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CRUISES: Mexico the Easy Way – Sailing Down the Riviera

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

The new darling of cruisers, the Mexican Riviera, stretching from the tip of southern California beyond Cabo San Lucas to Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta and afar is now easily reached from the improved port facilities in San Diego. Indeed, the Port of San Diego lists five cruise lines that use its port to deliver about a dozen cruises each month that head down the coast into the winter sun of Mexico.

A good choice for both value and quality is award-winning Holland America with its more than 130 years of maritime experience. Its newer ship, Oosterdam, offers a seven-day cruise to the most interesting ports on the Mexican Riviera.

Experienced cruisers say ports-of-call are all the same, it’s the ship that makes the difference – as if the fun is in the travel not the destination. To a degree this is true. As is common with many new ships today, the Oosterdam offers 85 percent of its accommodations an ocean view and two-thirds of its suites and staterooms have private verandahs. Those are not critical issues, however; passengers don’t spend much time in their cabins.

But experienced cruisers are the first to line up at shore excursion desks nailing down their preferences for when ships drop anchor. Here Holland America excels. With its formidable bargaining power and its early presence on this coastline it has captured, arguably, the best guides and the best excursions in the coastal towns.

The Mexican Riviera has become the playground of the Pacific now it’s so accessible by ship. Oosterdam passengers, for example, can wander the harbor at Cabo San Lucas on foot, go shopping in the marketplace or hire a taxi to explore what used to be a simple coastal village, all inexpensive options (especially if you negotiate the cab fare in advance). Newcomers probably should take the organized shore excursions, they will see much more. Second-time visitors might want to arrange their own activities.

Cabo tours include ATV (All Terrain Vehicle) and carriage rides; scuba, snorkeling, Pirate, kayaking and sportfishing trips; and beach horseback rides. This is the place to take the organized boat tour past Land’s End and Los Arcos with its fabled vaulting arches  

The next stop is different. Whereas Cabo has become a rather slick tourist attraction, Mazatlan is a real, historic port, not contrived like, say, Cancun. The people are genuine, too, not worn out by decades of demanding tourists, and more than ready to help you enjoy your vacation. This old former industrial port has, of course, all the possible watersport activities you’d expect at the seaside including a highly-recommended cruise to Stone where you laze on a beach in an old-world fishing village. Mazatlan also offers trips through the mangrove wetlands for birdwatchers; stages a show with the “daredevil Totonac Indian Papantla Fliers; and guides tours into the Sierra Madre mountain villages of Concordia and Copala.

If you think this is busy wait till you get to Puerto Vallarta. Famously once the haunt of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, it has two dozen choices for shore excursions. Again you can sail, snorkel, and scuba; you can ride horses, hike or bike; you can stay at sea level and swim with dolphins or fly to San Sebastian, 4,000 feet up in the Sierra Madres and walk the cobbles of this old silver-mining village. Or you can have the fun of what has pleased many: getting some of the stuffing knocked out of them in the Canopy Adventure. This involves a one hour drive into the rainforest then, harnessed to cables, gliding in a series of horizontal traverses along observation platforms 90 feet above the floor of the tropical forest. Says Holland America: “It’s a truly thrilling ecological experience.” They got that right and if you have Adobe Photoshop on your computer you may be able to remove the terrified look from your family’s otherwise happy faces. 

 
 

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