Sun. Feb. 14th, Mazatlan

Visitor number Valentine's Day Fun on the Parade route       After a late night last night we relaxed and actually slept in this morning until about 7:15 am. Puttered around, walkabout and update our Blog then at 1:00pm took a water taxi to town and walked for about 30 minutes to the Hacienda Restaurant on the Malecon. (thanks to Larry and Marilyn for arranging the tickets) A bunch of us had tickets here for a buffet meal at 3:00pm and open bar for 4 hours situated right on the 7 mile long Malecon, parade route.       Once here we checked out the viewing areas and wandered about as people began lining the parade route. The buffet and bar opened and we enjoyed a great meal and chatted before the warm up parade began at 4.00 pm. This was mostly sponsor type floats and music but lasted an hour. Then a pause. At this point we began walking south a few miles towards where the parade was coming from and passed over 25 floats with bands and dancers all lining up and prepping for the parade. Chairs lined the route with people everywhere on the road, roof tops, balconies etc.... Beer tents, food vendors, portable toilets set up, real amazing to see. Another thing we noticed was people carrying a plastic grocery bag with beer or pop covered in ice and dripping on the road, never in Canada.       We enjoyed the bands and dancers warming up and as we stopped to take a picture of some devils in red all of a sudden they jumped up and gathered around for a picture, and one of them took a picture of us with the friendly playful group of young people.         Now having walked a few miles and seen most of the parade already, especially good was the Mexicans in western outfits line dancing to real American western music. We were almost at Olas Atlas when we grabbed a pulmonia and watched the sun set from the water taxi. Back home we relaxed, read a bit and a movie.  Sun. Pics  View Winter 2009-10 in a larger map Notice the controls for this New Map on the left side, you can zoom into different areas of the map and see where we are or have been.