The second port on our Norwegian Mexican Riviera cruise was Mazatlan.
The cruise ship docked at the Mazatlan Cruise Vessel Terminal, which serves commercial and freight ships. There were numerous vehicles parked there.
After disembarking from the cruise ship, there's a very short (minute or so) ride over to the Mazatlan Cruise Terminal. As CruisePortInsider.com describes it, that Cruise Terminal is indeed a "frenetic atmosphere." There are gift shops and dining and lots of individuals (mostly men) attempting to sell rides and tours. We had our excursion for the day already booked through Costco Travel partner Shore Excursions Group. The tour we had selected was the "Stone Island and Old Town Sightseeing Tour." Mazatlan Van Tours was the tour's operator and Julio Juarez was our driver and guide.
Julio narrated as he drove us around Mazatlan on the "Old Town Sightseeing" portion of the tour and he told us about the Mazatlan. Two of the things he mentioned that stood out to me are his description of Mazatlan's Mardi Gras (Carnaval de Mazatlán) and the fact that 1 million cans of tuna are produced daily in Mazatlan. It was impressive to see Julio narrating while navigating the roads of Mazatlan. He pointed out that there are no street lights in Mazatlan!
Our first stop was near the Mazatlan Cathedral (Basilica de la Inmaculada Concepcion).
Both the exterior and interior of this cathedral are attractive.
We briefly strolled through the park (Plazuela Republica/Plaza de la Republica) that is across the street from the cathedral. The park itself is shady and pleasant, but the views of the cathedral make it even more interesting.
We walked through the Mazatlan Central Market (Mercado Pino Suarez) near the cathedral in which a wide variety of food (vegetables, fruits, meats, etc.) are sold along with purses, belts, other apparel items, tourist items, candies, and much more. Additional details and photographs of this market busy with tourists and locals can be seen on the market's web site as well as here, here, and here.
After our stop to see the cathedral, the plaza, and the market, Julio drove us to the top of a hill overlooking Mazatlan.
Our next stop on the "Old Town Sightseeing" portion of the tour was to view the Mazatlan Cliff Divers, a very popular attraction with the tourists (it felt the most crowded of all the things we saw in Mazatlan). It was hard to believe that these young divers would do this, but they did so repeatedly.
After witnessing the cliff divers, we headed to the "Stone Island" portion of the excursion. Julio drove us to a small pier where we boarded a ferry to "Stone Island."
When the ferry reached the other side after a few minutes of travel, we were met by several locals holding iguanas for people to have their photographs taken with the iguanas (and would accept donations for providing this). One iguana was particularly large and another rode around on his handler's shoulder as the handler drove his small motorbike. A tractor pulled some wagon trailers we rode in to the main "Stone Island" resort area.
Each group was provided with a table under a roofed area with close proximity to the beach. We were able to choose from a few different meal options on the menu and everyone in our party chose the "combination" plate. The scenery and activities were definitely the highlight compared to the food. Drinks were also provided at a station near the dining tables. Many people in the greater group at the Stone Island beach that day simply relaxed in the shade and looked at the Sea of Cortez and the beach.
Each person received tickets for two activities. Members of our group covered three different activities between us. We used one of the activity tickets to borrow a boogie board to use. A couple of us rode the banana boat that was pulled by a speed boat around Isla Cardones. This was obviously a fun ride for kids, but I found it to be more interesting than I anticipated as the boat that pulled us went pretty fast, we bounced around on the waves made by the boat quite a bit, and we got to see Isla Cardones up close and on the opposite side from the beach perspective.
As we had done in Puerto Vallarta, we also were able to sea kayak here as well. We did not ride the horses, but the people we talked to who did ride the horses were not very impressed with that particular activity. They stated that it was really short and there wasn't much interesting to see. Activities on the beach and in the Sea of Cortez seemed to be the better choice for this excursion.
At the end of the day (cruise ship port excursion "end of the day"), we rode back on the tractor-pulled seated trailers to the ferry and then rode the ferry back to the other side where Julio drove us in the van for the short drive to the cruise terminal. Now that we knew what Stone Island was and where it was, we could see that it was viewable from our cruise ship.
"Stone Island" is featured in the immediately previous image and in the next image. Julio explained to us that it's now really a peninsula instead of an island, but that it'd take significantly longer to drive to the tremendous beach we enjoyed if we had not ferried to it. The Google Maps representation of Stone Island shows its peninsular nature.
We enjoyed our first visit to Mazatlan. The "Stone Island and Old Town Sightseeing" excursion combined the Mazatlan Old Town sightseeing tour with several hours on the beach of "Stone Island" and provided a nice mix of interesting introduction to the city along with active enjoyment of the beautiful beach and sea access.
