Day 4 - Mazatlan!

Wednesday morning we awoke in beautiful Mazatlan! Our ship had docked in a little bay type thing at a container port. We weren't able to get an immediate view of the city itself, but what we saw was still really pretty!
Since we were docked, we were able to just walk off the ship whenever we wanted. That was nice. We had breakfast and got off the ship. The excursion we had booked was a canopy tour! Once our whole group was together, we got onto a tour bus and went off on a 50 minute drive out of Mazatlan into the Sierra Madre Mountains. We passed through some pretty poor parts of Mazatlan that had a lot of tagging. Kind of sad.

We finally arrived at our destination, the Huana Coa Canopy Tour!!

A cactus fence welcomed us. See all the blue agave plants behind it? Blue agaves = tequila!

This is a beautiful Huana Tree

All geared up and ready to go!

After a safety talk, we got into these crazy military vehicles and zoomed up the mountains in them to where the zip lines started.

Wheeeeeeee! (yes, that's me!)

Cute helmets, huh?

Tony!

The zip lines were pretty long. Some you couldn't even tell where the end was until you were going!

Tony and some blue agaves down below. See that Huana tree? That was our final destination. It was awesome to fly into the trees!

Then we did a quick (and I mean QUICK!) rappel down off the platform. Nine zip lines later we were done. It was beautiful and quite exhilarating!

Then we got back in the van and drove a quick jaunt to a tequila distillery. I am not a tequila lover, but it was really interesting to see how it is made and I had a teeny taste. Ouch.

This man is demonstrating the old way of smashing the agave pulp to get the juice out.

I believe this was where all the agave nectar was boiled the first time.

Then we headed back to the ship. This time we came in around the other way, where the touristy and more wealthy parts of Mazatlan are. We didn't have time to stop and shop or go on the beach, but that is ok. We were tired and hot and filthy!

There was a small market right before we got back on the ship where we bought some things and had some delicious chicken tacos.

Bye bye Mazatlan!

I just love all the colorful houses! That would so not fly here in suburban America!

After showering and another delicious dinner with our friends, we went to the ice rink/theater and watched a really great ice show! I could not believe the things they did on the ice, can you tell how small the rink is? Yikes!