Playa de Cortes,Guaymas to Las Jaibas, Mazatlan

Day 1 -We left the Playa de Cortes on Sunday, Nov. 13th and arrived at the Pemex (stop #3 on map) at about 3:45 pm. 

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It is just after 9am on Sunday and we are heading up the road that takes us out of the park up to the overpass where we will turn right (south) onto Mex 15 through downtown Guaymas.  In years past we have taken the bypass route which goes up by the airport but that road is often filled with potholes so now we don’t bother.  As well it is Sunday and traffic is light through downtown Guaymas.

Mex 15 through Guaymas.  On a week day this would be very busy, not today.

Up ahead you see overhead signs where the airport bypass road joins Mex 15 and we head through Empalme to join up with the toll road, Mex 15D.

Mex 15 D heading south and the pavement is horrible here.

At this point we are on the brand new concrete highway which is already being patched in many areas.  What’s up with that?

No more concrete and now it is not “bueno!”

Coming through Vicam.  Two years ago the Yaki Indians had road blocks up due to a dispute with the government over water.  No road block today. 

There was a huge Yaki statue and some sort of an elaborate gathering centre.  I hope that wasn’t a trade off for water rights!

Obregon is up ahead.  We have been warned that there are some detours in Obregon that are confusing but since it is Sunday we hope we’ll find our way through. 

The usual left turn to go east and bypass downtown Obregon.

New pavement and very quiet.  No one is working on Sunday. 

This is the last detour and the problem one.  We turned right here and then there were no more signs.  We knew we were heading west and that we now needed to head south but it was unclear as to how we were supposed to get back to Mex 15D.  The traffic was heading back north into Obregon and we didn’t want to go there!  We kept left saw a traffic circle and managed to get through it and head south.  We hear that quite a few people have had trouble with this and even ended up in downtown Obregon.  Not good in an RV.

Heading south now and there are huge poultry barns growning chicken for the name Bachaco that you see in the supermarkets.

Huge towers for a high voltage transmission line.  Our son-in-law Wade in Terrace is a powerline lineman and works on many huge projects like this. 

New steel poles for the transmission line.

We stopped at the Pemex at the north end of Navojoa and had lunch before heading south.  Once again on a Sunday afternoon there is no traffic.

You could shoot a cannon down the street today and not hit anyone!

Navojoa is one of the nicest Mexican towns we have travelled through.  Well kept and pretty.

To the left they are building the road bed for the northbound concrete highway so we are now two lane two way traffic.  Here we are managing to travel at any easy 100km per hour.

Welcome to Sinaloa.

On to Los Mochis.

Coming off the overpass through Los Mochis.  For the most part the roads have been good today as they are now mostly concrete.  In the stretches where we hit old pavement, they were terrible.  We do not expect tomorrow to be as good as today.  It would seem that Sonora is attempting to make all their highways concrete which is a good thing as long as they don’t break down the way the asphalt has.  We have also heard that the highway from the USA/Mexico border crossing at Lukeville all the way to Santa Ana is now horrible.  This is a new, mostly asphalt highway that has already broken down.  Ah Mexico!

We parked in the gated Pemex south of Los Mochis last night and it was almost completely empty.  This morning….still empty.  There was one other motorhome parked overnight but they were gone when we got up in the morning.

The workers that you see above seem to be weeding but in a rather haphazard, lacksidasical manner.  Some of the woman were sitting in small groups and seemed to be praying.  Now I am not regligious but I certainly have done enough weeding in my life as a gardener and I always say I am praying to the God of weeds!

 

We are parked in the very northwest corner of the lot to escape the dust that is kicked up by the trucks.  The wind seems always to come from the north so that is the safest place to park when the trucks pulling doubles make a big circle in the lot and kick up dust.    In the distance you can see the Monsanto chemical plant on the other side of this newly planted field.  Some years the chemical smell is so bad that we can’t open a window.  This time we ran the generator for A/C early and opened the windows later when it cooled down.  No smell but…. voracious biting bugs that seemed small enough to get through the screens.  We both got majorly bitten.  We sat outside in Nov. 2014 on our last trip and I got eaten alive.  Always something! 

Monday morning Nov. 14th about 8:30 am and we are ready to leave  our overnight stop at the Pemex just south just south of Los Mochis.

Heading south and the road is terrible at this point.  Where ever the road is like this we drive in the fast lane.  Sometimes we get honked at, sometimes the drivers are too dumb to go around us and pass but the traffic is light and we are not driving in the slow lane when it looks like that.

The windshield is dirty but you can see we share the road with tractors.

Not sure what is growing here but boy are those rows straight.  Eric says the tractors would have a GPS to make everything this straight. 

Here it is just after 1pm and we are leaving the overlook rest stop before Mazatlan after having lunch. 

I didn’t take a lot of pictures today as the road wasn’t very good and there wasn’t much to take pictures of anyway.  We drove at a fairly good speed in some places and slow in others.  The big problem is the unpredictability of the roads.  You will be sailing along at 100kph and then you’ll hit a horrible stretch with no warning.  There are also invisible left over topes (speed bumps) which have never been removed and when you hit them they almost loosen your teeth before manage to slow down.

Here we are coming along Avenida Sabalo Cerritos toward the Las Jaibas RV park.  The meridian is a bit of a mess but I guess when the tourists aren’t here and it’s raining they just ignore it.  It won’t be long before it’s all cleaned up.

This is us.  We are parked in the very far back corner of the RV park next to a stored boat.  We decided we wanted things to be as quiet as possible this winter and….this is it. 

No one next to us on either side, no one behind us…perfect.  We won’t have any dust from traffic and probably not many visitors either but if we want to see people they are just a short walk away.  I have my regular activities like, cards, bingo, Wednesday lunch, Boce etc. and Eric and I also go to the beach most afternoons so that’s social enough for me. 

The spots in the row ahead of us are very large pull thru’s so they will fill up now and then as people pass through on their way south and then north.  When we arrived on Monday this row was almost full and we had to squeeze up against the RV at the end.   We’d looked at parking in the main part of the park but in the end decided we were fine right here.  We won’t get the internet at the back of the park but we can walk up front if we need it.  We might also get an internet stick and run our WiFi on cell service.  We have a new AT&T smart phone from our daughter Krista and son-in-law Jeff who live in Pittsburgh.  We are on their plan and have unlimited phone calls in Mexico and back and forth from Mexico to the USA as well as unlimited international texting and 1 gig of data so things are pretty good right now.  We have a cell tower right next to the park so our service is good. 

All is well.