New Year's and "Nos vemos, amigo!" to Mazatlan.

    We spent New Year's Eve dining on the Plaza Machado, listening to live music and being entertained by joyous people singing along and dancing.  We glimpsed exploding fireworks overhead - at the malecon a few blocks away a crazier New Year's raved on, ours was quite festive but not too crazy.  

Jennifer looking hot, and me not!

We really enjoyed our time in Mazatlan.  Our first week we anchored at Isla Peidra, where we would dinghy to shore, leave the dinghy at a palapa restaurant (La Caleta, which is great), take the water taxi over to town, and walk to Old Town.  It was sort of a "planes, trains and automobiles" way to get to town, but it was fun and inexplicably, kind of convenient.  We loved the big market with fresh fruits, vegetables and seafood.   Also, the paletas (popsicles) are off the hook here - we are so glad we discovered them.  "El Real de Michoacan" is what to look for - what makes them special is that they are made of real fruit, like soursop (guanabana), tamarind, arayan, and mango con chamoya.   We also loved wandering the streets of old town, poking down alleyways, stairways and meandering cliffside streets that occasionally opened up to spectacular views.  The last two weeks in Mazatlan we stayed at Marina El Cid, which is really nice.  Big iguanas patrolled the pool, lurking for cocktail garnishes.

Lurking for cocktail garnishes, and toes.

  

However, it was the shallowest marina we've ever stayed at - at low tide Brightnest was sitting on the bottom at least once.

    We did one day trip, to a "pueblo magico" El Quelite, where we ate one of my favorite meals so far at El Meson de Los Laureanos.   El Quelite is a historic town with a bandit past you could sense while wandering the cobblestone streets. I could just see some gunslingers sitting in those wooden chairs under the awning (sans all the flowers).

We also took a lovely cooking class with Tomatl, which I recommend.  We focused on three Mexican ingredients: vanilla, tomate, and frijoles.

    A couple of days after New Years, we said goodbye to Mazatlan and to new friends on Skookum V, Mapache, and Catspaw.  Most are headed on a similar path as us, so we'll hopefully be sharing some more experiences with them some time soon.

    While I was a little bit worried about getting out of the shallow marina (insisted we leave on high tide, of course), it all worked out fine as our friends walked out our lines and gave us a good push.  It felt good to be moving again after three weeks in one city.