Day 2 in Mazatlan (Tuesday the 20 Jan)

I slept straight through for 7 and a half hours Woke up at 430 to some very loud ticking noise) and although am still tired could not get back to sleep, so at 530 got up and started the day. It was dark outside and very quiet. Not any traffic to speak of yet. While the water slowly came to a boil on the stove I got dressed. Figured out where to plug in the computer and made myself a tea with electrolytes and a peanut butter and honey sandwich for breakfast. Took a few photos of the house and the birds in the trees outside on the upstairs patio. Played my spanish guitar music while I downloaded the photos and cropped and exposed and up loaded them to Facebook after Linda came down and gave me the password to pirate wifi from the neighbours, although we have their permission.
 After breakfast Linda went back upstairs to lay down and I finished uploading the photos I had taken the day before and this morning and started getting responses almost immediately. Margie on line so chatted with her. Snowing there, so sad, no....seriously.  Diane and I made bracelets. We have to stay in the house till noon every day until they get their internet hooked up so all of our expeditions start after lunch which is saving me money so that is just fine. The internet will be installed within 20 days of ordering. They ordered it on the 29 dec so allowing time for holidays and such and assuming that the 20 days are working days. they might get their internet by the 28 january.

After lunch Diane and I headed off to the mall to go to the bead store , the casino to see if we could win any money and the grocery store to pick up a few items.

We caught the bus the centarrios? juarez mega and off we went. 7 pesos. Passed by a traffic accident with a real cop. There are many kinds of cops down here. Tourist police that drive by with their lights on like they are on their way to an accident. But no they just leave their lights on so everyone can see them. About one every block or two. I’ve never felt safer. Then there are the city police ( that was who was at the accident) then there are soldiers of some sort, haven’t seen them yet. I guess last year about 5 blocks from where Diane and Linda stayed there was a huge take down involving hundreds of these military police to capture a wanted drug lord who had come down from the mountains to spend a little R&R in the big Mazatlan at Carnaval. They saw lots of these police but not the actual take down. 

On with the bus ride Diane was acting tour guide and pointed things out: to the right is where the sea walk, the Malecon, begins; to the left is the blockbuster store; this is where we are going to get groceries but we are not getting off yet;  we will get off now to go to the mall to get beads at the bead store and go to the casino.

She was very good.

The mall is just like every other mall but with spanish signs and Mexican people. Pretty much the same as Southgate mall in Edmonton as far as the shops and food court goes. We wandered in and out of several shops found a book store where they had an english section and they had , although not in english, a book about the messages from water. Probably the closest thing I am going to find with anything to do about snowflakes in Mexico, so I bought it. I will have to get Shauna an english spanish dictionary so that she can translate it. LOL. We picked up a few things at the little bead shop and got a frappe and then went to the casino. 

Diane is very good a winning, so she got the casino card!AQ and I gave her 50 pesos (5 bucks) to put on it. We started out with 250 pesos and in no time had, by a series of ups and downs, gone up to 300 pesos by the time we called it quits. It was fun.

Walked to the mega store which is very much like our superstore and ended up spending two hours in there. Although They do have a lot of the same things that we have in Canada under the names of something else, they don’t have the all the same things that we have in Canada; no basil, no artichokes, no boconchini cheese. I wanted to make Paella for us and so needed arborio rice which I found in the imported aisle along with the  balsamic vinegar. But we did in the end manage ( with a bit of back and forth between the aisles) to find almost everything else on our list of groceries.

We took a pulmonaria home. A kind of fast golf cart for 50 pesos. Driving down there is crazy but they seem to know what to do so we just closed our eyes sometimes and got home safe in no time at all.

We had a beer which was great and the rest of Diane’s tamale pie, which is also really good, and chatted with Linda.  I retired early again and had a shower and went to bed. No tanning today but probably just a well wouldn’t want to shock this poor white body with too much sunshine all at once.