Tourist Traps

We had a rain storm last night – thunder and lightening only at the beginning but it rained off and on most of the night. Maybe the poor plants have had their coating of brown dust washed off of them.
Today is bright and sunny and probably will be humid, ick. No plans for today except - drum roll – Bill is working on his own blog. Maybe he’ll get it up and running today after he stops fooling around with all the widgets he can add to it.
One day we went to the Golden Zone – the tourist trap area – because the cruise ships were in and everything was open.
It was funny there were bus loads of people each group with its own guide in his/her green shirt. They were being hustled into the show area for the Voladores – the Indians who “fly” off the pole with their ankles tied to a rope. We saw it last year. So the stores were pretty empty and gave us a chance to browse.

Lots of clothes – all much higher in price than the same thing in the Central Market. Walked through one pretty arcade out on to the beach.
One of the pretty tile benches in the arcade
The restaurant at the beach end
Tile steps leading to the beach
The beach was covered with vendors – couldn’t walk two steps without someone shoving something into your face.
Need a big sign with NO on it. It is a pretty view out there though. A couple of parasailors were up. And one sail was waiting for a taker.
I keep thinking I’d like to do that but then chicken out. This is looking south on the beach towards the older part of Mazatlan
Back out onto the main street we went into the Shell Museum. Every kind of shell you can imagine. The shells that we brought back from Huatabampito last year, bags of them, were being sold for US$3 to 5 each! Shoot I should set up shop and sell at discount prices. The place has an upstairs so up I went. Sure glad I did. They have a huge mural made out of shells and right in the middle of the room is a big fountain. I can’t describe it but it was beautiful. The center piece and all the surrounding parts of the fountain were shells.

A close up of the shells
Later we were just window shopping in the Centro Historico and went into one home shop and saw this carved painted wood bedroom set. LOVE it. Reminded us of the dining room set we saw in Hidalgo last year. Beautiful.
This is the leather mask we got in La Noria - it's about 8 inches long