Day 4: Mazatlan:
Initially we’d arranged to go on a walking tour around the streets of Mazatlan. This, however, would have involved tagging along with snail paced, geriatric coffin dodgers. Having had second thoughts about this, Amy decided to see if she could cancel the tour without losing our money. Imagine our delight when the very efficient Monica managed to sell our tickets on and refund us the equivalent of several long island ice teas, which we can highly recommend as brain cell killers.
So then, somewhat novelly, we were actually attached to a dock this day. Having disembarked on shank’s pony, we discovered that it was at least three miles into the old part of town and a further two into the new sector. We really weren’t interested in the new sector and wanted to see the old part of town and some of the attractions that were being hawked by the so-called “tourist information guides”. It seems that everyone you talk to has an angle of some sort and something to sell. Having eventually decided to walk to the main attractions on our own after spending a good 5-10 minutes talking with one of the taxi drivers, we realized that after approximately 300 yards the day’s temperatures would kill us quicker than a dose of ebola in a fast forward time machine.
We skulked back to the taxi driver and hoped that the $30 fee for the 1 1/2 hour that we had already negotiated after we got our independent heads on still stood. Fortunately it did and Gustavo, our particularly fluent english-speaking driver, started to take us on a mini-tour of places we wished to visit.
It turned out that Gustavo had experienced living in LA at some point, which is why his driving skills in heavy traffic were up to the mark. We arrived at our first destination, which Gustavo proudly told us, was the second tallest natural lighthouse in the world. His tour guide skills didn’t extend to knowing which was the tallest, but this could have been due to the fact that his brain was overpowered by the sublime stench that was emanating from the sewage plant inconveniently located directly next door.
We knew we were limited with time, but Amy seemed to think the clock was ticking faster and started making her way up the rocky slopes like some demented, tattooed, sweaty mountain goat. I attempted to excuse my utter lack of fitness on the fact that I was carrying the rucksack, which she rebutted, and took all of the wind out of my sails by saying that I could wait where we were and she would run the rest of the way. The fackin’ head case.
Fortunately, and much to my relief, about 3/4 of the way up, she saw sense and decided that even though we’d seen a 90 year-old-man jog past us on the way down, that time was of the essence, and we’d head back after taking a couple of photos. Gustavo was highly impressed when we lied through our teeth and nodded furiously when he asked if we’d reached the top, accompanied by a resounding “Yep” from Amy.
Next stop was a lookout point that viewed the lighthouse that we had so unsuccessfully managed to scale. For me this wasn’t a surprise, but what was a surprise, was that a guy who was selling masks, and that was old enough to be our great-grandfather, propositioned us with the supply of some “good good cheeba”, once again!
After this, we pulled up alongside a statue of a guy on a motorcycle. It turned out, after we had totally disrespected his memory by taking comedy pillion rides on his monument, that he was Mexico’s equivalent of Elvis Presely. His name was Peter Infante and he was a famous movie star and singer who died in a plane crash. Gustavo told us that he loved motorcycles and had starred in many movies featuring motorcycles, which was good enough for us motorheads.Reeespect, Mr Infante.
Gustavo was then slick enough to take us to a shop that served free margaritas, which was good skills x10 from our articulate human broom faced dude. After quaffing a couple of these, we scurried off to what was in our minds, the extreme sports event of the day, the cliff diver. Gustavo proudly trumpeted the fact that this daredevil beaner was going to jump 45’ from a cliff into just 6’ of water. After the free booze, this sounded quite impressive, and we laid out $5 to watch our superhero perform. After a short period, our man clambered his way onto the precipice, saluting the crowd, and possibly praising Jesus, before belly flopping into the frothing waters below. It was impressive enough, but I do believe that I’d rather have had another margarita for the money and tried it myself.
Amazingly before this X games marvel, our time had already expired with Gustavo. We had already said our good-byes before the cliff diver and taken a few photos, one of which was of an intriguing red gate that covered a cave that wound its way into the cliff face a good 30’. There was a metal devil’s head on top of the gate and the word “iablo” (missing D) on top of a pitchfork. Amy took a photo with flash into the deep recesses of the cave, and it was only when we downloaded it to the laptop later that amongst the beer cans and other assorted litter we saw lucifer himself mocking our blindness.
We then worked our way back through town in search of margaritas the size of fishbowls. Tragically, it would appear that one would have to go into the new part of town to find these and we had to settle for several more smaller versions. We zigzagged our way through the back streets, managing to discover the real Mazatlan and being fortunate enough to get photos of the huge contrasts that a tour guide would never wish to show you.
We stopped off at an internet cafe to see what gems Dom had come up with, and it has to be said he didn’t disappoint. We then made our way back to tequila central and had some more margaritas with some nachos. By this time, we were completely fooked and mozied back to the ship.
We crashed out for a bit. Amy went to the gym and I just slobbed it out on a sun lounger next to the pool. The biggest surprise for me was hearing an American tell a funny joke. “Why are the streets in France lined with trees?” “Because the Germans like to march in the shade.” Not groundbreaking, but it made me chuckle.
We again went to dinner and amazingly, Gerry seemed to have sprouted the beginnings of a personality overnight. We were given a stark reminder of her idiocy though when her shrill intonation requested an explanation from me as to why the English aristocracy had people to put their trousers on for them. “What’s up with that?” she whined. I explained to this recently qualified lawyer that it had about as much relevance to modern times as the slave trade does to modern America. I don’t think she understood. The only saving grace was that David hadn’t informed her of the dolphin smack down and we got to bullshit her via the medium of her own husband’s voice because neither of us could be bothered to tell her. It was then off to bed, having drunk about 18 gallons of water to try and rehydrate ourselves following the day’s tequila fest.