I will have to say, that I am not a fan of Mazatlan, but I wasn't actually IN Mazatlan that much. It is a major port town, and along with that comes industry. Shrimping is a BIG one there...with it's fishing boats, processing, and packing plants all down along the harbor. We drove out of town as soon as we got off the ship, through the industrial and seedier neighborhoods, into the outer agricultural areas, and on our way, for an hour and a half into the mountains, to the two very special little towns of Concordia and Copala, which I will talk about later. Along the way we stopped to see a brick making area, complete with kiln made of dried bricks and fueled by a wood fire in the interior of the structure. Further into the foothills are mango orchards, and areas where the people are furniture and pottery artisans. The vegetation was very dry and unsightly at this time of year as it is the end of the dry season...in a couple of more months it will return to a more lush enviornment.
To be fair to the area, the touristy section is fairly nice, upscale shops, some nice hotels and beaches, but I'm not the person to tout it's high points because I was only there for 40 minutes!! The down side of cruising is the time constraint, especially on the planned excursions.
Things are dry and brown here, too, so I can relate to those sentiments. Sounds like you packed alot into those 40 minutes...impressive!
ReplyDeleteMost of the day, including these pics, were the same day we actually went into the mts. Todd. When we came back to Mazatlan, the 40 min. were spent in maybe 2 shops in the tourist area across from the beach...what we saw was mostly from the bus!
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