Crossing the Great Sea

ferry dock in La Paz, Baja

Honestly we were expecting the worst, having planned to take an 18-hour ferry ride to Mazatlán, but when we arrived at the ticket office we soon learned that the Mazatlán ferry was not operating. No big deal though because there was another ferry that arrived only 5 hours north of Mazatlán in Topolobompo. This ride was a lot cheaper (about $200 including our car) and only 6 hours, which meant that we didn’t need to pay for a cabin to sleep in. Actually the whole ordeal was much more pleasant than we had planned on. We arrived 2 hours before our departure, pressed the infamous Mexican “button” to see if our vehicle would need to be searched -of course we got red, and therefore searched (but it was only about a minute)-, and drove into the underbelly of the boat.

Chihuahua Star

It's definitely not a Carnival cruise liner, but the Chihuahua Star really wasn’t too bad. It had a nice reception/lobby area, a restaurant, cafeteria, bar/disco, a big deck with a pool (drained unfortunately) and movie viewing/sleeping chairs. We passed our time reading, snacking and playing Bananagram (thanks Greg & Jessica). Before we knew it was had arrived in Topo, driven off the boat, and were on our way to Los Mochis for the night.

the winning puzzle

In Los Mochis we tracked down the one and only RV park to find the gates locked. Since we only had about 6 hours until we had planned to be back on the road, we found the local Walmart and “camped” in their parking lot. While we felt completely safe, sleeping at the Walmart isn’t recommeneded (at least in Los Mochis) because it is really really loud…..and a little ghetto too! Oh well, at least we gave the local something to talk about!