We had a week left in the La Penita RV Park once we returned from our 12-day inland tour. Many park dwellers were scheduled to leave on the following Tuesday, so we made sure to exchange digits as we said our goodbyes, before the caravans of travelers departed for northerly climates. We managed to do all our “lasts” that week like: beach walks, walk to the market, pool swim, etc. Then spent a solid half day cleaning and organizing on Friday and again on Saturday to ensure we were ready to leave by 7 am on Sunday Apr 6th . Leaving-site-125.html We weren’t going far, but it was far enough… back to Mazatlan for a week. It was an uneventful drive and great to see a few familiar faces as we pulled into the Las Jaibas trailer park. There were also other RV’ers that arrived daily from more southern locations in transit back to northern destinations.
Over the next week we got into our old routine of beach walks and bike rides and organizing what music venue we would go too. We also had one last tourist activity we wanted to go do and that was the 1873 Observatory Tourist Park. This included another cable car (funicular) up to the top and there were quite a few activities such as the whale museum (built out of seacans), original house/military observation post, sky bar/restaurant, iguana and parrot and peacock sanctuary and a distillery. Here is the squawking birds and the whale museum 1873-observatory.html You could also opt to take some steep steps down to the bottom and see other various historical spots on the way. We were here for at least 3 hours and the entire space was awesome and really surprised us in its grandness. We ended our time with a drink at the skybar enjoying the view of the ocean!
It was the week leading up to Easter and just like the week leading up to Christmas, there were tonnes of extra people on the street cleaning up dirt, trimming palm trees and generally making everything look better than it normally does. On the Friday, we decided to take the green chicken bus to Sabalo/Centro so we could go for dinner in Plaza Machado…we had to go back for that amazing tortilla soup we had in December! It did NOT disappoint! (Don’t worry….I finally put the food video together, link is near the bottom)
Our last Saturday we managed to get 99% of our gear packed up before we headed for our last beach day and sunset…..shared with only 1000 other people on the beach! Touring-mazatlan.html
We departed Mazatlan at 8 am the following Sunday heading north on 15 D toll highway. By 2 pm we were in Los Mochis, but not convinced we wanted to overnight at that dusty Pemex….so we kept going and Todd said he was good to keep driving. We assessed different gas stations along the way and then we found the mac daddy location on the northside of Navajoa in a gated Pemex station. We pulled in around 4-ish and Todd was busy getting the solar and generator properly plugged in to get air conditioning blasting….it was 36C outside and the overnight was only a low of 26! He managed to get us cooling, dinner was eaten and he crashed by 8:30! Day 2 was a very short trek to San Carlos – 2 hrs and 10 minutes later we arrived at our final Mexican destination at Totonaka RV Park.
Now is a good time to comment on how many times we were stopped by military and agriculture for inspections. Many RV’ers from La Penita area were worried that there would be increased inspections due tariff war bullshit and issues at the border crossings. Some RV’ers had more inspections and stops and bribes and some had less. We had 1 military stop – where the young kid only spoke Spanish and when I opened the door he asked how many people – we said 2 and he waved us through. The agriculture guy asked Todd if we had any fruit, we said no only salad and he waved us off. We were also never asked for our TIP documentation for either vehicle – which kind of surprised us. So there you have it…no issues.
The week of April 12-19 is Samana Santa (Holy Week) which is the busiest vacation time of year for Mexican’s. Then Easter Sunday and the following week most people take off work and spend time with family at the beach. Easter celebration is a solid 2 weeks of craziness at all beach towns. People flock to the beach, create their own little oasis / tent town, eat, ride ATV’s, swim, fish, play loud music, fireworks, etc. There are also pop up restaurants and snack shacks everywhere along the beach. The first real night of Samana Santa was the first Thursday night. By 7 pm the road was packed with people driving up and down with loud music blaring, people lining the streets in their vehicles pumping out the music drinking beer and chatting with friends. It was loud and busy but thank goodness not near our RV Park! The Saturday night we decided to walk down main street to go find something for dinner. We walked 2 km and the closer we got to the central area the crazier it got! The side street was packed, full of people parked with their cars, drinking beer and sitting around in chairs and then there were the cars with trunks open and LARGE stereo speakers blasting music (estimate $5-10,000 stereo systems) or live bands and people dancing in the street back to back with another live band and people dancing in the street followed by another huge speaker system and people dancing in the street. It seems so bizarre to us Canadians on why people park their car on the street, take out their cooler of beer and basically have a tailgate party, without a game or an event to go to!. There was fireworks every night and we could hear music playing but it wasn’t really loud. Todd said he heard the neighbors come home around 4:30 am. This is our first time experiencing Easter … and it might be our last…
We met a younger couple (Tyler and Ashley) from Calgary on our second day at the park and we spent quite a few afternoons with them at the pool chatting RV life, adventures, politics and whatever else we had too! We spent our last day here packing up, cooking for our drive day and at the pool. i may also have spent some time putting my last video’s together for:
- Sunsets: All-the-sunsets.html
- All the food: All-the-food.html
Ruby’s full tour. 90 hours of driving
Although that google map says 90 hours….it isn’t accurate. Its very difficult to maintain 110 km / hour on Mexican toll roads, so a more accurate number of hours would probably be more like 120 hours of driving. After 155 days in Mexico ….we are both ready to head home to Canada….because its time and there are things we won’t miss:
- Cleaning the ocean salt off the us and car windows every week
- Topes and rough roads
- Unfinished buildings
- Tipping for every service
- Constantly converting currency in your head
- Dust everywhere and in everything
- Noises (car’s backfiring, loud music out of the trunk of the cars, loud motorcycles, barking dogs, random fireworks anytime day or night)
- Little ant infestations in the house
But also so many things we will miss:
- The weather, the people, the culture
- Site 125 at the La Penita RV Park
- Seeing the whales everyday out the window or from our patio
- Hearing the waves 24/7
- Tacos and real chilaquiles
- Soft butter
- Cheap, fresh and flavourful produce (tomatoes, avocados, pineapples, etc)
- Buying fresh squeezed OJ from the juice lady on the street for our mimosa’s
- Storing eggs on the counter
- Wearing shorts and shirts or a bathing suit on a daily basis
- Todd will miss driving the car in all cities as the driving rules are all common sensical
- Meeting so many new people
But before we get home (estimate May 2), we will pitstop in Tucson and then the Grand Canyon. In the meantime, we did put together our lists and stats for 6 months…..here’s what we came up with:
- Total # of days on the road: 166
- # of taco stands: 19 (this surprises me, not sure why its so low!)
- # of fancy restaurants: 10 (this also surprised me, but we don’t normally eat out alot at home)
- # of bike rides: 72
- Average steps per day: 8800 (this also seems surprisingly low)
- # of Dodge shadows we saw still operating: 5
- # of fake Alan Jackson’s we met: 2
- # of times Todd “packed a lunch”: 17 (this also surprised me)
- # of 30 lb propane tanks (for the firepit): 15
- Total monies spent on Mexican toll highways for Ruby towing a car: $1312
- Total Trixie KM: 9398 towed and 6500 touring around
- Total Ruby KM: 9,398