Christmas in Mazatlan

          We pulled into Mazatlan during breakfast.  Earl Gray never tasted so fine as it did that morning.  As I always do, I was writing as I drank my tea and ate my breakfast.  

"We missed sunrise, it being about 7:10, but it is still beautiful.  I don't think it's fair that everyone makes such a fuss about sunrise and sunset and then forgets the sun's other positions in the sky.  Dawn and dusk are equally as commonplace as the sun at breakfast time.  Not that the sun could ever be commonplace, regardless of where it is in the sky...The sky is all somber gray and dull blues-maybe even green in some parts.  There is a line of cloudes, heavy at the bottoms but fluffy at the tops.  Beneath them is a curious trail of what looks like steam.  I was fixated by that, I remember.  It, too, is very beautiful but now that we have pulled closer to Mazatlan I can see that it is smoke from some factories.  Such a shame that so stunning a scene is under the cloud of pollution.  But it's funny that something so awful could be beautiful too."

          Going ashore was much smoother in Mazatlan than it was in Cabo because the Norwegion Star actually docked and we could just walk ashore, so to speak.  Good thing too, because half my family is easily seasick.  Oh, the irony.  
           After meeting up with our tour, we stopped at a bakery: La Panadería Malpica.  Elezar, our tour guide, explained to us the process in which bread is baked there.  It is very traditional, with a wide oven and great wooden racks for cooling.  My mother gave me a few pesos and I bought a bag of them, still warm and very sweet, from the old lady.  She did not speak English, so I had the pleasure of asking in Spanish.  She was very kind, smiling as I asked her:"Esta cosa blanca...es
azúcar?".  It was sugar, by the way.  

The Title in English (Spanish was on the other side)

        We walked, contentedly munching on the good, fluffy bread, down the street a ways until we reached the home and workshop of José, the tile-maker.  Watching him make tile was fascinating.  First he cleaned and oiled the tile mold with a wooden brush and dripped some paint over it.  It looked random, but he declared that he knew exactly what it was going to look like.  His movements were so sure, so deft, that I'm sure he did.  He filled it with a plaster mixture-not all at once, but in dollops, splitting the mold into sections.  Then he took a pencil-"solamente una lápiz simple"-and swirled it carefully in the plaster.  I can't remember exactly what he did next, but I think he packed it with some kind of sand mixture and pressed it with a contraption that Elezar told us applied two tons of pressure.  
       José also did not speak English, so Elezar translated for him.  José's spanish was very soft, almost like a drawl.  But not a drawl.  The word "drawl" sounds wrong, so forget I even said it.  But I digress. I bought a tile for Profe Sanchez, my Spanish teacher.  

      Next we stopped in Concordia, which was established in 1565.  Their furniture, which has earned them renown, is gorgeous.  Colonial, and mostly made of the Mapa cut from the Sierra Madre mountains.  
       A long, winding road up into the Sierra Madre and we reached the mining town of Copala, built the same year as Concordia.  According to Elezar, 95% of the buildings in Copala are still standing from the days of the Spaniards.  They grew a great many fruit trees here; bananas, mangoes, papaya, coconuts.  
      The best part of Copala was its church.  I am not Catholic, yet I stood trembling in its mighty shadow.  The bricks were faded by sun and wind and rain, and the roof was crumbling, but I have never seen a church like that.  The man that sat across the aisle from me on the tour bus was a history teacher-I heard him tell Elezar so.  He said that all that church needed was a relic, and Catholics from the world over would flood Copala, making pilgrimages.  Maybe it's a good thing, then, that Copala doesn't have a relic.  Or maybe I'm being ignorant.  
      

What a church!

          Lunch was in a little place with a sign that read: "Restaurante Desde 1881".  There I had the most delicious cheesecake I have ever had in my life.  It was topped with some kind of nut and a fruit called the guayaba, that tasted a little bit like pear.  It was less rich than American cheesecake, and less sweet.  I could have eaten it by the truckload, but then...I am an American.  Haha. 
         So, that was a little part of Mazatlan.  As ever, a few hours is never enough to truly experience a new land and a new culture, but even that faint taste was rich.  I hope to return to Mazatlan someday, and do a better job visiting.  

Thank you for your time