Faro Lighthouse

Today after a slightly less chaotic breakfast we took a DiDi (local Uber) to Faro park, an island off historic downtown Mazatlan. We paid 10 pesos each to use the bathroom at the bottom of the hill, then hiked up to the highest lighthouse in North America. We hiked up that mountain so quickly it surprised Leia as well: our powerful mountain lungs are still working, though we sweat in 50% humidity. We observed many interesting large seabirds there, including Magnificent Frigatebirds and Great Blue Herons, and we saw pelicans diving for fish off the beach when we took our walk yesterday.

Leia insisted on another DiDi rather than walk a few minutes back along the pier, which we took to Angelina’s restaurant in the Centro. It served delicious food in a lovely atmosphere. The elderly server was very helpful yet slow-moving. We had nice Poke tostados with a quite authentic poke sauce, and a chopped octopus and shrimp dish that was more Mediterranean style than Mexican. Leia had strawberry lemonade made of pureed strawberries and Guy had basil lemonade.

Then we walked around to the art museum and saw it was closed for a private event, so we could only peek in the windows at vases and art. We walked around that block to have Paella at Casa Mayora, which felt kind of fancy. This place played lounge covers of popular songs, and had an impressive-looking cocktail list, though it was too early for me to drink any of it. Continuing around the block led us to a coffee shop on the boardwalk, where we had coffee and a muffin.

We walked up the boardwalk, stopping to admire the many sculptures, and a cave called “the Devil’s cave” sealed with a decorative fence. There are many statues of mermaids and nude people here, all with pointy nipples and one with a small penis, as if they were cold when sculpted. We stopped at a taco chain to pass some time until we could see the sunset from the boardwalk. Then we had to wait for 3-4 DiDi drivers to give up before we could get picked up and driven back to our hotel. You can haggle the price in this app, which is always a little cheaper than Uber.