2 for 1 usually means they are offering you a good deal in order to drum up business and to get you through the door where presumably you're going to spend money on other things while you're there, we fell for the 2 for 1 deal more than once. 2 for 1 in Mexico usually means, it turns out, that they are really trying to fleece the unsuspecting tourist. For example a beer in most places in Mexico, especially in non touristy areas, would be around 12 pesos, but when you order a 2 for 1 beer, it's 50 pesos for your 2 beers or 60-80 pesos for your 2 mixed drinks that come in small glasses with 1/2 the liquor you'd find in a normal drink. The other cute trick they play is the 1/2 for 1, which means you go into a place and ask how much the beer is and they say 12 pesos and you think great let's order some beer and they bring you out the chico, the 1/2 sized beer.

We spent about 8 days at the La Cruz anchorage a few miles outside of Puerto Vallarta and 2 days at the marina over Christmas weekend. The small town of La Cruz is actually pretty nice, lots of inexpensive and good places to eat, a couple small markets, tortillaria, veterinarian, laundry, and buses that run every few minutes to Bucerias and Puerto Vallarta. We did make into Puerto Vallarta a couple times, did a little sight seeing, met up with some good friends from the bay area, and yes, we got fleeced. I would have to rank PV below Mazatlan but well above Cabo because it does have character, lots of artwork and once you get to know your way around you can find the good yet inexpensive places to eat and drink.

Christmas turned out to be really nice, we had planned on having dinner with Lenard and Wilma from Midnight Sun, we bought a ham at Costco, made some wild rice and scalloped potatoes. We ended up with an impromptu potluck-dock party with about 16 people from several different countries, who all joined us in the celebration. Everyone from a couple we had 1st met back in Emeryville to people we had just met that day.

There are no photos of PV, I didn't bring the camera on the 1st trip and on the 2nd one the camera decided that it wasn't going to work that day (time for a new camera). Here is a photo of the tortilla machine in La Cruz.

Tortillas maize, made fresh daily. 12 pesos/kilo

12 pesos = 1 dollar

Parque National Isla Isabel

Spent several days sitting around in Mazatlan waiting for some good wind to take us south to Isla Isabel. We finally decided that we would buy a spinnaker and see if we could get the boat to move a bit faster in the light winds, luckily we met a guy who had an extra one laying around that was almost a perfect fit.

Our New Spinnaker

The spinnaker did help quite a bit and kept us going without having to turn the engine on for quite some time. It was slow going though and nothing is going to move you in windless conditions except the engine and so we did end up motoring for the final 12 hours.

Sea birds will often land on the boat to take a break, this tern stayed with us for a couple hours, we also saw a number of terns riding around on sea turtles

Finally arrived at our destination 24 hours later and on my birthday. Isla Isabel is a National Park 70 miles south of Mazatlan. It home to a number of breeding bird colonies including the Magnificent Frigate Bird, the Brown Booby, the Blue Footed Booby and others along with several species of lizards. Not a bad place to spend your birthday.

View from the Light House

Hiked up to the light house the 1st morning we were there, pretty awesome views from up there. My camera batteries died right after taking this photo. The second time I hiked up there a couple days later, I took several photos which I think would have turned out awesome but the camera for some reason didn't save any of them. I guess it's time for a new camera.

Blue Footed Boobies

Brown Boobies

Fishing Village on the Island

One of the most amazing places that I have ever been, wish I had an underwater camera, the fish and sealife surrounding the island was pretty amazing too and we even saw humped back whales breaching off on the horizon.We'll have another chance to go back on our way up the coast next spring.

Brown Boobies

Cerveceria del Pacifico

One of the best, can't miss things that we've found to do in Mazatlan so far is the Pacifico Brewery tour. Pacifico Brewery was started by a couple of German's 110 years ago here in Mazatlan,this is now one of the smallest breweries so they only bottle 163,000 cases of beer a day here for the Mexican market which sells 4.5% rather than the 3.2% that gets sent to the States from one of their other breweries. The tour is free and very informative, the tasting room has one of the best views of the city, so take the 4pm tour and get a good view of the sunset while you are up there and best of all, it's all the free beer you can drink in the hour or so they let you hang out up there before kicking you out.

El Gallito Bar

Complete with live crowing chickens

Think we would of consumed a lot more free beer if we hadn't had spent the afternoon before the tour drinking Pacificos in the nearby bars, someone lied and told us the tour was at 2pm, so we had some time to kill.

Looking out towards the harbor

Life is Good!

Mazatlan

Well we did it, made the jump from La Paz to Mazatlan. It's 190nm from Bahia de los Muertos to Mazatlan, we did it in 32 hours. Had good winds almost the entire way on the beam 6-8.5 knots for 24 hours straight. Seas were pretty sloppy though and I did get seasick. I finally broke down and went and bought medication for the seasickness, it's something I usually don't think about when we are ashore and since I don't get seasick that often, I kept putting it off, but now I think it'd be better to not risk the suffering anymore. I'll let you know how it works out. 

Approaching Isla Creston near the entrance to Mazatlan Harbor

Cruise Ship leaving the harbor

Met up with old friends Lenard and Wilma and new friend Dino we are all heading south from here to Isla Isabella and Puerto Vallarta

We anchored the 1st night at Stone Island anchorage just below Mazatlan's harbor, it was very calm and quite there, got to catch up on our sleep. Moved over to the Club Nautico anchorage inside the harbor the next morning as it's much closer and much easier to get to town from here. Spent some time checking out the city and local establishments, the downtown market has just about anything you could ever want or need, well except for aged cheddar, dark chocolate or IPAs.

Catedral Basilica de la Inmaculada Conception

Pool and 12 peso Pacificos at Bar Olimpia

Magnificent Frigate Birds fighting over shark guts

Puesta del Sol from where we anchored at Club Nautico

Len,Wilma and Dino had already been here for a couple weeks, so they were pretty much ready to leave when we got here especially since Lenard had his portaboat dinghy stolen while anchored out near Isla Venados. We hung out with them for a couple days before they left and had a great Thanksgiving dinner with them. Wilma ended up doing most of the cooking and we bought 3 roasted chickens to go with it, good food, good friends, beautiful weather, who could ask for anything more.

We've decided that it's too cold here, it's been in the 50s at night, so were going to leave soon and keep heading south, try and catch up with the Midnight Sun and Hadar. Isla Isabella is our next stop followed by San Blas then Puerto Vallarta before Christmas. Isla Isabella is a nesting ground for many different types of seabirds and has some of the best diving and snorkeling on Mexico's Pacific coast.