On to Lo De Marcos

We're a few days behind on sharing our adventure.  Having too much fun and a rather slow internet makes keeping up with the blog challenging!  Making time to get caught up at least a bit.....

Another day's journey to reach our January home in Lo De Marcos (LDM), Nayarit, Mexico.  We left Mazatlan around 8am to ensure arrival in LDM before dark; no regrets only spending 2 nights in Mazatlan.  Again the scenery on Mexican federal highway 15D did not disappoint!  Those lush farmlands in the state of Sinaloa continued as we began our journey to Lo De Marcos in the state of Nayarit.  More corn, tomatoes, beans and now we're starting to see some blue agave (unfortunately too little and going too fast for pics).  While on the highway we passed through a few typical small towns, but mainly it was scenic driving.

As we enter Nayarit, those farmlands start to change into dense, tropical jungle.  In some sections trees grow across the highway, forming tunnels made of branches and leaves.  The road becomes very curvy and how some of these trucks don't just topple over is beyond us!  Up & down. Curve right, switch left.  Many signs for dangerous curves....tramo de curva peligrosa, and they aren't kidding!!  We took it slow and enjoyed every second of it!!

Before we knew it we were closing in on LDM and it was only 2pm....quick ride!  Oh and we jumped a time zone, time zones are interesting here, so we'll digress for a moment to share....

From best we can gather, time zones in Mexico are assigned by state.  When we were in Sonora and Sinaloa, we were in what the US would consider Mountain Standard Time.  The state of Jalisco, where Puerto Vallarta, Chapala Guadalajara are, is Central time.  Nayarit is the odd one out though as it is split between Mountain & Central, with LDM being the dividing line; north of LDM in Nayarit is Mountain, south is Central.  Why is this the case?  As we heard, many of the tourist that come to towns in Nayarit (Nuevo Vallarta, Bacerias, Punta de Mita, LDM) fly into and out of Puerto Vallarta unaware of the differences in time zone (a particular issue for Nuevo Vallarta as it's right next to Puerto Vallarta).  When all of these towns were on Mountain time, too may tourists were missing flights as they were unaware of the time zone difference, so the Mexican government split the time zone in Nayarit to accommodate its tourists who can't tell time!  Turns out the setting to automatically detect time zones on our technology devices isn't always accurate; laptop had us in Mountain, tablet and phone in Central.  We had to ask our host, Abraham, what time zone we were in!  More about Abraham to come!

The house we're renting wasn't quite ready when we arrived (the owner was working on repairs and updates that fell behind due to the holidays) so we walked around town and had an awesome shrimp lunch for $4 at The 3 Hermanos restaurant and Sweet Pea was able to sit with us while we ate!

Repairs on the house took longer to make and none were fully completed this first day (nothing hampered our use of the house) so Abraham, the owner's son who is responsible for getting the place ready for renters, stayed on in the bungalow on the property to oversee the rest of the work.  Abraham quickly became a valuable source of information and entertainment and before long will be someone we'll call amigo!  Our first night in LDM was spent eating street tacos from the stand right next door and playing backgammon...off to a great start!