Mainland Mexico
February 2006
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As hard as it was for us to leave our family, we realized that staying for fear of some catastrophe was not honoring Adam and would not make any of our loved ones safer. So with Adam’s bumper sticker in mind, we headed down to San Diego and met up with our friends, Sharon and Conner, who we met traveling in Baja last year. We had a couple of fun days of surfing and sharing stories. They hooked us up with all sorts of great tips for our up-coming journey from Mexico to Panama since they had done a similar route last summer. We even got to meet Sarah’s brother, Noah, for Pho at a great Vietnamese restaurant one night after his classes at UCSD before we headed out from the San Diego area.
We then headed to Tempe, Arizona to check in with the Walker’s since Wanda had been in the hospital and her recovery was in question. Wanda was doing better by the time we got there, a huge relief to us. We visited with Dave, Sheryl and Cleo before saying goodbye once again. We also relished the chance to say goodbye to Glenn, Barb, Cheryl, Maura and Grandma Rice one more time. We then hit the road for the border via Tucson and Nogales.
On February 14th 2006 we crossed back into Mexico, took care of our paperwork and drove through Hermosillo on our way to Guaymas, our first stop. We found an old hotel and camped in what used to be a campground out back. We really weren’t interested in spending time in Guaymas, so we took off south and decided to make our way to a small mining town a few miles to the east of Navajoa called Alamos. We found a great place to camp on the edge of town called Rancho Acosta. We spent a day exploring the old town with its rich mining history and interesting buildings. The following day we packed it up early and pointed the van south towards Mazatlan. We drove all day through varied landscapes of deserts and miles of agriculture. Entering Mazatlan from the North we pulled into Playa Bruja and introduced ourselves to the kind staff of a restaurant on the beach. They asked us if we were there for the “surf contest.” We looked at each other and said no but found our timing to be hilarious. We ended up spending the night right in front of the restaurant and woke up to sloppy surf conditions and many disappointed surfers and spectators. We took the opportunity to head into Mazatlan and look for some camping options. We found many campgrounds full of huge RVs and sunburned people. Realizing we needed to communicate with family, we decided to camp for a night in a campground right in the center of Mazatlan so that we could use their wireless network to set ourselves up with Skype. Skype is a great service which allows you to call regular phones and cell phones via your computer, anywhere in the globe for 2 cents per minute, provided you have a high speed connection. We had a ball marveling at the technology and well it worked. Go Skype!
Having touched base with some peeps, we left the congestion and noise of Mazatlan and headed out near the airport toward “Isla de las Piedras” a lesser known area with a quiet reputation. After a bouncy ride through an enormous coconut grove, we found ourselves in a small town which was actually closer to Mazatlan centro than where we had been before. The geographical difference was that we were separated by the harbor and a small hill. Poking around the “island” a bit led us to a campground where we decided to settle in. We started to hear more and more about Mazatlan’s famous Carnival celebration and how it was only a few days away, so we decided to stick around and check it out. We also bumped into a local family who was building a cob-style structure which would serve as their gift shop at some point. We helped out for several days learning all we could about cob, the super old, super cheap and sustainable way to build structures. The funny thing about Stone Island was the daily influx of cruise ship and/or resort tourists who would apparently pay for a “tour” of the “island”. They would be carted in via flat bed trailers with seats pulled by old tractors to a restaurant where they would have 3 hours to eat, drink, buy stuff from vendors and play in the water. Promptly at 3 pm each day, the tour would end and they would all be carted back to the docks where they would take the “ferry” back to Mazatlan. Some of them were curious enough to come over and talk to us about things like “how did you get your car out here” and “is it safe to drive in Mexico”. We did our best to inform them of all we have learned about Mexican travel via our van, but a fair number of them felt ripped off when they found out the “island” wasn’t one.
Before we knew it, Carnival was upon us so we made plans to experience the week long festival around “Fat Tuesday” and the beginning of lent. The festival which ensued was remarkable. A truly Mexican style celebration with night after night of music on one of at least a dozen stages lining Olas Altas beach and the Malecon. The party really didn’t start each night until about 10pm. From that point there were literally thousands of people dancing, drinking (usually simultaneously) and generally partying down till the break of dawn. We found ourselves totally out of shape for this type of thing but we did our best. We took in two parades, including the parade for the “burning of the effigy in bad humor” (see pictures) and then the huge opening parade with its elaborate floats. As Carnival ended, so did our time in (not on) Isla de la Piedra.
Up to this point, we hadn’t found any surf but really hadn’t been anywhere that would work at this point in the year. On the island, we did have a couple goes including one where Sarah was catching wave after wave in knee high surf to the cheers of the locals and campers alike. We were feeling the itch, so we packed it up and headed south to San Blas. It took the majority of a day to drive south on the 15 to San Blas. We looked around the town, checked out the main beach in town, drove to Las Islitas on the north end of Bahia de Matachen. Having heard from many people that the bugs at night in San Blas are really bad, we decided to camp just south of the little town of Aticama at a grassy little spot overlooking the ocean. The next day we hopped a ride with some travelers to La Tovara where we took an amazing boat tour through part of the giant fresh water estuary/marine park immediately inland from San Blas. The tour reminded us of the Jungle ride at Disneyland except our guide spoke Spanish, commanded his 4 stroke powered panga with the greatest of ease and assured us that there were no animatronics on the tour. We saw numerous birds, three crocodiles, some turtles, huge termite nests and an old abandon movie set. We did our best to capture some photos so you all can get an idea of what we experienced.
Feeling satisfied with our stop but not drawn to stay longer, we pushed further south to a great little beach called Playa Chacala. The beach was only about an hour and a half south of the San Blas area and down a side road leading to this tranquil spot. Upon arriving, we were greeted by “Mayor Bob” from Berkely, CA. Bob offered us a spot on the beach right next to him where we camped for the next few days for free. Chacala has definitely been discovered by the tourism industry, it just hasn’t fully hit yet. On the weekend, there are lots of local families from Tepic spending the weekend on the beach amongst the usual North American mix of RVers. While in Chacala, Bob introduced us to his friend Allan who was visiting from San Miguel de Allende. Allan joined us for dinner and we had some great talks together. When we departed, we exchanged info and told Allan that we were thinking of hitting his home town of San Miguel de Allende soon. He insisted that we call him if we were ever in town so that he could show us around. We were grateful for the invite and looked forward to catching up with him down the road.
About 40 minutes south of Las Varas and Playa Chacala was the town of Sayulita. We decided that we were too close not to take a peek so we headed in after a short detour to check out some surf near Punta de Mita. Sayulita didn’t have immediate appeal to us as it looked like it was flooded with North American tourists. However, we found our way to the camp spot our friends Sharon and Conner told us about. The place was pretty packed full of rigs but the super nice owner immediately found a spot for us. We didn’t really expect to stay more than a night or two until we saw the surf and realized they had high speed internet access in the campground so that we could call folks at home. The locals told us it had been flat for at least 2 weeks but that swell had finally showed up. Compared to what we had seen so far on the trip, the waves were great. Immediately in front of the campground was a chest-high, peeling left (meaning the wave breaks from left to right if you are looking at it from the beach). Despite the number of people in the water due to a national surf contest that ended the day we arrived, Eric managed to work his way into some fun waves on the first day. Following our motto of never leaving good surf, we ended up staying for 10 days while Eric surfed himself silly and Sarah worked on her left bottom turn. We met loads of nice people both in the water and in the campground. The folks we met included a couple of young families traveling with there itty bitty babies and the usual cadre of retired folks just hanging out. We ended up catching a couple of different swells while we there which at times produced some beautiful head high “walls of glass”. It is obvious why this little town is so overrun with tourism… It is close to Puerto Vallarta so people can fly in, take a cab and find themselves in a smaller Mexican town with good surf, lots of places to rent boards and a mellow beach for those that just want to hang out. Not our IDEAL place but it was perfect for us at that time and we are grateful to have had such a good time there. Since there is more to this trip than surfing, we decided to plan an inland tour which would take us to some of the old colonial cities in the mountains of north/central Mexico. So we planned a route, packed it up and headed for the mountains……