Mazatlan 2007

Tuesday, February 6 (Ron)

Had breakfast in our condo, then Pat went down to the Gold Zone to get online while I used the laptop to get online next door at Marina del Rey. We met back at our resort to plan the afternoon. I had promised our amigo, Fernando, that we’d have lunch at the resort right next to ours, Marina del Sol, where he works as a waiter. So a little before 3pm Pat and I went over there, talked with Fernando for a while, then had a light lunch. We came back over to our resort just briefly, then headed down to the Gold Zone to rent a kayak.

I had never been in a kayak before, Pat had but never in the ocean. We got off the bus at Chili’s Pepper and walked out onto the beach. Just a short ways up was a catamaran on the beach so we went over there to get a kayak. The guy said that normal price for an hour is two hundred pesos, but today, special price, only a hundred and fifty pesos. We said OK and he gave us some brief instructions. A couple of minutes later we are in the water. Getting out past the breaking waves was a little tricky, we almost capsized, but once we got out a ways the ocean was pretty calm. We paddled out to Bird Island. There were thirty to forty pelicans on the rocks and a few more splashing in the water. We paddled around some and let the current carry us some. Totally different view of the Gold Zone from out there. We stayed out for the full hour, came back in, and then went over to Chili’s Pepper where there were some plastic tables and chairs in the sand. We sat there to dry out, have a beer, and watch the sunset. Right out there on the beach you are exposed to every beach vendor in the area. One after another came by, showing us their wares. We are getting pretty good at convincing them we don’t have any money because we really don’t have any money after being down here for a week and a half. Of course, we did get a few things – Pat got a nice shawl and I got one to send to Florida. Five hundred and twenty pesos - $25 each seems like a lot and maybe it is, but they had a lot of sequins and small beads sewn on by hand. Pat’s has sea horses and the one I got has butterflies. A little while later a vendor came by with shirts, kind of a different design and kinda cool. One of them caught my eye so I showed a slight interest in it – didn’t want to overplay my hand. He was asking two hundred pesos, but I got him down to a hundred and fifty and he even threw in a free Mexican suitcase to put the shirt in. Never heard of a Mexican suitcase? It’s a plastic grocery bag! Several more vendors came by, we said it was very nice (whatever they had) but we were not interested. They would go on to the victim, I mean customer. Then this one guy came by, I don’t even remember what he was selling. We told him ‘No, gracias’ but he was persistent. We told him ‘No dinero’. That seemed to piss him off and he started ranting about how everybody says that, but they wouldn’t be here if they didn’t have any money. Then something about the cruise ship people. He didn’t make much sense and seemed to be getting all worked up about it. He must have been drunk, high, or loco. We decided it was a good time to leave so we paid our bill and left him there talking to himself.

We caught the bus back to the resort and had supper in our suite. We bought so much food at Gigante yesterday that we had a lot of prepared food from their deli and a bunch of pastries left over. Supper was very good, very quick, and very cheap. After supper I worked on the journal while Pat read, and we got to bed early for a change.