Last June I spent a week in Mazatlan, Mexico a group of bloggers and social media all-stars courtesy of Go Mazatlan. Although I’d heard of Mazatlan before, I knew little about the city. Mazatlan, I learned, is not your normal all-inclusive drinking-on-the-beach Mexican destination. If you’re looking for that, you should go to Cancun or Puerto Vallerta.
Mazatlan is a cultural destination. If you’re looking for cobblestone streets, outdoor live music, art galleries, and colonial architecture, then Mazatlan is where you want to be. We stayed at the El Cid Marina Resort and spent most of our time learning about they city’s arts, culture, and gastronomy. Of course there are many places to stay in Mazatlan and it is best to read reviews of Mexican hotels and compare their prices online.
Despite the trip’s focus on culture, I was able to find a few sweet outdoors escapes in and around the city.
Mazatlan Adventure #1: Zip Lining
There’s more than one zip lining outfit near Mazatlan. We went with Huana Coa Canopy Adventures, which is a short drive from Mazatlan near the village of La Noria. I love zip lining because it’s not too expensive, anyone can do it, and it’s a fairly exciting way to appreciate the natural beauty of a place.
Huana Coa has one advantage over other zip line tours in the area; it’s basically next door to the Los Osuna distillery, so after touring the fields of agave from above, you can tour the facility where Los Osuna produces its award-winning agave liquor and, of course, sample some. Interested in learning more? Read this detailed post about my trip.
Mazatlan Adventure #2: Booze Cruise
There were some aspects of our trip’s organization that I questioned. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely think that sending a bunch of bloggers and social media superstars on a booze cruise to get drunk, go snorkelling, and tweet happy tweets about Mazatlan = winning strategy.
However, scheduling said bloggers and tweeters to return from half the day drinking in the sun to a meeting during in which they are expected to listen to a long presentation from a tourism board bigwig about the area’s history and culture = recipe for inappropriate head-on-table naps.
Either way, our booze cruise to Deer Island was definitely a good time.
Mazatlan Adventure #3: Surfing
I don’t get the opportunity to surf that often, so whenever one comes up I jump on it. When I asked the folks from Go Mazatlan about arranging a surf trip, they were all over it. In fact, they arranged two. Mazatlan doesn’t have the most incredible surf in Mexico. This is true. However, it does have good surf and there aren’t a lot of surfers.
There are a few breaks in the city itself. We stopped by a couple. They were fairly small, but not too crowded. We also visited a break about a 30-minute drive north of the city. We were practically the only people there. If you’re like me and prefer a small empty break to a big crowded one, then you’ll love surfing around Mazatlan.
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Zip Lining and Booze Cruises. Got to be done. Will be doing that in New Zealand when I’m there next year Matt, not done Mexico yet. Guess I’m one of those tourists who are turned off by the drug trade and rumours of killings 🙁 Was it all safe when you went?
Yeah, Mexico has gotten tons of bad press. It really didn’t seem very dangerous when I was there. Most of that violence is related to the drug trade. If you’re not a part of that, I don’t think Mexico is much more dangerous than it was in years past.