Preparing for a Week in Mazatlan

—Blogpost written by Bob 

In this blogpost, we continue our 6-month winter excursion in San Miguel de Allende (SMA), Mexico.  We arrived by car on October 15, traveling from near Annapolis, Maryland where we live on our sailboat.  These few days were spent preparing for a week-long getaway to Mazatlan on the Pacific Coast of Mexico.  

Saturday, December 11

We leave for Mazatlan on Tuesday morning, December 14.  Our planning is not lonely for our week-long getaway but for our return to San Miguel de Allende just before Christmas, December 23.  On Tuesday evening we plan to stay in in a suburb of Guadalajara, Tlaquepaque, which was a little more than half way to Mazatlan from San Miguel de Allende.

Two artists working on a mural on
Calle Cancion India. (I think
they were making a mosaic 
using very small tiles.)

Today, we walked into town to visit a Bazaar, offering lots of things that interested Maggie.  Afterward we went out for lunch at a small cafe on the first floor of a small hotel--it was very tasty!

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We took a taxi back to our apartment in time for the start of the Army-Navy game at 2 PM local time.  Navy (previously 3-8), from our adopted hometown of Annapolis, upset Army (previously 8-3) by a score of 17 to 13. 

Sunday, December 12

Fireworks (sounded like "cherry bombs" from my youth) were going off all night long due to some type of celebration, some seemed right next to our building.  The explosions echoed up the canyon.  It was almost like we were trying to sleep in a war zone.  They were still exploding as I wrote this paragraph at 8:30 AM.  Lola was still hiding under our bed in fear during breakfast in the morning.

Lola after being spooked by all
the fireworks last night.

I later found out that December 12 was the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe (Guadalupe is the name of our neighborhood in San Miguel de Allende) which didn't fully explain the fireworks but at least I found out the reason for the celebration. (The fireworks continued during the day.)

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For lunch today, Maggie walked to a nearby Pollo Feliz (translated to "Happy Chicken") and picked up take-out.  (Pollo Feliz is similar to KFC in the U.S.)  We had differing views on our lunch--I hated it, though I usually like fried chicken.

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Our planning for our week-long getaway started with Maggie visiting a nearby ATM for the second day in a row so we had some cash for our trip.  Meanwhile I gathered the necessary addresses so that I could  put them into our car's GPS.  (I couldn't get a GPS signal in our apartment because of the concrete roof--so the address entries must wait until tomorrow.)  The complete trip to Mazatlan (according to our electronic maps) takes 9 hours and 27 minutes.  Since we will be stopping overnight in Tlaquepaque on Wednesday, it will take 4 hours and 12 minutes from San Miguel de Allende--when we have a 2 PM check-in time.  This would leave 5 hours and 15 minutes for Thursday morning when we have a 1 PM check-in time, meaning we should check out of our hotel in Tlaquepaque at 7:30 AM.

Our complete 9-hour route from
San Miguel de Allende
to Mazatlan.  

As you can see on the above map, Mazatlan is about equidistant as San Miguel de Allende from Laredo TX.  This means that if we come to Mazatlan for a future winter, it won't require driving any further in Mexico.

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In the process of the above planning, the website for the hotel we are staying at on Wednesday night stated that they don't allow pets.  We called to make sure they understood that we were traveling with 2 cats and it was OK with them.

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The weather in Mazatlan (as well as Tlaquepaque) was predicted to have high temperatures in the low-to-mid 80's and lows in the low 60's with little to no chance of rain as far as could be safely predicted. (This meant shorts and t-shirts instead of jeans and sweatshirts!)

Monday, December 13

We ate oatmeal for breakfast this morning--the hot cereal seemed to go so well with the very cool mornings here in San Miguel de Allende.  Putting the two new addresses into our car's GPS for our upcoming trip and driving to La Comer (the supermarket) for groceries.  (I couldn't put in the complete address for our Mazatlan AirBnB for some strange reason.)

We went out for lunch at Rustica for the second time and it's getting old for me already.  I had the same thing both times (which was a mistake), the steak sandwich.  Maggie tried something different, a breaded chicken dish (a chicken breast was hammered down to a thickness of about 1/4-inch, then breaded and fried) which tasted great.  (While we were in the restaurant, we got our car washed again--for only $5 USD--it needed it badly.  With so little rainfall during the winter months, the streets are very dusty and so was our car.)

We had lunch today at Rustica--it's our second time
there.  This restaurant is for gringos--it is an
overly-themed restaurant in my opinion.

When we returned to our apartment around 4 PM, Maggie graciously offered to check at the nearby La Conexion office for our last package in the pipeline.  (We finally got it!)

We started packing our bags
for our trip to Mazatlan.

Tuesday, December 14

Today was our last day in San Miguel de Allende for a little over a week, eight days to be exact.  We spent the day trying to finish up our packing, making little adjustments as we proceeded.  (We will load everything into our car tomorrow morning.)

I loaded up all my camera lenses--I was originally going to try and gt by with one lens (my new one) but decided against it at the last minute.

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This was a short blogpost because we have more packing to do before we leave...our next blogpost will be made from Mazatlan.  Thanks for following our blog!