The Awe of Old Mazatlan

MAZATLAN, Mexico — So you've been to Cancun, had a good time, but felt as though you just vacationed in Florida. Everyone spoke English. You ate at the Hard Rock Cafe, paid for your margaritas with dollars and searched in vain for the guy with the sombrero riding his donkey down cobblestone streets. When you got home, your friends told you that you hadn't seen the "real Mexico."

My family and I-husband, Mark, and 5-year-old son, Sebastian-recently returned from Mazatlan, where we lived and worked for two sometimes frustrating but always genuine years. In our time there, we poked into many of the corners of this city of about 500,000 and learned many of the secrets that ensure visitors see the authentic article.

Mazatlan, on the northern Pacific Coast in Sinaloa state and surrounded by the Sierra Madre Occidental, is Mexico's largest Pacific port. It was settled by the Spanish in 1531, but it wasn't incorporated into a city until the early 1800s. Unlike other vacation destinations that were developed to attract the tourist dollar, Mazatlan is, first and foremost, a flourishing seaport, so it feels more like a fishing town than a tourist trap. (One of the benefits of this: A thriving shrimp industry means the shellfish is wonderfully fresh and can be prepared in a variety of ways.) In the 1940s, Hollywood celebrities, mostly fishing fanatics, began to discover this little pocket of paradise. But with the rising popularity of Cabo, Cancun and Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan seems to have fallen off the tourist radar.

That's puzzling, because there are plenty of attractions-long stretches of beautiful beach, perfect weather from November through April, water sports, sailing, golf, great fishing and killer sunsets. In fact, my husband and I were watching the sun set behind the Pacific the night we decided that the pros outweighed the cons and that we would relocate to Mazatlan from central Virginia.

You won't find the big chain hotels here, a double-edged sword for the tourism industry. The city has avoided homogenization, retaining its charm and some local ownership of its resorts. But without the clout and guaranteed numbers that big chains bring, the destination can't attract as many flights as it would like. That could change: Construction is scheduled to begin in November on a Hilton hotel at a property near the airport that features a beautiful golf course on the Pacific.