Day 4 – Mazatlan to Puerto Vallarta
This was for sure a day we have been looking forward to. Our AirBnB in Mazatlan wan’t too near the beach so we didn’t get to see it until we left that morning. We left at 9am and decided to take a drive through town on our way to the highway. We drove through the tourist area and not lying, counted 5 Senior Frogs. WTF? As we were driving past all of the tourists looking at the beaches and the ocean, we realized that giant blue thing of water might be the biggest reason we are making this journey. We love the ocean, we want to be by/in/on the ocean 24/7.
Leaving Mazatlan, we were trying to get on the 200 and shorted it by 1 right turn. This made for a little adventure getting out of town driving down a street that paralleled the highway. Lots of traffic and many, many topes. If you don’t already know, topes are the Mexican version of speed bumps. Aggressive out of nowhere bone rattling speed bumps. We are driving down this road at about 10mph because of the traffic and the topes, we can see our entrance to the highway is coming up soon and about 5 car lengths ahead of us we see 4 Policia Fedarales trucks. Each truck is packed with about 3-4 fully armored fully armed men standing in the back. No worries right, they are ahead of us and there are 20 cars in line behind them They start to stop and each one of them does this swerve and back up move into an unmarked compound. No worries. The entrance to the highway is right there and we get on with no issues.
Shannon is an extensive planner, this isn’t news to most of you but let me assure you, every leg of this trip is planned. Our drive from Mazatlan to Puerto Vallarta was supposed to be 4 hours. This turned into 5 because we were unaware of a time change from Mountain to Central. So 4 hours driving, 5 because of the time change. Our trip took 7.5 hours… You think you have it planned, and when you are on the tollway headed in the right direction, you are forced to exit onto another road going the complete opposite direction because the road you were on is suddenly, or not, we have no idea, closed, Ok, no problem, we will just find a retorno and turn around. Well 30 minutes later, no retorno in sight, we are trying to figure out what to do. Our maps is showing there is another turn around in 30 more minutes. Ok, not so bad, we will add 2 hours to our trip, this still gets us in Puerto Vallarta in daylight hours and we can still enjoy the Westin Pool. Up ahead a tollbooth. This is our chance to turn around and not drive another half hour! We flip around and start heading the correct direction on the correct road! WooHoo! Nope. The road we are on is closed to at the same place as before. We thought it was just the exit/entrance onto the road going the direction we wanted… Again, not that big of a deal, there are other roads to Puerto Vallarta. We hop on the 200 and start driving headed to our amazing beachfront Westin Resort & Spa. The traffic headed the other direction was insane! We were headed to PV on a Sunday and everyone else was headed home. We were on a 2 lane windy mountain road and so many huge bussed headed to Guadalajara were flying by the other direction. So what was supposed to be 4 hours, was actually 7.5.
As we pull up to the Westin we are feeling great. It has been a long day of driving and our reward is right in front of us. Everyone is so freaking nice and they let us park Chivo right in front of the hotel for 2 nights. We check into our room, 9th floor ocean view with a balcony and it is so gorgeous. We immediately change into swim suits and head to the pool. 4, maybe 10 margaritas later, we are exactly where we want to be for the night.
