Mazatlan and the drive to PV

Las Jaibas RV Park was almost empty while we were there. For a while we were the only rig. The mostly fenced park gave Trekker a place to run though we were careful to keep him from bolting out the front gate and across the road to look for the beach--like he did last year.

The first photo is of the front section of the park, our motorhome is actually about a third of the way down. The small building is the office near the entrance, the large tower is across the street--the beach where Trekker loved to play. The rear section of the park is normally reserved for the multi rig caravans. This is one of the larger RV Parks in Mazatlan with 135 large sites.

In Mazatlan we had hoped to find Juan Salizar Jr, our favourite bodyman to fix a small oops on the right front of the rig but that will have to wait for another day. In Mazatlan we just lazed around for a few days. We were wanting to connect with an old Victoria friend who has a condo in Maz, and who had left by car the morning we did--in fact we had planned to be on the same ferry and meet for lunch down Puget Sound. But as you may remember we were delayed and had to wait for the afternoon ferry.

Our second day in Maz we found Paul, and invited him over the rig for dinner the next night. As we were sitting down for dinner there was a knock on the door--our friends Mark and Deana from home! They have a condo in Mazatlan not far from the RV Park we were staying. We invited them to keep us company with a glass of wine while we finished dinner and we all had a good time. They had known we would be in Mazatlan about that time and had been checking out the RV Parks to find us. They had guests arriving the next day, also acquaintances from the same neighbourhood, so we made arrangements to go out to dinner with them that night.

Paul picked us up and we drove the kilometer or to to La Bruja (the Witch) on the beach where we met the gang. We had a good dinner and a good visit. Beer and margaritias were 2 for 1 so it's a good thing we couldn't stay late! In the morning we were off to Puerta Vallarta, a reasonably long drive.


We had planned to leave Las Jaibas early as we hoped to make PV in one day's drive but it was 9:00 by the time we were actually rolling. However retirement is about not having deadlines any more so . . . .

Traffic was surprisingly light through Mazatlan, though it seemed to drag on forever. We fueled up at a new Pemex near the airport and were soon on the cuota to Tepic. We still hadn't decided on a route—our usual one through Villa Hidalgo and San Blas to Las Varas or stay on the cuota all the way to Tepic. The advantages of the detour were flat though narrow roads, no tolls and the banana bread in the tiny village of Matachen, just south of San Blas.

Several hours later we decided to try the new route; the cuota to Tepic then south on the 200 to Compostela. No Banana bread this year!

Our "little Diesel Pusher" (300HP 5.9L Cummins) made short work of the hills and we were soon back on the level in Tepic. Traffic through the city wasn't too bad and though the signage for the road to Puerto Vallarta could have been better we didn't make any wrong turns and were soon downhill towards Compostela.

Traffic here was much lighter than expected though we were glad we were going down hill. Up hill traffic was lined up behind trucks grinding up the grades. The scenery here was quite pleasant; we both enjoyed this part of the drive not having been this way before.

At Compostela about 2:30 we found a place to get off the road for our lunch break of about 45 minutes. Back on the road again, 35 kilometres later we entered the town of Las Varas and were back in known territory, about 2 hours from Puerto Vallarta.

We were well into PV when Art's cell phone rang; Gillian answered it—it was Melchor, our friend and Spanish Teacher. The RV Park had just called him to see where we were! (Melchor had made the reservation for us.) We were able to tell him we were just a few minutes from the RV Park and sure enough, Gabby, the manager, was there to greet us as we pulled in.

Fuel for this section; 119.2 litres