Finally the Mainland

La Paz to Puerto Vallarta

We arrived in La Paz early on Sunday afternoon to find them in the full swing of Carnival.  The plan seemed simple enough, find a hotel, Skype with mom and then go to Carnival.  Finding a hotel during Carnival proved a bit more difficult.  The first hotel had room but no parking, the second parking and room but no dogs, the third no room and so on an so on.  We drove through the city for about 3 hours before deciding on not going to Carnival and just heading down to the port to find a hotel there so we would be able to skype with mom and find out about a ferry to the mainland.  We found a hotel only to find it closed.  Across the street there was a great (but very expensive) restaurant.  The waiter’s there were so helpful, they called around to the hotels and found two that had room, parking and would accept dogs.  Back into the truck we went, back to La Paz, we missed the turn off of the road back to the center and looped all the way back to the North side of town.  Not wanting to fight the traffic yet again (and now in the dark) in hopes of finding the hotel we went for the second option… it turned out to be a very nice hotel… if you are a truck driver.  The only upside of the day was that I got to Skype with my mom!

The next morning we were off and running early to find out about a ferry to the Mainland.  When we arrived at 8 am we were told to go to the other ferry office to find out about cargo ticket, they told us to come back at 10 to buy the tickets and that the ferry left that day.  We drove back to La Paz to get some necessary items for our 18 hour trip and were back at the ferry at 11.  We booked our passage and headed to the beach to run and swim the doggies so they would sleep the rest of the day, and the next.  

 

We also stopped by the restaurant to say good bye to the very helpful waiters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ferry ride was great.  We had the upper deck almost completely to ourselves, our nice comfy bed to sleep in and 18 hours of relaxing and whale watching (we saw a breech and a roll which made the trip even better). 

 

 

 

 We arrived in Mazatlan at 9:30 the next morning and headed south through beautiful landscape of rolling green cane fields.

We stopped for comida corrida in Tempico and paid $13 for a 4 course shrimp meal with a couple of cervezas.Our destination for the day was a little town that I had read about on quite a few overlander’s blogspots called Sayulita.

I should have known when I saw the Subway sandwich shop by the Pemex that maybe this wasn’t our type of place and the 30 foot high arch welcoming our arrival to the town should have been hint number 2 but it wasn’t until we turned left into the cobbled stoned main street that I really knew that this was definitely not our type of place.  

 

Sayulita is a cute, picturesque even Mexico town. Cobbled streets with a Xocalo in the center, restaurants lining the side with second story balconies where one imagines a Senorita waiting to go on Paeso. The problem is that it was filled completely to the gills with American tourists. There were signs advertising the zip line, yoga studio and surf school. I am sure that every waiter spoke great English and that all of the food was carefully prepared so it was safe for tourist’s stomachs. I might be being a little harsh in saying this, but it reminded me of a Dude Ranch where American’s can come and experience “Real Mexico” without giving up any of the comforts they expect. It felt like the Disney version of Mexico and I expected to hear It’s a Small World playing in the back ground. To be fair, it is different from the gated resorts that surround the area, where visitors never even get a glimpse of what is outside of the manicured landscapes enclosed in the 10 foot walls that keep them trapped. But in my opinion it isn’t much better, it is still a sterilized, Americanized version that looked like Olvera Street in LA.

We headed south to Bucerias and found a hotel for the night. We are planning on staying here for a couple of days, Fritz wants to get the front end of the truck looked at (something about break calibration?) and I want to take the boards out and get in the ocean. Yes the hotel we are at has a swimming pool, security at night for the car, and I could probably get a message if I wanted to, but the family in the next room all speak Spanish and all we have to do is walk across the street to get a Taco de la Calle, so we actually prefer it here. 

Maybe we are just weird.