Traveling as a vacation...

So we made the ferry in La Paz and all the paperwork is out of the way. It took 4 days in total to finally get the tickets and get on the boat. I think that the lesson here is never leave a border unless everything is squared away first. The boat was quite an experience! We secured our bikes in the belly of the great steel beast with scraps of filthy greasy rope that we found lying around! It was hot and full if diesel fumes as we searched for a way to the deck of the ship for a breath of fresh air...as we were the last people in the hold down there. The view was excellent from the deck and the sun was setting as we left the port. We ended up with a cabin and slept for most of the trip. We popped our heads up topside a few times to see the stars and get some fresh air during the 17 hour journey. The big ship was guided into the Mazatlan dock by a single tug boat with a really strong tether! It was quite impressive! Unloaded from the ship and eager to hit the road again we hightailed it out of Mazatlan on the toll road for while to get out of the congestion and pollution. Once we got off the highway and onto some country roads things really got interesting! The GPS led us astray for the first time, the wrong way down a one way road! I noticed the flow of traffic and snapped a hard right turn! It then wanted me to drive through a corn field to get back on track, so I pulled over to asses the situation. We stopped in a small town on a back street covered in cobbles and a band hopped out from underneath a tree and started to belt out some Mexican tunes as I sorted out the route! Back on track we motored past potholes large enough to swallow the bikes whole. We rolled down a toll road for a while and there were countless stands selling camarones seco, so we pulled over and gave it a try. Dried shrimp, not bad, not my favorite, but not bad. We rode on until the sun was setting again, looking for a place to camp. We tried the beach and almost got stuck in the sand, before stopping to ask for some help. We were pointed in the right direction but we ran out of daylight and had to stop at a hotel. The hotel might be on a postcard somewhere as it was paradise in the middle of nowhere. In fact the name of it was Bahia Paraiso! We slept in air conditioned comfort all by ourselves as we were the only guests! Complete with a lap pool and a courtyard of tropical plants, just off its own private beach all for 30 bucks! We were too spent for riding somewhere for dinner so we just ate tuna crackers and spam in the hotel room! It tasted great with how hungry we were. Hopefully tomorrows camping will go better!