Maz... First Impressions
Mazatlan – life is good - and we are exploring the city bit by bit. You don't realize just how big a place is until you start moving about in it. The city of Mazatlan is about 1/4 the land area of the entire country of Grenada but has more than 4 times the population of Grenada. Mazatlan is a big city with big city shopping, services and countless restaurants. We are currently going through culture shock at the change from living in Grenada, and are also in awe at just how much this place has to offer.
Some of our readers might remember that we had prepared a spreadsheet to compare and score points for various cities / countries for potential long term visits based on what is important to us. We recently added a summary line item called the “Cyndi Factor” (so honey... what's important to you..?) and it includes only the scores from a few line items:
low rainfall (we had enough in Vancouver);
low humidity (asthma issue);
average temperature (we like it warm year round);
sunshine hours (lots);
good shopping (lots);
great supply of drinking water (preferable in the taps).
Mazatlan scored highest of all the locations on our spreadsheet when all of these were added together. This is the reason we are here now. It seems the spreadsheet works.
Financially it has been a good move as we pay about 2/3 the rent that we paid in Grenada and about 1/2 of what we paid for food and other consumables there. Also, the quality and selection here in Mazatlan is amazing.
80% of the city is built on relatively flat land with wide roads and nice sidewalks. A lot of people use bicycles to get around. We think we should join them. This photo is from our roof deck.
Up to now the weather has been perfect for us. Sunny skies, a light breeze, no clouds, 28 C during the day and 18 C at night. We miss the chirping tree frogs here at night – not enough jungle around us – but we enjoy hearing singing birds everywhere we go during the day. Not hearing the tree frogs is a big change for us as we got used to falling asleep to that in PV, Barbados and in Grenada. We also haven't seen a lot of lizards or geckos scooting around.
We live in a nice neighbourhood filled with nice homes and what appears to be well-to-do home owners. Water is delivered to our neighbourhood (22 pesos for a 20 litre carafe) every weekday at 9:20 am - just flag him down when he comes by - and garbage pickup is three times per week. Household garbage is dropped into steel baskets that sit on a post three feet off the ground so critters can't get access to it.
There are many expats living here and we bump into people from Canada and USA every day. Perhaps not as often as we did in PV. Our most recent are Ken and Ike from Alberta. They left their non-retired wives in the Great White North while they popped down for a few cerveza.
We have found several “fun” places along the beach and we like to visit and compare restaurant menus and refreshment items. Sometimes it seems it is less expensive to eat out than it is to go grocery shopping and spend time cooking and washing dishes. Awesome!
We have to admit that we miss the yellow Caribbean hot sauce - man, that is good stuff on everything. Mexican hot sauces come in several varieties but is more like Frank's Red Hot and it just doesn't work the same way in our recipes... Oh well, we suppose it's time to amend our recipes and palates a bit.
The day we arrived in Mazatlan we discovered that we had difficulty remembering the few Spanish words that we learned during our PV experience, and felt rather confufalated (new word) when we had to communicate in stores. Most store clerks don't speak English (nor should they have to... duh...) and we found that we had to use a lot of hand gestures, posturing and charade-like movements... and then - Hallelujah - we found the voice activated Google Translate app for our new smart phones. Seriously... it was time to cue singing angels with gold lined clouds and sunbeams shining on heads. Whomever invented this thing is a genius - Yaaaay! We feel much more confident using this free app... just say some words in English and out comes Spanish that you can hear and see - amazing! We are slowly adding new words and phrases to our vocabulary but it's going to take some time.
We have found that Mexicans are very friendly and helpful. OK, OK, this is actually something that everyone tells you about living in Mexico, but we think in this mixed-up-Trump world it’s worth reiterating that Mexicans are not all drug dealers and bad hombres. We feel safe here. In fact, in our experience most Mexicans will go out of the way to help you with whatever situation you find yourself in, whether that’s asking for directions or swapping change with you at the bus stop. However, that brings me on to my next point…
If you ask for directions, and the person you ask has no idea where that place is, rare is the occasion that they’ll straight up tell you that they don't know. Instead, they’ll vaguely wave their hand, give a mumbled response and then phone a friend to get directions for you. In short, Mexicans don't want to disappoint you. We found this in Grenada too.
We still walk everywhere – it keeps us healthy – and it's usually a 15 minute walk to our chosen destination for a given day. Some places are a bit further and then we get a good long walk in – up to an hour one way – and then walk back again unless we have overburdened our shopping bags. We have noticed the numbers on the scale getting smaller and our waistbands feeling a bit more loose after our recent visit to Vancouver.
The beaches are very long here - about 20 km of sand, where you can also walk on tourist friendly paved boardwalks (Malecon) and ride on their great bike paths. We hope to be able to explore more in a single outing once we get ourselves set up with bicycles. In the meantime we will continue to enjoy beautiful sunsets, nice beaches, great tasting food, inexpensive beer and fun beach bars... Muchas Gracias.