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Let's just say that the final travelog has some ranting in it.

We're enjoying Mazatlan. It's a nice city, a lot of flavor and history and culture to it. Kids learn dance and art and music in the restored theater on the square, you can get a full meal for 20 pesos (I had a filet mignon tonight for 85 pesos), and the people are really friendly.

We had a bit of an adventure last night, when we invited our friend Pablo and his friend Jorge out to the boat for drinks. It's quite something (a) to experience traveling around with a native instead of by yourself (taxis are more than half price, among other things), and (b) to watch Mexican men drink. The drunker they got, the more foreign the culture seemed...they also started speaking more Spanish, which is entertaining, as I can only understand about 30% of a conversation in severely colloquial Spanish. It was a good time, we're just very tired.

Their hard alcohol of choice was mescal, which could be tequila, except that what we had was 51% cane alcohol (essentially really bad rum), 38% "distilled alcohol" (which I took to be equivalent to Everclear), and 9% agave (decent tequila is 100% agave). Reminiscent of Bourbon Street in New Orleans in that respect.}

I'm tired, and somewhat headachey and generally creaky today. There's a bit of frustration revolving around the boat, and that's difficult when the focus of your travel is a source of stress. Hopefully the next few weeks will bring some resolution.

Life is not without its challenges, even on vacation, eh?