City Tours

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A Rare Four Cruise Ship Day in Mazatlán

rhere were four cruise ships in harbour today, a very rare event! My friend Grant lives along the route between the docks and the Plazuela Machado and reports that it’s “raining Gringos” today! Too funny. There are apparently 10,000 extra people in town. Maz is a fairly large city, almost half a million people spread out over its metro area, but these 10,000 folks are concentrated in Centro and the Golden Zone. It’s probably rather crowded on the other side!

Since this was such a big deal, I made sure to take my camera on my walk this afternoon and so was able to note of a few things along the way.

One of my neighbours has a patch on his house that looks rather like a rat. Someone else seemed to think so and chalked in a tail!

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This was quite a shock the other day. We’re right at the end of my street and the grove there was clearcut to make room for a house site!

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I visited the upstairs flat in this house recently.

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You go up those terra cotta stairs to a really lovely landing and the little balcony is off the bedroom. Brand new construction, one bedroom, bathroom, and a small kitchen/dining/living room combo (I think the covered landing is meant to be the living room proper). Not to my taste and way more than I’d want to pay, but I have to say that I loved the view from up there. I’ve been seeing a number of properties lately since friends of mine are shopping for friends of theirs and I get to come along as the translator!

I saw one house that I would have considered for next year, if I was coming back next year and knew I could get internet there. It’s not a ‘Gringo’ house at all, very Mexican with a bit of an odd layout, bright blue tiled floors, orange walls, and no glass in the windows, with a porch overlooking the harbour. I saw another place where the living room and kitchen are open to the outdoors and only the bedrooms and bathrooms are properly closed off. Not sure how I feel about that for long-term living, but it’s been neat seeing the variety of houses available for rent.

Coming to the embarcadero, I saw the first two of the four ships.

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And the other two as I rounded the corner to head back towards Calle Principal.

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The Titanik was also in dock. 🙂

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Crown Princess.

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Norwegian Jewel.

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I love looking up at the mountain that is right smack in the middle of Isla. It looks like any mountain back home until…

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I see the cacti.

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This building has been under construction since last year! It’s been interesting to see how construction is done here. The buildings are made of brick walls, which are then rendered by hand with cement.

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I love this grove of vines near the rear of the El Velero restaurant. They are thick enough to seem like a building!

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Miguel’s has updated some of its signage.

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They have a pizza oven now, but the pizza business is not going well. Folks find the pizza too expensive.

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This is the house being built on the lot at the end of my street that was vacant last year. You can see the brick that’s behind the cement. It will be cut out for the windows. Friends of mine and I are wondering why such tiny windows when there is such a view from that vantage point…

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I love the tropical vibe at the back of my house, and if I wish there was just one window back there.

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And I still can’t believe this lush backyard with palm trees is part of the place I call home!

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Visiting Mazatlán’s Tianguis de la Juárez (Flea Market)

After hearing about the ‘Juárez flea market’ through readers Michael and Rochelle and seeing some pictures on Contessa’s blog, I was intrigued. I didn’t have much to go on, besides Michael giving me a very rough idea of the location. Googling Mercado Juárez didn’t give me much other than super old information. But cobbling together a bunch of clues, I finally found the right combination of words (tianguis and Juárez) to get a jackpot of information on the Spanish-language sites.

From these sites, I learned that this market is where the locals shop to get much better deals than at the Mercado Pino-Suárez in Centro and that the market is located in a colonia (neighbourhood) in Maz that is almost a self-contained city. Sunday mornings, folks sell all manner of used goods and this is the most exciting time to go.

Now, to get there…

A lot of the buses that go by the embarcadero have the name Juárez written on them. So this morning, I decided to flag one down and ask if they went to the tianguis de la Juárez. Yup! It was a rather short ride and I knew I was there when the bus slowed to a crawl as it went through the heart of this open-air market. No street closures in Mexico! I hopped off, picked up a giant guava agua fresca (just $10!), and spent quite a bit of time just walking up and down the streets, orientating myself.

This was ‘my’ Mexico, with air smelling of cilantro and grilled meat and laundry detergent, with a whiff of exhaust. Listen carefully and you could hear under the music bartering, cleavers chopping meat and coconuts, vehicles going over topes, and the swish of brooms. It was crowded and busy, but not in the least overwhelming, not the way it would have been at this time last year.

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Everything was for sale and I had fun poking through hardware and kitchen supply shops, as well as looking at clothing. So many sandals!

After exploring the roadside stands, I discovered the flea market part of the market, where there were a lot of clothes for sale!

This was my favourite part of the experience, reminding me a bit of going through the mercado in Durango. Just a warren of stalls with little rhyme or reason to the layout and lots of treasures to be found.

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And treasure I did find! I have been looking for something since last year and which I cannot believe has been so elusive, a lime press. And just like that, I found myself facing an assortment of them! I had a choice of metal or plastic for the same price, but with the metal being aluminum, I preferred to go with the plastic. The seller admitted that he preferred the plastic ones since they have little poky bits that do a better job of fully squeezing the lime. So sold! Oh, and just $25, not negotiable.

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I was trying to decide which taco stand to grab lunch from when I noticed the pizza quite a few people were eating. It looked rather like New York style, so I changed my lunch plans and grabbed a slice for something ridiculous like $24 (prices were definitely lower in this part of Maz than in Centro!) to assuage my curiosity. Well, it wound up being the best pizza I’ve had since Idaho Falls! The cheese and sauce were spot on, the dough not quite chewy enough. But dang! I’ll be spoiled for pizza if I got anywhere else in Maz, methinks!

Just as I was finishing up and found myself wishing for a nieve vendor, what did I spot?! She had most of the usual flavours and I went with prune. $15, same price as I pay in Centro, got me nearly three times as much, and in a cone! It was almost too much, but nieve is so light and refreshing that it goes down easily.

I’d managed to fill almost two hours and I was ready to go, so I decided to take a bus back, not having any heavy shopping to carry. I figured I could grab any bus that would go back to more familiar parts of Maz and make my way back to the embarcadero from wherever I landed. Since I had come from nearly Centro on one one-way street, it stood to reason that I had to catch a bus going in the opposite direction. And when the first bus was Cocos-Juárez, I figured, great, I’ll end up pretty near to the embarcadero.

Well, all was going well for quite a bit. I had no idea where I was and the route was terrible, going over 50 billion topes, but then we turned onto Gabriel Leyva, which becomes Emilio Barragán and I figured I was nearly home… Then we turned off of Gabriel Leyva and went very deep into a residential neighbourhood and even traversed some muddy streets I wouldn’t have taken in anything else than a four-wheel drive before the bus stopped and the driver told me I was at the end of the line. I had taken the bus going in the wrong direction. OOPS!

Now, before anyone has a heart attack, I was not ‘in the middle of nowhere.’ It was a busy neighbourhood, with kids playing outside and tons of buses and taxis going by. I’ve been stranded in bad parts of Chicago, New York, and Baltimore, so let me tell you to get any thoughts of my being ‘in trouble’ out of your heads. I knew exactly how to get to the embarcadero and had the option of waiting 20 minutes for the driver to finish his break and take me back out to Gabriel Leyva, flagging down a taxi, or walking.

It was a gorgeous day, I had spent yesterday cooped up because of a rain storm, and this was a vibrant neighbourhood with lots to see. I decided to start walking and if I got tired or didn’t feel safe, I’d flag down a pulmonía. I ended up walking the whole way, nearly 6KM total! What a happy OOPS!

I was hoping today would be an adventure and I’d say I succeeded at making it one!

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Playing Hooky

I had a day of transcription to do, but by the time I got halfway through my work it was 1PM and I just had to get away from my computer screen, even if it meant have to come back home to the unfinished job.

Pad Thai was what I was in the mood for, so I decided to head up to the Golden Zone, then walk to the bank and Soriana. Getting to the Golden Zone felt like an eternity! I waited for ages on this side for a lancha, then I waited for eons on the other side for a bus. I waited so long that I considered getting into a pulmonía even if that would have meant a $100 trip to the GZ instead of just a $10 one!

Let’s just say that this was the perfect day for me to have given into my curiosity and bought a big fluffy doughnut with cinnamon sugar from the lady at the embarcadero because I would have passed out from hunger by the time I got to the restaurant! I thought I didn’t like doughnuts. As it turns out, I don’t like Canadian doughnuts. Mexican doughnuts are great. 🙂 And cheap! It was only something like $2!

A photo posted by Rae Crothers (@travelingrae) on

So the bus finally arrived and it was incredibly crowded, standing room only for me… until a gentleman got up and told me to take his seat! Chivalry isn’t dead in Mexico!  I was very grateful since it’s been incredibly humid the last few days and my knee is  being really bad, so I appreciated a rest between all that walking I would end up doing.

Like last time, there was no one at the restaurant, even though I arrived quite a bit later. I had the pork in my Pad Thai this time and it wasn’t any better than the chicken in terms of the meat being a bit bland. But that’s being nitpicky again because the Pad Thai was again worth the very long journey to get to it! Two stars didn’t even make my eyes water this time. Either I’m getting used to spice or the chef skimped! It’s such a shame the restaurant is tucked away out of sight. Hopefully, word of mouth will be enough to keep it running a long time.

Next stop was the bank. I make a withdrawal up to my daily limit each time I go by one of the two Scotiabank branches that are part of my normal routes so that I have a reserve of cash on hand since neither one is particularly convenient to go to in a rush. I always convert my big bills to smaller ones and have yet to encounter any reluctance on a teller’s part. I’m really glad I opened up the account because I am saving a bundle on withdrawal fees!

Right next to Scotiabank is Office Depot and I spent a blissful half hour in there getting a few things I need to do my taxes and close the books for the year, including separators with the month written on them. They are in English, which I guess makes sense even for Mexico since the months are so close in both languages, as well as French, with just January being the odd duck out in Spanish (enero versus January/janvier). I just love poking through office supply stores. 🙂

Then, I got a few things at Soriana. I was hoping to find Swiffer refills, even though I knew that was likely wishful thinking. I have to wash my floors a lot here because so much sand gets in and the only mops I could find last year were the string kind that just basically push the dirt around. So I came armed with my Swiffer. The refills are pricey (I go through up to four sheets to do the whole house), but the wet sheets both clean the floor and trap the dirt, doing a much better job than a broom and mop, so they’re well worth the money. A lady asked if she could help me and I just said, “Swiffer…” and she said they didn’t have any, but she could suggest something else. She handed me a reusable microfiber cloth that promises to do the same thing as the Swiffer sheets (and which are meant to clip onto a Swiffer-type mop head), only you have to dip the cloth in water and wring it out. More work, but more economical. At something like $30, it’ll be worth trying it!

I also treated myself to some new bedsheets, another attempt to bring a little colour into the house. A ‘full’ mattress in the U.S./Canada is ‘matrimonial’ in Mexico. Just an FYI. 🙂

By the time I got out, the sky had gone from grey to absolutely leaden. It’ll probably pour tonight. It was a pretty fast taxi ride to the embarcadero (taking yet another route I’ve never taken before, so I saw new things), a bit of a wait at the lancha, and then a short taxi ride home on this side, with the driver knowing exactly where to take me. He took some other passengers, too, and one asked what the heck we were doing stopping where we did. He was surprised that it was my house. Must have thought I live in the trailer park or the hotel, I guess… He hopped out and helped me with my bags. Gentlemen aren’t in short supply in this country!

Gah, I’d better get back to work. But I think I have the next three days off!

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Durango’s Teleférico (Cable Car)

Saturday morning’s first stop was to be the teleférico (cable car), which, like all Durango attractions, only opened at 10:00 a.m. En route, I stopped in at a coffee roasting house and ordered their $10 Americano special, but was upsold to a $28 French pressed cup. MMM! They also gave me a small bag of their grounds, good enough to make at least four more coffees at home! What a deal! It was very, very, very loud in the store and I could barely hear anything, so when the guy pushed the bag of beans at me, I said, “No thank you,” and he laughed and replied, very loudly, “No, no, we are gifting it to you!” I’ve never had that happen before and I’m actually drinking a cup of their coffee as I’m writing this post! It is much better than the disappointing Chiapas I bought from Rico’s, but still not as good as Rico’s Veracruz!

It’s so hard to get decent coffee in Maz, enough so that I thought that Mexico doesn’t have a coffee culture. As it turns out, this is just another Maz thing. There is coffee everywhere in Durango, from espresso drinks to plain old drip coffee. I never saw any instant. If I ordered coffee with a meal, I got real coffee. In Maz, I get instant. *shudders* So I may have overdone it a bit with the caffeine over the weekend!

I took my coffee to the library and sipped it while enjoying the view, then I bought my ticket. $20 roundtrip. I knew that there wasn’t much at the other end, just a church and lookout point, but I wanted to see Durango from above. And, $20 roundtrip! Durango is so affordable!

Here I am at the waiting area on the low side. You can see that the cable cars don’t travel very far or very high.

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The cars were very clean and in new condition:

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Your return ticket is good all day, but I can’t imagine spending much time at the top.

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I love looking down at Mexican rooftops!

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It really didn’t feel that high up while I was riding the cable car:

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Everything about the installation was very shiny and obviously well maintained:

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Here’s the platform at the top:

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There was a youngish gal riding solo next to me and we started to talk when we landed. Her name is Julia (hoo-lee-ah) and she is a 27-year-old nurse from Guadalajara who was enjoying her three weeks of holiday traveling from home to Durango by way of Maz. She was on Isla last week! We hit it off right away, being so unaccustomed to running into other solo female travelers. She went along for the same reason I do so: we can’t find the right person to share the journey with!

She was traveling by bus because she wanted to see the scenery and not just her steering wheel. Got to agree with her on that one. I love to drive, but I sometimes miss out on what’s around me!

We ended up spending all of Saturday together! So this is how you get a picture of me at the Mirador de los remedios (viewpoint of the remedies):

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Durango is huge. You don’t really see urban sprawl like that in Canada:

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This tower amused me:

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The viewpoint was well done, with a lot of different levels:

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This is the oldest church in Durango, built in the early 1600s:

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So much urban sprawl:

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Julia and I had fun mapping out the parts of the city that we know. I could see the Soriana sign on 20 de noviembre, so it was very easy to spot my hotel!

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We had a conversation with the cable car operator on the way down. He was curious as to where I’m from and when I said Maz for the winter he shuddered and said pretty much the same thing the pharmacist had said the night before about Maz not being a place he particularly enjoys going! I then got a lecture on all that Durango has to offer tourists (museums, shows, architecture, and more) and its three big annual festivals. I promised him that I would tell all my friends to come to Durango. So go to Durango!

I was peckish as we landed and was going to ask Julia if she wanted to eat something when she preempted my question! She’d only had coffee since getting up, so she was ready for a big brunch. She wanted to try a place called Tostadas, right around the corner on Florida from Tía Chona. We had to wait to get a table, which was a sign that this was a good restaurant! We both had orange juice with complimentary toast and jam while we perused the menu. She ordered some sort of mini-burrito things. I went with a torta and it was really good, with thinly sliced roast pork, as well as guacamole, mustard, cheese, ham, and other goodies. Julia made me laugh when she said she doesn’t like hot things — both in terms of spiciness and temperature! I added some of the spicy salsa to my torta and asked if that was bad form since she wasn’t putting any on her rather plain looking meal. Not at all, it was just too spicy for her! Another Mexican stereotype debunked; they don’t all like burning their tongues!

When we were done eating, we had just enough time to hoof it to Plaza de armas to catch a bus!

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Museo General Francisco Villa/ Palacio de Zambrano, Durango

I ventured out again around 5:00 to check out the teléférico. What are those things called in English?! Téléférique en français… Oh, cable car! Geeze! 🙂 I got to the entrance and there was a sign to access the site from the library. Okay.

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Yup, officially working off my giant lunch!

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Unfortunately, the cable cars were down for maintenance until late, but would open again at 10:00 in the morning.

The view from the library was worth the climb!

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By this point, I had a bad blister on the small toe of my left foot. I always get them there and when I do, I dream of amputating the toe as it gives me nothing but grief! But rather than do something so drastic, I kept an eye out for a pharmacy so I could get some Band-Aids, having forgotten to tuck a few in my purse. I found a small one at the corner of Independencia and Florida/20 de noviembre. There are a lot of pharmacies in Mexico! There, I told the pharmacist that I needed ‘this,’ holding up a picture of a Band-Aid on my phone. I did that because the last time I asked for a bandage for a foot issue, I was offered a tensor bandage. It was $1 for two!

I wound up being there for quite a while because the pharmacist was curious about me and pleased that I had enough Spanish to answer his questions. We ended up having a really interesting conversation about Mazatlán, which he described as “Not for me. Very dirty and extremely noisy. Nothing to do if you don’t like going to the beach.”

This was interesting because I was going to have two more similar conversations the next day. But, you know, I can’t entirely disagree with him, not now that I have another colonial city to compare Maz to. What I thought about Maz being ‘Mexican’ is really Maz being Maz. Mexico isn’t always that noisy or chaotic. Durango, while busy, and much larger than Mazatlán, was incredibly quiet and what I saw of it was much better ordered than Maz, as well as not as rough around the edges and definitely a lot cleaner. Durango wasn’t ‘better’, don’t get me wrong, but this conversation with the pharmacist reminded me to avoid generalizing about a country because of one experience, something I’m always telling people not to do!

My best friend asked me if I’d consider pulling up my Maz roots and moving to Durango for the rest of the winter. The thought never even crossed my mind. It actually gets cold in Durango! 🙂

Speaking of which, I had perfect weather all weekend, just overcast enough to not sunburn me, and warm enough, even at night, that I could wear a skirt or dress with sandals and just a light cardi. And none of the promised Saturday rain materialised!

From the pharmacy, I decided it was too early to call it a day, so I opted to go check out the Museo General Francisco Villa/Palacio de Zambrano, about the famous figure from the Mexican Revolutionary War. You may have heard of him as Pancho Villa. Entrance here was also about $22 and I got an introduction to the museum in French!!!

There are two interesting aspects to the museum. First is, of course, the palace itself, built by a mining tycoon. The museum’s rooms are sprawled through several rooms of the palace, but the signage and subtle guest direction is really well done.

Looking towards the entrance courtyard:

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The first room, about the origins of the palace, had signage in Spanish, English, and Braille! The rest of the museum was only in Spanish, though.

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Another courtyard:

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Staircase and one of many beautiful murals:

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Your tour continues thataway. There are so many smaller museums that aren’t laid out as clearly as this one was.

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Stone arches:

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More stone arches:

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The Mexican flag’s eagle in stained glass:

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It was interesting to learn about Pancho Villa. Much like I learned from a Quebec perspective that celebrated Manitoban hero Louis Riel was a scoundrel, I always got the U.S. perspective that Pancho Villa was a criminal. Historic perspective always depends on who is telling the story! Villa described himself as a “simple and rough man who learned to read very late and who lived the wild life of the mountains.”

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There was a lot of information to take in since I was new to this history and so I won’t even try to recap all the info I was bombarded with!

But I do have to admire him here, where he said that every community in Mexico should have a school for the betterment of Mexican society as a whole:

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One of the final exhibits was about the Mexican legal system. I liked how the old layers of wallpaper in the door frames of that room were preserved:

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This mural of Villa on his horse is in the entrance lobby and is apparently a famous image of him:

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Villa was assassinated and there was disagreement about where he should be interred. His tomb was eventually ransacked and his body decapitated!

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His body (literally) was finally laid to final rest in Mexico City:

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As for his head, there are a lot of theories about where it wound up, including in the hands of Yale’s Skull and Bones Society!

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I could have easily spent a full day just in this museum thoroughly reading instead of just skimming all the information, but I knew I couldn’t learn Mexican history that quickly and that I should just let what I’d learned sink in and then build on it.

I went back to the hotel for a bit and then eventually got hungry, so I went out to find a light dinner. After circling around for ages and finding absolutely nothing appealing (despite an abundance of choice), I decided my growling stomach was lying and I wasn’t hungry. I got back to the hotel and noticed a torta restaurant literally across the street from the entrance! All that walking and the most appealing thing was right there! I went in and ordered their ‘especial’ (which means whatever they want to throw into a sandwich special). It was very delicious and combined guacamole with mustard! A strange concept that worked! It really hit the spot and then I was done for the night.

I was in bed early (9:00), but the brats next door came thundering up and down and up and down and up and down the stairs for several hours, so I didn’t really get to sleep until well past 1:00, knowing that I’d be awake with the bell chime at 7:00. So much for a restful vacation, but, hey, I can sleep when I’m dead!