Chapter 10 - Birthday, Beachfront, and Border Crossing

Hi and welcome back –

After three weeks in Mazatlan, we left on April 25 and spent one night at the Hotel Del Rio in Navajoa.

Of course, we found a taco place, the Taco Factory (Taqueria) for supper and "wow" did they serve their tacos with a lot of extra toppings.

I really started liking cucumbers and shredded cabbage on street tacos.

On April 26, I woke up to my 50^th birthday! Celebrating a birthday abroad was on my bucket list…..wish granted!

Corp picked some plumeria flowers off the tree at the hotel.
Seemed fitting to wear them in my hair during the drive to Guaymas.

Along the way, we ran into our first road-side banditos. Basically, they are locals demanding money or you can't continue down the road. I think we gave them $5 USD. Corp didn't want to pay it, but we did.

We heard later that if you don't pay they may pull you out of the car and assault you.
The locals pay the banditos too.

On April 26, we arrived in Guaymas.

We stayed at Paulina’s Place for 7 days.

😀 The pros of Paulina’s Place:

·       2 bedroom, 1 bath
·       beachfront
·       large, open floor plan
·       tv worked
·       patio
·       off-street parking

😒 The cons of Paulina’s Place:

·       check-in was1.5 hours late
·       upper level unit
·       very few restaurants/bars within walking distance

I took a time lapse video at sunset.

Corp really wanted to get me a birthday cake. After three bakery failures, we decided to get one at Walmart.

It was red velvet with chocolate/cherry glazing…it was delicious!

Birthday supper was celebrated at Taco & Steak restaurant. It was a great find. We enjoyed steak macho tacos and stuffed potato several times during our week stay.

We learned "macho" tacos just means they have a steamed green pepper in them.
The extra texture was delicious!

We really enjoyed chatting with the owner, Renae.

One morning we saw a weird phenomenon in the ocean. Swarms of fish were swimming away from the ducks. It was mesmerizing to watch the dark blob move so beautifully in the water.

On April 28, we visited Playa San Francisco in the San Carlos. San Carlos is about 20 minutes from Guaymas and is the more touristy of the two beach towns.

Unique city sign...in this area they display their town name
in the mountainside with white rocks.

The beach was great for seashell picking and we saw dolphins playing super close to shore.

We also saw a semi-truck stuck on the beach. Why was a semi-truck on the beach in the first place? We will never know.

We drove down a beach road, but ended up turning around because the road got too narrow. We also scratched our 4Runner in the process. Most of the scratches came out at the car wash. Lesson learned…never trust a beach road.

In Guaymas, there were a lot of homeless dogs. The most we have seen in our 4 months in Mexico.

We bought some Pedigree dog food and would throw the food out whenever we saw what we thought was a homeless dog. We did this several days over the course of the week we were there.

On April 29, we visited El Arco. It’s a beautiful stone arch on the ocean. We drove by a super stinky fish processing plant and a boat boneyard to get there.

The fish plant was so stinky!

These two boats in the bone boatyard were huge.

We were even chased by junkyard dogs.

We can across a lot of dogs in Mexico, but these two were definitely not friendly.

We were amazed at the amount of trash along the walking path up to the arch. It was a super unique place, but definitely not a tourist attraction.

While at El Arco we made a video wishing our friend Laura happy 50^th birthday.

We also made her a birthday wish at the beach.

In the afternoon, we came home to crazy winds at the beach. White caps as far as the eye could see. The past several days the ocean was like glass. It was so windy that a light bulb blew out of our outside patio light and busted on the neighbor's patio. I never knew a light bulb could break into that many pieces.

On April 30, we visited the lookout by San Carlos. The lookout had some really neat dolphin sculptures.

There was beautiful scenery at the top of the lookout.

We decided to go back the next day and hiked down the hill and spelled out “Mexico 2022” in white rocks on the beach.

The MX 2022 is hard to see but it's above my left shoulder.

In San Carlos, we discovered a marina with overlooking homes on the hill.

On May 2, we left Guaymas and planned for a border crossing at Nogales – Mariposa. We cancelled our temporary import permits for 4Runner and scooter and turned in our tourist visas. All was super easy! So much easier than when we crossed into Mexico 4 months ago. We took a wrong turn in Nogales and ended up crossing into the U.S. at the Nogales-Centro with no issues.