Blogs from Sinaloa, Mexico, North America

It’s another earlyish start as we are catching the 9am bus. We are up at 6.30am for showers and final pack up before breakfast in the restaurant downstairs. This turns out to be quite slow service - I claim it’s Ian’s fault...he ordered omelette and we’ve just seen the eggs arriving! It’s a huge omelette accompanied by mashed beans. Ditto for my pancakes...far too large to contemplate finishing! Breakfast done, we check out in the nick of time and order our Uber to the bus station. Today we are with Futura bus company. The driver and his assistant arrive looking like airline pilots with gold stripes on their jackets and braided hats - very smart, apart from the cigarette dangling from the driver’s fingers. He checks the large luggage compartment before his second-in-command begins loading and ... read more

Another early start since we are visiting the only sight in El Fuerte - the Bosque Secreto (Secret Forest). This is a large part of the only remaining dry tropical forest left in North America. The weather is already hot and humid at 7.30am, but overcast. Equipped with long trousers, hats and long-sleeved shirts to defeat the bugs, we are warm before leaving our air con room. The tour, as advertised, was by boat followed by a bit of walking. In the event the river water level is too low for a boat so we were offered kayaks instead. I am keen to give it a go but Ian point blank refuses. He claims that his ability to fall into water is too great a risk. A compromise is reached and it is decided that we ... read more

The plan this morning was to be up by 7am and out by 7.30am. Unfortunately I woke with a splitting headache which delayed us slightly. I think I am finding the heat and humidity a bit much! We leave at 9am and already it is hot, though not quite as bad as yesterday afternoon. We take an Uber to Le Faro, a lighthouse on a rocky outcrop at the end of the bay. Our car takes us as far as he can go and from there it is walking only, up to the top. The path takes us beside a sewage plant which stinks - not a good start! We follow a gravel track which twists and winds it’s way (hopefully) up to the top. We meet a lot of people coming down but no-one going ... read more

Mazatlan was our original intended ferry destination from La Paz, and although it’s taken us another day we’ve made it here via a night in Los Mochis and a 7 hour bus trip (which was comfortable enough). Acapulco may be famous for cliff divers but Mazatlan has them too. Around lunch time when enough of a crowd has built up we see one guy do his dive. It’s not from a very high point but there’s no way you would catch me doing this – even if he makes a 1000 pesos in tips per dive. Mazatlan is really not too bad a place. The prom is brash and noisy – it reminds me a lot of places in Spain. It caters for a Mexican, rather than foreign, crowd, but the beach is pretty good and ... read more

The 20th October saw us set off on our travels again and we landed in Mexico City in the early evening. We were staying two nights to recover from the flight, adjust to the time difference and to allow a day between flights as we always do. As we pulled up at the hotel the area around looked really run down and the driver must have seen our faces as he quickly said, "Outside bad but in hotel very good". He was right, the hotel was fine despite having a machine gun armed guard standing by reception. I was nervous around him to begin with but strangely we soon bonded by necessity. Neither he nor the reception staff spoke any English so I spoke Spanish. For some reason the reception staff could not understand me but ... read more