I had a Skype call with my mother the other day and one of the things that came up was the cost of driving here versus my savings over the winter (which will merit a post of its own at some point).<\/p>\n
One of the things I said was that I’m looking into flying here next year rather than driving to save some time, but that it’s a little more expensive than driving straight here and taking a hotel a couple of nights.<\/p>\n
She was surprised by this, wondering if I really want to be here without a vehicle. The short answer is yes.<\/p>\n
The only advantage of having a vehicle here is to go on day drips and explore the environs. But getting to Isla by The Road is such a pain that leaving that way isn’t very enticing, so day trips are pretty much out of the question. Besides, there is so much to do in Maz itself that it would take years to fully unravel the mysteries of the city. And you definitely don’t want to drive in Maz unless you have to!<\/p>\n
What surprised my mother is just how accessible Maz is to me from Isla, that between a walk and a panga ride, I can be back from a proper grocery store in less than an hour, something I can’t do back home! There is an incredible amount I can walk to once I get to Maz and things that are too far away are easily accessible with very inexpensive and expansive public transportation. I’ll be exploring the buses very soon!<\/p>\n
Much as I love driving, I prefer public transportation in a large city when the public transportation is inexpensive and easy to use. When I lived in Gatineau my last year in Quebec, I could take an Ottawa bus two blocks from my house. $1.50 allowed me to take a round trip to just about anywhere in the city. I’d frequently take a bus to a particular area and then walk to where I needed to go before getting on a bus home. I didn’t have to deal with parking and traffic and could make all the stops I wanted as long as I was on my last bus before the time limit for return expired.<\/p>\n
Ottawa has, I believe, the absolute best public transportation system in all of Canada and I made heavy use of it when I could. Even when I lived in the country, I knew where to drop my car cheaply so I could grab a bus instead.<\/p>\n
Mazatl\u00e1n is offering the same vibe as my favourite Canadian city. Walkability and public transportation make it so accessible that I would not feel handicapped being here without a vehicle. I just have to decide if I could bring everything I need in a couple of suitcases!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had a Skype call with my mother the other day and one of the things that came up was the cost of driving here versus my savings over the winter (which will merit a post of its own at some point). One of the things I said was that I’m looking into flying here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[815,14,635,814,3],"tags":[853],"class_list":["post-1522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mazatlan","category-mexico","category-north-america","category-sinaloa","category-travel","tag-accommodation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}