Mazatlan, Mexico

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and fishing port on the Pacific, with the world's largest shrimping fleet, and in recent years has become a very popular beach resort.

History

Mazatlán (Náhuatl: "Place of the Deer") was an area of Indian settlement long before the Conquest. The Spaniards, led by Hernando de Bazán, arrived here in 1576, but it was 1806 before the town was founded. Mazatlán and the surrounding area had previously been exposed to frequent pirate raids, and at times served as a buccaneers' lair. The foundations of the town's subsequent development were laid in the mid 19th c. by German settlers, who improved the harbour in order to facilitate the export of their agricultural produce and the import of farming equipment.

Sights

There are few buildings in Mazatlán which can be described as outstanding. Features of interest, however, include the lighthouse (El Faro), towering 154 m (505 ft), and the historic Teatro Angela Peralta, a pretty building named after a famous diva, victim of a cholera epidemic in 1863. Other attractions include the "Death Divers" who launch themselves into the sea from the Mirador, the Cerro del Vigia with its observatory, from where pirates once kept watch, and the Cerro del Neveria, also a look-out point, which gets its name from the tunnels in the mountain used for storage of ice for refrigerating fish.