Our next stop was Mazatlan. I was up bright and early to catch the sunrise a bit before 7am.
We had booked a tour with the cruise line for this stop, "Panoramic Hiking Views to El Faro Lighthouse." You can see the lighthouse at the top of the hill in the picture below. It looked quite a ways to climb and our hike was going to start at the base of the climb. It was a bit intimidating. One note: El Faro Lighthouse is redundant, since Faro is Mexican for Lighthouse.
Small four to eight person open air pickups took us from port to the base of the hill where there is a paid entrance for El Faro. Our tour guide took the time to take a picture of each couple who wanted one atop the sign. One of these days I may get ours from Elizabeth's phone pictures. If she ever shares them.
The tour guide, faced with a wide range of athleticism and age in his tour group, did an excellent job of adjusting the walk to make it enjoyable for all of us. With numerous stops on the way up and extensive talks at each stop, he kept the most in shape from outrunning and demoralizing the least fit and oldest among the group. It helped that at each stop he would also tell us how far we were and how far, sometimes how many steps, to the next stop. Everyone in the group made it to the top, even a lady in her 80's.
Two more stops up we had made it to the halfway point. Look closely and you can see the cruise ship back in port becoming smaller and smaller.
A couple more stops and, before we knew it, we'd reached the top. And the cruise ship was even smaller. Not an easy hike, but not nearly as taxing as two days previous when we walked to The Hill of the Cross Viewpoint in Puerto Vallarta, which felt like a death march compared to this informative and almost leisurely walk up the hill to the Faro.
After burning all of those calories it seemed only fitting that we should refuel at an authentic Mexican restaurant. The tour guide took us to a local restaurant, La Puntilla, that wasn't as touristy as most and was only a short walk from the cruise port. We had the shrimp and octopus ceviche along with coconut shrimp. It was all very tasty and super fresh. Even the octopus was tender. Washed down with a Negra Modelo beer (or two), and sitting in an open air patio by the water, it was a pleasant end to a wonderful day. If we go to Mazatlan again I'm not sure if we'll do the walk up to Faro, but I'm sure we'll visit La Puntilla again!
That evening we left port around sunset, a bit after 6pm, cruising by the lighthouse one last time. A beautiful end to a wonderful day!
Click this link or one of the pictures above to see more pictures in the Mazatlan photo album.
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