Hole In The Donut Travels

I stepped from my casita and looked up into a night sky exploding with stars. They swirled and throbbed, so bright that I needed no flashlight to find my way. On the western horizon, Orion’s bow pointed me toward the open-air restaurant at Rancho Pescadero, while the Big Dipper hung low in the eastern sky. [...]

Like everyone, I appreciate a good restaurant. But perhaps because I used to be severely overweight, food is not overwhelmingly important to me when I travel. I generally eat only one meal a day, and most of the time I am happy enough with something from street vendors, who usually offer selections more appropriate for [...]

My mother would have loved this. Every year, when I’d visit for Christmas, Mom would drag me to Bingo at the local smoke-filled hall. Gleefully she’d buy a passel of bingo cards and press a packet upon me. I’d tape my eight or ten cards to the carved and chipped wooden table while she spread [...]

So much for my schedule. I knew it was going to be a fluid trip, I just didn’t know how fluid. First I killed time in Cabo San Lucas waiting for a casita to become available at the new Rancho Pescadero Resort near Todos Santos, Mexico in order to spend a few more days in [...]

It’s a high school girl’s worst nightmare, discovering that her phone number has been scrawled on the boy’s room wall. Those five words: “for a good time call….” speak shameful volumes about a girl who has given in to temptation, in search of elusive popularity, love, excitement.
Not so long ago, virginal Cabo San Lucas was [...]

One of the things I promised myself when I embarked upon this trek around Mexico, Central and South America was NO planes, unless absolutely necessary. Back in the days when it didn’t take three hours to get checked in and through security, back when the airlines actually cared about their passengers, flying was a lot [...]

I’d been in Mazatlan, Mexico for exactly one day when I received an email from Nancy Dardarian. She and her husband are American expats from the Seattle area who retired to Mazatlan more than two years ago. When they first started thinking about moving permanently to Mexico, Nancy and Paul launched a blog, Countdown to [...]

It’s a process, I keep reminding myself. When I first arrived in Mexico my Spanish was rusty. Not wanting to make a fool out of myself, I pre-planned everything I wanted to say prior to it coming out of my mouth. In my mind, I practiced Spanish sentences such as, “Can you recommend the best [...]

Hundreds of years ago, Mazatlan was founded as a fishing village on the north bank of a natural inlet from the Sea of Cortez. Over time, Mazatlan grew northward from the inlet as the protected deep-water lagoon beyond the inlet attracted a commercial fishing fleet that now numbers in excess of 800 boats and provides [...]

To really discover Mazatlan one must leave the touristy “Golden Zone” along the town’s northern shores and venture into its historic old town. At its core is the lovely Moorish and Gothic style Cathedral Basilica de la Inmaculada Concepcion, which presides over Plaza Republica and calls the faithful to worship with a puzzling array of [...]