We are in San Blas for a few days.

Hello from Aticama.

We left Mazatlan around 8:15 yesterday Morning. Stopped first to fill up on diesel – imagine our surprise the price has gone down from 14.2 a liter to 13.7. And with the exchange rate of 18 pesos to a dollar we paid 2.86 a dollar for a gallon. Much better.

However we more than lost the savings on the fuel with the tolls on the highway. 62 dollars for 140 miles of toll road. 

And around 50 horrid miles of free road. 

The 50 miles took almost as long to cover as the 140. The only rough part of the toll road was a few miles going past Escuinapa the rest of it was pretty good.

We got to El Chaco around 12:30. There are only two other RVs here. Our friend John and one other Class A.

The new bypass Cuota (toll road) around Mazatlan is so great, sure glad it opened last year. The drive to here isn’t anything special. Lots of different agriculture, very green. Fields of corn

A big new blue agave farm.

Soon we were in the State of Nayarite – no inspections of any kind where we had to stop.

These guys were painting the bridge. Buckets of paint and brushes and rollers

The last toll booth was about 2 kilometers before we got off the highway. And as we got off there was another toll booth with it barrier down. WTH. I thought maybe they did like they do in the states, refund part of your money. But No they wanted more money?? Don’t think so. So instead of refunding any money he gave us tickets with a credit on them. BUT we’d have to get back on the highway in that same area. And we’re not going to leave that way so…

Now we were on a narrow two lane road with the bushes growing right up to the edge of the road. Going through more farms. I think this is rice.

This is bananas or platanos. And we’ve never figured out what these empty brick buildings were used for.

Lots of tobacco grown around here.

So far we’d gone over 12 topes in different little towns. Unmarked topes, usually in the shade of a tree. Only missed seeing one. Poor Alfa. Going through this little town Villa Hildalgo was much easier than it used to be. Two years ago they repaved their main street and took out a whole bunch of topes. Thank goodness.

On the almost last stretch of the road – this is a ten miles section that has about 13 topes and 5 vados. A vado is a dip in the road, a deep dip and usually very rough dip.

The road again was narrow with bushes growing right up to what there was of pavement. Everytime we go over this road we say Never Again.

Laundry day.

The last little section of the road from San Blas to Aticama is okay. Something was going on here – a fiesta of some kind.

Then we were at the campground. It is pretty here. Only a few feet from the beach. Parked on nice green grass.

Last night we went into San Blas to go to dinner at Traditiones owned by or friend Javier. Bill and I had a big salad, French fries and chicken Melanesia. But more time was spent talking.

After eating we took a short walk up to the plaza. Lots of families there with their grandparents and little kids.

They haven’t taken down the Christmas tree yet. It was huge – too bad it wasn’t lighted.

Bill in a little store looking for something.

The government building in town. 

And no neither of us got any bug bites yesterday.