Mazatlan

Today was our excursion to Mazatlan.  It was an educational tour.  We started off on a bus ride through "Old Town Mazatlan" (read the slums) and it didn't leave that good of an impression to us on the cleanliness and beauty of the city.  After we left "Old Town", we stopped at a traditional Adobe brick makers place to see how the handmade Adobe bricks are done the old fashioned way.  The adobe bricks were neat and it was cool learning how they are made (by slinging mud into a mould and drying them in the sun for 10 days) but sad because we saw children running around there all covered in dirt.
Our next stop was to a pottery and furniture "factory".  I put factory into quotations because they were all being made by hand.  Let me just say that the carvings in the furniture were AMAZING!!!!  It is too bad that they don't export their furniture because it is BEAUTIFUL!!!!  And the detail work in the carvings were unbelieveable!!!
We then stopped at a town called Concordia which was this small town of about 12,000 people and it had a beautiful church that was built in the 1700's!!!  The carvings on the church were AMAZING!!!  The only thing that I didn't like was that the town had a really creepy vibe to it and it was really hard to get past that!  I wasn't sad to leave that place.
After Concordia was a town called Cada and it was a beautiful little town of 3,000 people and it was in the Sierra Modre mountains and it was SO Beautiful!!!  I really enjoyed the town and it had these cobblestone type streets and it was just beautiful!  Our lunch was held there at a restaurant and the food was actually quite good!
Finally we took the long bus trip back to the port and we went shopping!  My favorite part was that I was able to buy all sorts of great presents for my kiddies!!!  They are going to be so excited by what I got for them!  I got a little something something for myself too (not just vanilla, though I certainly got some of that too!!!).
So it was a good day, an educational day and I will sleep well tonight!!!
On to Cabo San Lucas tomorrow!!!!