5C's Que Pasa

Walking down the street we were greeted with " You're Contessa!! ". Mucho gusto Jean. What a lovely chance meeting and thanks for being a dedicated blog reader.

Our last errand of the day was to pick up some fresh produce at the mercardo. First we stopped for lunch.

Meet Tony, the owner and cook at Tony's Burgers. That is our lunch on the grill.

Absolutely delicious and huge shrimp burgers.

A walk in town is an adventure, you never know what you will see around the next corner.

I love this glass work, obviously designed to give this home privacy from passing pedestrians.

I don't know the story behind this. This fellow is the one who bring the thirty plus horses past our site every morning. Here he was standing next to where the horses hang out during the day. Did he just rescue the horses from this ugly looking snake? He did say it was dangerous!

The locals are always helping each other out. Hard to see but a fisherman and his net are getting a ride back up the beach sitting on top of two palm trees that are being dragged somewhere for something.

Last weekend a band set up just in front of us. Turns out that they were shooting a promo video. They did another set up in the botanical gardens behind us the next day.

15 people got out of these two cars one afternoon. As they were parked directly in front of us it was easy to count but I was surprised as more and more just kept coming out the doors.

Beach construction! The owners of the shrimp farm are once again digging way under the sand to lay new pipes to and from the ocean. They do this at least once per year. Between the tides and the heavy tractors passing over the PVC pipes get broken.

We are still glad we got the larger Weber as we do seem to fill the grill when cooking for just the two of us. That sockeye was delicious!

An example of the tides.

Buried treasure? This came up on a wave.

Some things never change, like the passing of time and the setting position of the sun.

This fellow just rolled his bike down to the dock and hired his own panga.

First you carefully lift your front wheel over onto the boat.

Looks like this panga is well secured. We have friends who witnessed and photographed a person falling into the water as they disembarked the other day. Hang onto that bike real tight.

Of course it is most important to sit on your bike as it crosses the channel to Stone Island.

Meanwhile we sat in our panga waiting to get back to the Isla with just a few smaller bikes waiting to cross. By the way the two girls on the left looked like any American pale faced redhead but were totally Mexican.

I bet he road his bike all the way to the Isla. For a mere 50 pesos ( $3.75 USD ) he saved himself about 90 minutes and 8 miles of gravel road. Well done!

The theme for the 116th Carnaval is Litoralia ~ la peile del mar ~ the skin of the sea.

The theme refers to the sea touching the shore.

All of the large Carnaval celebrations take place by the sea. For instance, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Venice, Italy, Havana, Cuba and of course New Orleans, Louisiana.

Mazatlan, Mexico is right up there with the best of them.

The two largest modern public Carnaval celebrations in Mexico are in Veracruz and Mazatlan with other large celebrations in Baja California and the Yucatán Peninsulas which attract significant numbers of visitors mostly from within Mexico.

Mazatlan has the oldest major modern Carnaval tradition in Mexico with a history of over a hundred years starting in 1898.

Another check and it was determined that I indeed needed that dreaded root canal.

Just a little more freezing por favor.

Half way done.

From El Sol de Mazatlan

We still saw lots of signs like this. Behind the sign is a net keeping rock from falling onto the road. We saw work still being done here and there along the road. I am certain that this highway will require constant maintenance.

In the distance the Sierra Madre Occidental range which the highway passes through.

One of the 115 bridges. You can see a tunnel on the left.

The tunnels are very thick and have lots of cement way up high. This was the first of 61 tunnels we passed through.

This one also had a service tunnel. We figured that electricity had been strung between Mazatlan and Durango and that the wires were layed under the tunnels. Colin was driving and I was taking the photos, mostly through the car windows.

Amazing scenery. Here you can see some of the construction roads that had been created.

This modern highway is a true engineering feat.

The road is 2 lanes each direction.

Graffiti or Mexican art?

The girls did not appreciate the beauty we were seeing and slept all the way there and back.

As we got higher and higher it became much cooler and the vegetation changed to pine trees.

Lots of interesting rock formations.

This is my shot of the now famous Puente Baluarte. In the Durango Visitor Guide it states that this bridge possesses the Guinness World Record for the tallest bridge in the world. It is 1,321 ft. high, the Empire State Building in New York is 1,250 ft. high and the Eiffel Tower in Paris is a mere 1,063 ft. tall. The Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building seemed much more impressive to me in person but then I was viewing them from ground level. Besides unlike the latter two, when you get to the top, you can't just stop and admire the view from the middle of the bridge.

Colin found a place to stop and take this shot of el Puente Baluarte.

Colin stopped on the side of the road to get this shot.

Colin was so taken by the way this road was built, that we went a few miles to find a turn around and came back to take this shot. Notice how the road surface is twisted.

The inside of the longest tunnel, over a mile long. Colin just pulled over and got out in middle of the road to get this shot. The tunnel goes up and then down and also curves. Quite a job to build this.

Sadly Alberta & Steve left early this morning. They were planning to stay a few weeks longer but their daughter needs some help and off they went on a day's notice. We will miss them and of course now that they are gone we realize how we should have got together more.

Late yesterday afternoon we headed over to Valero's for a farewell meal with Hugh. He left midday today. Sixteen days went by very quickly.

We missed the actual sunset but as we walked back to the RV park we realized how great the sky was looking.

So we took some fun shots.

Dos amigos.

Once again Mother Nature put on a wonderful farewell show.

Just being a bit further up the beach gave us some great photo ops.

Who knows if the four of us will ever be together again?

Stunning!

At least I didn't have to say adios to mi amiga Lynne.