ET
Nov 24, 2002, 9:01 PM
Post #4 of 7
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Re: [jkoster] Where Shoul We Stay in Mazatlan ???
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....We opted for a place on Avenida del Mar about a half mile north of Olas Altas. I forget the name but it was a nice place just south of the Aguamarina. When we got there I went inside to check out the availability of rooms. The desk clerk said they had rooms and the price would be $95/nt. Too high. I went back to the taxi and relayed the info to my wife and the driver. He then went in with us and talked to the clerk and we were offered a room for $60/nt or three nights for $150, just in our price range. It was a very nice place with a pool and the best shrimp in the city available just across the street in a palapa restaurant on the beach.
Along this stretch of the beachfront, which I believe is referred to as Playa Norte, there's a number of moderately priced hotels. From your description of being south of the Aguamarina I'm thinking it might have been either the Hotel de Cima (Avenida del Mar #48) or the Plaza Marina (Avenida del Mar #73). There's also a number of similar hotels heading north. They were mostly constructed during the first big tourist expansion, I believe in the late 60's and 70's, prior to the move to the Zona Dorado. The downside to all of them is that you have to cross Avenida del Mar, a major thoroughfare to access the beach (the de Cima has a tunnel), the plus is that once you do cross the beach is a lot better for lolling on than at Olas Altas around the Belmar (where you also have to cross the street). Avenida del Mar is also quite noisy from all the vehicle traffic, day and night, so if you get an oceanview room you need to either be pretty noise resistant or sleep with the windows shut. The other both plus and minus is that it's sort of in the middle of town, which means that (a) if you're not a serious walker and/or (b) you want to take in the nightlife, you'll be taking a lot of pulmonias (the plus being it's a lot more central to everything, compared to travelling back and forth between the old town and the Zona Dorado (if you're into that kind of thing, personally I dislike the Zona with a passion....).
Several guidebooks recommend Hotel de Cima. I've stayed at the Plaza Marina because unlike Hotel de Cima it offers suites with kitchenettes (they're a bit more pricy than the de Cima, but offered separate bedroom, living/eating room, and a noisy but private balcony). It suffers from a bit of an identity crisis, having been a Best Western property, then a Howard Johnsons (there's also a Howard Johnson's further north along AdM), and now an independent, but the staff is quite friendly and accomodating and at least some of the rooms have been recently renovated.
The Plaza Aguamarina's restaurant is definitely nothing to write home about, but across the street there's several on-the-beach palapa restaurants. Of the bunch, I'd highly recommend Mariscos Puerto Azul, which had excellent oysters and clams (so fresh they'd ball up when you squirted them with limon), good shrimp, and pescado zarandeado which I still wake up in the middle of the night chewing on my pillow after dreaming about. Fair warning, these palapa restaurants open late morning, and close around 5 PM, so they're not options for cena. Also fair warning that although the restaurants are extremely basic (the sanitation may make you twitch), you can run a US-like luncheon meal tab if you go all out (a dozen oysters, a dozen clams, a plate of shrimp, and then zarandeado for two, all spread out over several hours, with mucho cerveza will probably set you back around $30).
A few blocks south along the main drag there's also Restaurant El Camachin which also serves a killer zarandeado in slightly more civilized (but still pretty basic) settings. El Camachin is also fun in that during the afternoon meal hour, in addition to a large quantity of mariachis and 3-piece norteno groups strolling through, they sometimes have a 12 piece Sinaloan brass band that assembles and plays for pay - it was kind of a surprise because the musicians straggled in in "street" clothing and were milling around in the back (I thought the management let them sort of hang out there) and then suddenly they struck up a tune.
(This post was edited by ET on Nov 24, 2002, 9:13 PM)
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