For the first time in all our visits to Mazatlán, we decided to take a tour to the town of El Quelite.  We were told they had a wonderful Mexican restaurant.  

Enroute we were told that this area of Sinaloa, Mexico is known for corn, cattle and mangos. 

We passed a sign indicating the Tropico de Cancer.  This latitude is the same that goes through the Hawaiian Islands – but the landscape is so different.

Our first stop was at El Quamade, a small town known for making cheese. They supply cheese for much of Mazatlán and the state of Sinaloa.

We stopped at a small quail farm.  

The bird in the foreground is a coquena.  Coquena are half chicken and half turkey and are able to breed.

We reached El Quelite and took a walk up to a raised viewpoint with a small shrine.  

We learned that the village was named for a vegetable that grows wild similar to spinach.  The village began in the 1800s.

The village church was built in the 1800s and remodeled in the 1930s.

There was a holiday the day we were there and a ceremony was happening at the church.   

We saw a little of the before and after.

The famous restaurant was named El Meson de Los Laureanos.  The Laureanos were brother bandits that were famous in this area.  They have been memorialized as Robin Hood types, but were really just bandits.

The food really was very good.  We had many samplings served to us because we were part of a tour.  

These were cheese and a Mexican pizza made with cheese from the former village. 

We had rice water and chamomile water.  I usually like water just plain but the rice water really was delicious.

Randy ordered a combination plate and I ordered a chili relleno. 

I had never had a relleno served in a soup before.  All the food was delicious.

Randy took a picture when he went into the baños.  Target shooting urinals is the best we can figure.

As we were leaving town we went by ancient athletic grounds and a statue depicting a game played here thousands of years ago.  The ball was made of rubber and weighed about 15 lbs. Hip action was part of the game. The teams played six on six and, in ancient times, the losing team was killed.

Back in Mazatlán, we enjoyed our second trip to the Angela Perata Theater – this time for Gala Navideńa, their Christmas spectacular.  There was a good combination of songs in Spanish and English and lots of well choreographed dancing.  We will definitely try to go again in the future.

We enjoyed spending an afternoon playing cards with our Boise friend Pam and her friend Charlene.

We went on another tour with Eduardo from our previous Flavor Tellers tour.  In that instance, Eduardo was an employee. Eduardo is also developing his own company of tours.   He has a Masters degree in Creative Writing from New York University and developed a tour around literature with a Mazatlán connection.  The city doesn’t have known literary giants so this tour is about known writers who mention visits to Mazatlán, or those whose visits can be inferred through their writing.

We spent a delightful four hours learning about connections, or potential connections, with Herman Melville, John Steinbeck, Taylor Bayard, Ken Kesey and others we didn’t even begin to know.

We began at a library with a Spanish collection and an English collection. Each were administered by different agencies.  Although both collections were closed during Covid, the Spanish collection received the care it needed to remain viable.

The English language collection molded after months and years of neglect.  It is unknown what will happen with the deteriorating collection and space.

Eduardo took us to a cafe where they developed and served us tacos with a literary connection to one of the authors he told us about. 

The details have escaped my memory but I appreciate the effort because he was improvising and accommodating my dislike of seafood.

This was not part of our tour, but we did walk by the Beatles in Mazatlán!

Towards the end Eduardo showed us a hotel, the Casa Lucila, named for his grandmother Lucila.  The hotel has a rich musical history.  

Eduardo’s grandfather is enshrined in a sculpture nearby – one of many sculptures along the Mazatlán malachon.  

We ate breakfast a couple of times at a cafe called Surf’s Up.  It is about a half mile walk down the beach from our resort.  

On this morning we saw several groups of sea birds aggressively move from area to area after fish.  We asked the waiter about the type of fish. As best we could understand, he was saying “pardo” but we found no fish with that name doing a bit of research. It could have been a language snafu, or a regional name of a type of fish. Who knows?

We enjoyed some sunsets!

We had some more quality time with the iguanas we shared our third floor space with!

She is kind of pretty when you consider the intricacies of the skin.

Just when we thought our naughty iguana was tamed by the sight of the maid’s broom, he was back. He watched Randy sitting there for a while, then came onto the balcony when Randy came inside. Whatever….we were going to dinner.

On our last morning, I looked out to the surrounding trees and ledges to do a count.   Over our two weeks the iguana count had been a high of 12 and a low of four.

One of the iguanas saw me approach, turned away – AND FELL OFF the third floor ledge!  Oh my!  I heard it fall into the foliage, and not onto the sidewalk, so I was glad about that.

When we went down for breakfast about ten minutes later, it was no where to be found.  That made me hopeful for its survival.  It isn’t like iguanas haven’t already survived since the beginning of time.

Another trip to Mazatlán was successfully and enjoyably accomplished. Using two weeks a year, our contract will be complete in 2028. As much as we enjoy going to Emerald Bay, we will not renew. There are too many other places to explore.  Adios Amigos!

We were in Mazatlan in December 2023.

Next up: A break for me the writer and you the reader!