Old Mazatlán

We are presently staying in the area of town known as Old Mazatlán , close to the more historic pieces of town and far from the resort area further north. The word "old" here is also apropos because we spent the day reliving parts of a past visit to Mazatlán. Almost a year ago, we stopped here with friends on a cruise, so it's the one city in Mexico that we actually knew a bit beforehand. And today, we managed to eat at the same lunch restaurant that we chose a year ago, and we walked down some of the same streets. So far, we haven't really explored much new here.

But that's OK with us. Emily described this piece of the trip as a sort of vacation from vacation. There are no museums we need to visit, no cultural events we can't miss. It's just beautiful beach, pleasant plazas, and general relaxation. We spent much of the day strolling, eating, and napping. And we watched a beautiful sunset over the ocean from our balcony. It's lovely.

We have only done one real new thing today that bears reporting here, and that was to stop by a "Festival of Humor" set up in the gallery of a local theater. As we quickly discovered, "festival of humor" here means "display of tons of anti-American political cartoons." Ha, ha. Very funny. There seems to have been some sort of competition here to get the best anti-American cartoons from around the world, and the best were on display here in Mazatlán. The themes were pretty repetitive: you know, the usual, America eating the rest of the world; American killing the rest of the world; America taking a giant crap on the globe. No more than 1 cartoon in every 10 was actually intelligent or even marginally amusing. Not at all what we were expecting, but you have to keep your sense of humor about it, right?

Highlights of tomorrows plans: relax, stroll, relax, swim, relax, eat, relax. Maybe make some jokes about how awful America is.