January 15, 2009 Thursday jueves
I was up at 6 this morning to get ready to go to Tepic with Bridget. We caught the first bus out this morning at 7. The tickets were 42 pesos for one way which is less than $4.20 each. We could have bought round trip tickets for 80 pesos, but we did not know what time we would catch the bus back. For all I know it might not have mattered but they do assign seats on your tickets.
I did recognize some of the people riding the bus, one of the ladies lives on the same street as I do, and she walks by our place several times a day.

We arrived in Tepic around 9:30. We decided to take a taxi from the bus station to the central plaza. The taxi was 30 pesos. It was a wild ride, weaving from lane to lane. He started to turn into a side street but it was blocked off, so there we were stopped in the oncoming traffic lanes. He started hitting the steering wheel with his hand as he was backing up to get back in the lane we were in before. Then he had to set at a red light, which seemed to make him madder as he would hit the steering wheel more and say things that I think I was glad I couldn’t understand.

When we got to the plaza we noticed that most of the stores were not open yet. We walked around the plaza and into the market to look around and to pass time until things opened up.
At 10 we were able to buy our tickets for the 11 o-clock trolley tour of Tepic. Since we had an hour to kill and neither one of us had breakfast we decided to find someplace to eat. We walked up and down the streets by the plaza until I recognized the street the restaurant was on that Larry and I ate at last year. We paid 40 pesos apiece for our breakfast.

We had about 5 minutes before the trolley trip when they told us they didn’t have enough people for the 11 o-clock tour, would we like to wait for the 12 o-clock one or get our 10 pesos back. We decided not to go on the 12 o-clock got our pesos back and started to walk away. We were less than 50 feet away when they called us back as they now have the required amount of people.

When we got up to where the Indians sell their goods we were given 10 minutes that turned into 30 to look around and eat the tacos they make there. The tortillas are blue as they are made from blue corn. Everyone that had one said they were very good.
There was also a new statue up there.

Most of the trolley ride was the same as last year. We didn’t get to go into the ruins this time. I think because the tour started a little late and they like to give you more time to buy things from the Indians on top of the hill.
After the trolley tour I bought 2 small tortilla frying pans that had a painted picture on it. They were 2 for 100 pesos. Then we caught another taxi to Wal-Mart, this time the fare was 25 pesos. I bought a few things that I haven’t been able to find here. I spent 285.14 pesos.

We walked back to the bus station, it was close to 2:30, and we thought that we would have til the 3 o-clock bus. When we bought our tickets she said that it was the 2:45 bus.
We were having a little bit of a problem finding which bus was ours. The driver hadn’t put the name of the town on the window yet, when I spotted the neighbor lady that rode to Tepic with us. She was waving at us to come back to where she was. As that was where the bus was we wanted to catch.

I ended up spending 546.54 pesos or less than $54.65 US. This is over our $35.00 a day budget but we have been under the $35.00 for quite a while.

Larry thought we would be back on the 3 o-clock bus and was waiting for us at the bus station, but didn’t really get out of Tepic until 3:15. So he wasn’t at the station to great us when we got back.