December 2021
This was a day stop during our Mexican Riviera cruise in December, 2021. We first thought of doing a walking tour of old town, then, I found a more comprehensive tour of Mazatlan (population: 462,000) through Tripadvisor.com. We paid $30/pp for a supposedly a 4 hour (ended up being 3 hours) small group van tour provided by Vista Tours, a local company.
We were picked up by the tour company representative at the cruise terminal after a little bit of mix-up: we thought they will be waiting with a sign showing our name, but the person was just sitting on a bench without a sign of any kind. A very kind gentleman from another tour company called our tour company so that we could find our guy. There were plenty of local van tour companies offering the same tour ($30pp) at the terminal.
From the cruise terminal in the yellow area on the map above, we were brought to a huge gift shop in the Gold Zone, the tourist resort area, to regroup and be put on the right van. There were only 4 others in our group. Our guide and the driver both spoke good English & they never rushed us.
We drove slowly along the Malecon, the longest oceanfront walkway (13 miles) in Americas, we were told. Then we drove into the Historic Center (Centro Historico) and stopped at the market area. Here the fish market spreads out more casually in an outdoor setting, and the best shrimps in Mexico are from here, we learned.
Next we walked into the central market. We had free time to browse in this market that seemed to have everything one might need for daily lives: fruit & vegetables, food stalls, clothing, souvenirs, and more. It was a manageable size,and the layout was pretty straight forward.
The Cathedral was just a few blocks away from the market. We were free to walk in and out of there.
We drove back out to the coastal road to witness the cliff divers. When we were there, two brothers did the job: one working the crowd and the other on the platform to do the dive. An unusual way of making a living, I must say. People seemed to be fairly generous with tipping.
Then we drove around the hillside community where there were fancy houses with killer ocean views. Speaking of fancy, we stopped at a jewelry store where artsy high end silver and other jewelry items were sold so that we could “shop without worrying about buying fakes,” our guide explained. Free drinks were available here, and I took a small bottle of water feeling a bit guilty because I was not a great customer in a place like this.
We went back to the old town area to walk around. Plaza Machado was a very nice low key leafy city center with no crowd when we were there, and that was our favorite part of the tour. There seemed to be lots of restaurants and shops around the area to peek in or eat at.
We would have liked to hang around and have a sea food lunch since we were at the “sea food capital” of Mexico. But our guide got us on the van and took us back to the cruise terminal. If we had known that’s where we were headed next, we would have not gotten on the van. The historic center wasn’t far from the terminal, and we could have walked back. But the weather was hot and we felt lazy.
Now that we’ve done the whirlwind tour to cover all the attractions (except the brewery where 20+ different beers are produced and the lighthouse, which, we were not that interested in), we will just go to the historic center and hang out next time we go to Mazatlan.
Small Wide World 