The Road to San Blas

We left Mazatlan on Wednesday morning, heading south on Highway 15.

About 30 kilometers before the Mexican city of Tepic we turned west onto secondary highway 200, a paved one lane road that leads to the coastal town of San Blas.

We've spent the past two days here in a cute little Mexican Hotel.  

Hotel Posada Carey is a small, six unit hotel owned by a lady named Marta.  During peak season, rooms usually go for $120 USD/night, but it's been a very slow tourist season and Marta is charging us half that.

The rooms are bright and clean, there's a small pool in the back and two banana trees in the courtyard.

There are a lot of stray dogs here, more than most other Mexican towns, but they seem to be well fed.  The population of San Blas is either 12,000 (according to the internet) or 26,000 (according to an elderly fisherman named Jose Guadalupe Morelis, who was born here).

Today we went out on Jose's boat for a tour around San Blas and la Isla Rey.

A windy day on the water, but sunny and 26C.  If I look cold it's only because I was sitting on a wet life jacket.

More pics from the water:

The rusty old fishing boat in the pic above is wedged in the sand, outside San Blas on the edge of Isla Rey.  Jose told us it was a shrimping boat that was caught in a hurricane here about 7 years ago.  Several fishermen died in the storm and the owners from Puerto Penasco just left the boat here to rust.   

The picture below is a statue of the Virgin Fatima (ver-hen Fa-tee-ma).  Fishermen and Mexican Catholic tourists come in small boats to see the statue every year on May 13th.  I couldn't figure out the significance because Jose explained everything in Spanish and the details totally went over my head.

Jose charged us $30 for the boat tour which lasted about an hour and a half.  We were constantly moving so most of that money probably went to gas.

We haven't seen many tourists in San Blas, a few Canadians and maybe five or six Americans.  Some of the locals have mentioned how slow tourism is this year, and they don't have much hope for 2009.  I don't know about other parts of Mexico, but the world economic problems are certainly affecting San Blas.

We like this area but tomorrow morning we're packing up and heading south to our final destination, Sayulita.

Buenas noches.

Comments

[Don Smith]

You are doing a "crackerjack" job on this sister, the only thing missing is the occassional "Wish You Were Here."

You have all the earmarks of a good photo journalist, and I for one appreciate the effort.

Good Job Sport!

BCO

[Don Smith]

heh-heh

http://bitsandpieces.us/2009/01/02/only-in/

[kelsi]

BoxCar - you know the Mex picture on the webpage you linked to? My fella's gonna try that tomorrow.

Maybe I'll post a pic... ;)

[Mike]

Hi Guys,

Good to see you made it. Wish I (and Mave) were there. I would send you a picture of the snowbank (not sand) that has been formed in our back yard but I don't want to scare you two. You may not come back. I sent for my retirement papers today so next year. When you see Mike and Debbie, say hello.

Luv,

Mike and Mavis