Puerto Penasco Sonora Mexico

Hubby and I have been to many places in Mexico but, only to the ones you can commercially fly into. This time we ventured to the closest one to us "Rocky Point" only 215 miles away. We have always avoided having to drive our car into Mexico but decided to brave it with special Mexican insurance, of course.

First let me say that Rocky Point in NOT Mazatlan but for a little small town it was pretty nice. We chose to stay in town rather than in the northern condo area and the hotel "Penasco Del Sol" had recently been renovated. We found it to be very nice and comfortable. The surprising thing to us was that it was off season and when they say off season....they mean it. We felt pretty much alone, (with the exception of the last night when they put a group of young people right above us and they raised he-- all night long including going down to the beach and setting off firecrackers and smoke bombs). But in the restaurants and etc. we were mostly alone and did indeed get some good service! It was a bit sad to see it so empty and the people hurting for business, one place that we stopped in all but begged us to stay for dinner.

Like most Mexican towns they have a Malecon and this picture exemplifies the most popular thing here.................shrimp!

When they say off season in Rocky Point it means it is too cold to play in the water and indeed it was about the same temp. as in Phoenix which is sweater weather. It does not however, deter the people from going shrimping and we took full advantage........bringing home about 70 lbs.

At $7.00 per pound you can't really go wrong and of course we shared some with our kids and friends:)

We chose to go by Taxi to our nightly restaurant ventures and both were good. The first one "The Friendly Dolphin" had the most interesting menagerie of things. From the outside it was all lit up like a Christmas tree and there were three stories...here is a shot of the bar on the top story where we ate.

The second one (The Lighthouse) which is on the highest point of the city and overlooks the bay, was truly EXCELLENT!! Beautiful view, wonderful food and great entertainment and....very reasonable. I had a steak with all the trimmings and it was $18.00 American with an exchange rate of 13 peso's to the dollar.

It was nice to have our car and to be able to venture around the little town but we found out real quick that you best follow their rules perfectly! The roads are not real well marked and there are many that are one way. You can't tell that until you see all the cars parked in the same direction and so by accident we went down one dirt road the wrong way. Much later we were chased down by a bicycle cop that said they had a picture of us in the middle of this infraction (sure...they have camera's but no street lights or signs) and we would have to go to court...but of course there was another person there that could speak English and translate and told us "This is just about money" which means you give the cop $20.00 and you can go on your way. We had two of these little experiences and yes both times we had done something wrong. The last one, the cop kept hinting how much he liked my husbands hat and I told him he wasn't getting the hat...with a smile of course so he settled for the $20.00. For the most part the people are very nice and treated us just fine so guess this just goes with the territory and when you are in their town you play by their rules. Most people that go frequently rent a condo out on the north side and don't drive around the town.

Rocky point is located at the inside tip of the Sea of Cortez so you don't get much waves and the beaches are really long....so much so that they use special trucks on stilts to help you launch your boat but it is still a pretty view................

Now the big question is....will we go back? We really enjoyed the restaurants and etc. but there was not a lot to do during the day. No tours, no museums and etc. I might would like to see if there is a boat that could take you over to San Felipe for a little day excursion and I would consider coming with our kids and renting a condo.

It was a nice little Christmas present and we seem to always manage to have a good time just being together............................

Oh..........on a side note we stopped at a little casino a few miles out of a town called "Why" on our way back and hubby won $25.00....I told him we gave it to the Mexicans and took from the Indians....we aren't prejudice.