The beach at Playa Matanchen, Tepic and Save the Whale

Monday a.m.
Saturday morning I got up in time to see the full moon before it set. Nice sight.

Full moon setting

 Watched a fisherman come in and unload his catch into his pickup on the beach. Then he used the pickup to relocate the boat up out of the high tide line. And the beach in front of us is used as a highway – all kinds of traffic in the mornings.

The vendors are out early on weekend mornings too. Getting set up for the day.

Truck going to work and an early vendor

 As you can see we are just a small wall away from the beach.

Bill, Willie and Jennie on the beach

A video of the sounds of the beach – the waves and birds. Turn your speakers on.

Looking down the beach towards Aticama

Looking up the beach towards San Blas.

Looking towards San Blas

Because the beach will be crowded with weekenders and noisy we decided to take a trip into Tepic about 40 miles away inland and up the mountain. The road is a good newly paved two lane road. The only problem is it is very curvy – I don’t think there is one 100 foot stretch of it without a curve. The vegetation is very lush. In places the trees grow together to form tree tunnels.

Tree tunnel

There are zillions of mango trees all over the mountains. i can't imagine how they harvest the mangos as the trees grow on the sides of steep mountains. The only thing I can think of is they shake the trees when the mangos are ripe and they all fall off and roll to the bottom of the mountain and then they can be picked up.

Mango and banana trees

And trees with beautiful flowers on them. White ones, yellow one, red ones and these gorgeous pink ones.

And trees with a real reddish colored bark don’t know what it is but it is pretty.

Red barked tree

Banana trees with the little bananas on them.

There are a couple of little towns to go through – this one has a bright yellow church.

Just before Tepic we passed the ladies that sell all kinds of fruit. Stopped to buy some lemons – yes real yellow lemons. their fruit stands look like works of art. so many colors and so well displayed.

Like a still life work of art

And we bought a whole bunch which The Driver juiced with his handy dandy little juice machine when we got back to jennie.

Once into downtown Tepic we noticed that all the road construction has finally been finished and the main street is now paved with dark shiny square pavers. Looks like driving on a very expensive black marble. Quite impressive.

Nice new street

We parked right across from the main plaza

Looking at Plaza from church

Which is right across from the Cathedral. We saw this same view a little over 32 years ago. Link

Looking at church from other end of plaza

Then walked around some. Of course stopping to check out the small street where the Huichol Indians make and sell their jewelry. One of the women beading – I got one of the dolls. Fell in love with them.

Got the doll on the right

Another lady in her elaborately embroidered blouse also beading.

Some of the bead work.

Beautiful woven bead work

As we walked by one of the older buildings I noticed this information sign in Braille. At one time I could write Braille but have forgotten so much all I could read was the number 2010 – (the first four letters on the second line – first the sign designating the following letters are numbers (the backward looking L) then the numbers 2 0 1 0 Wow.

Another addition to downtowns beauty are the fake trees that line the main street.

They are very pretty – the trunks and branches are a thick dark brown cord of some type and the flowers of the trees are plastic with tiny lights in them. Must be really pretty at night.

After picking up the car we went to WalMart – of course – managed to get behind this loaded cane truck. There is a big sugar plant between downtown and WalMart. These trucks leave deposits of cane everywhere. Especially at topes.

Back on the curvy road home. That is the road next to us after a hairpin turn.

And just one of the curves.

I’m going to try to use YouTube to post a video of the ride but it is kind of long so may not work. I was only going to film until we got to a straight part of the road. Finally just had to stop. Deceided to post it separately. It will be either before or after this posting. It will take a while to watch but its interesting.
Just wanted you to notice the guard rails – oh that’s right there are no guard rails. And the mountain is straight down.

You thought I was kidding – this is just a small part of the GPS route.

Once at the bottom of the hills and on our way back to the RV park we saw these beautiful Birds of Paradise – they were bright red. All red no orange or blue.

Then these fence posts that have taken root and started to grow. .

From Aticama The Driver made the decision not to go the long way around the hill to the RV park but to go the short way over a dirt road and across the beach. Much much shorter distance.

Beach shortcut - Jennie is the small white dot in the center

In the distance by Jennie we could see a commotion in the water. A fishing boat was close to shore and a lot of people were out in the water. What the heck?  Check next post for answer.
I sure hope someone is reading these.