El Fuerte and Mazatlan

At the end of El Chepe train ride we ended up in El Fuerte. We ended up staying at Hostel Guerrero. It was a decent hostel. Good price and in a very good location. El Fuerte is known for it´s Black Bass, so we decided to eat it at two different meals. The Lobina Flameado (Flamed Black Bass) topped the charts though. It was stuffed with bacon and ooey gooey melted cheese, then topped with a celery and soy sauce dressing. Yum!

View from the Castiallna (sp?) restaurant where we had flamed black bass.


Hootie and I tried heading out on a kayaking trip, but our guide never showed up. Instead, we ended up hanging out in the lawn at Tres Amigos (a tour place). The service was great, she had a lot of good information and gave us some beer. Also, we got to lounge in her backyard and lay around in the hammock right on the river. It was some good down time. She told us about some petroglyphs on the outskirts of town. She didn´t have real specific directions, but we decided to try and find it. We ended up finding it! It was amazing. We were hiking through old fields, and our trails kept turning into road blocks. But, we were persistent. A little old man that worked for the state archeaoligists, or something like that, was able to sort-of point us in the right direction. We ended up finding the petroglyphs at the top of a little mountain. It was a great view of the city from there.

Some of the petroglyphs that we came across on the hike.

Leaf cutter ants crossing our trails. I´ve never seen these things before except for in cartoons. I thought they were pretty cool!

Looking down the river from the top of the petroglyphs.

Sunset in El Fuerte. Taken from the top of the museum.

After leaving El Fuerte we took a bus to Los Mochis and then headed onward to Mazatlan. When we arrived in Mazatlan we found a really cool area. Really artsy and unique. It was in old Mazatlan around Plazuela Machado. There was really good food and music in this area. Our hotel, Hotel Central, was located here. We found this one after looking at another, Hotel Belmar, where we saw our first cockroach! The next day we checked out the art museum. It was here that we met Lopus. He was the exhibiting artist. He was amazing and super helpful. He introduced us to his friend, Blas Nayar. Blas owns a studio near Plazuela Machado. They were both really cool and ended up having drinks with us later that night at the little cantina down from our hotel. I bought a book from Lopus that he signed for me. It´s pretty cool. The weather wasn´t very nice in Mazatlan since we were on the edge of Hurricane Rick. Nevertheless, it didn´t stop us from taking a 10km walk down the coast to Zona Dorada. Hootie had never seen this tourist area before, so I wanted to show him just what it was like. Of course you know, we did not like it! We ended up having one beer at Joe´s Oyster Bar and that was enough! We grabbed a pulmonia back to our part of town. What a relief! We also got to eat at Panama´s. My favorite restaurant in Mazatlan. I ate here probably about 10 years ago and had my first Chilaquiles. Once again we had the Chilaquiles, they were amazing!

Church in the Plaza Municipal in Mazatlan Viejo.

Inside the beautiful church.

Hootie teaking a break to look at the ocean view on our 10km trek. The hill in the background is Mazatlan Viejo, our starting point on this journey.

Sun starting to set on the ocean in Mazatlan.

Sunset behind the clouds.

After Mazatlan we weren´t sure if we were going to head to a little surf town called San Blas or to Puerto Vallarta. We ended up going to Puerto Vallarta because we thought the weather may be better there.