Mazatlán, (pronounced “maz-it-LAWN”, with the stress on the last syllable), means “place of the deer” in the Nahuatl (Aztec) language,. It is a city of around half a million people, located on a long, flat stretch of the Pacific coast of Mexico, just to the south of the Tropic of Cancer and due east of the tip of the Baja peninsula. It is here that the cool waters of the deep Pacific meet those of the warm, shallow Gulf of California. You might think of Mazatlán as having one foot in the tropics and the other in the dryer, dessert climate to the north.