Mazatlán and Puerto Vallarta - driving/travelling safety

[dglvrk2]

For spring break this year, my family plans to fly to PV. We will stay at a friend's house about an hour north of PV, in a wonderful little town for a week. We then plan to drive to Mazatlán.  We would stay on the main road (Hwy 150) and drive during the day. We will stay in a resort in the mountains east of Mazatlán for the Eclipse, for about four days, then drive back to PV.

I'm reading mixed reviews on the safety of this area.  Travel bloggers are saying it's safe.  The US State Department says NOT to travel in Sinaloa, Mazatlán's state due to violent crime and kidnapping. 

Does anyone have any perspective on this?  I would be with my husband, school aged children and septuagenarian in-laws.  The in-laws and husband are fluent in Spanish, but are Jewish and German by heritage....so the similarities stop at the language.

TIA

[midwestmama]

My boss is originally from Sinaloa (though he has lived in the US for about 10 years now), and he just returned from almost 2 months there. (He usually travels back there for the holidays.) He did not mention any issues during this trip, but when he was there last year, there was a situation where the government essentially locked everything down for a few days due to a cartel situation. Because he is native, I can't speak as much to the tourist perspective, but wanted to share with you what I know from what my boss has shared.

[sakoro]

Feb 6, 2024 22:17:18 GMT -5 dglvrk2 said:

We then plan to drive to Mazatlán.  We would stay on the main road (Hwy 150) and drive during the day. We will stay in a resort in the mountains east of Mazatlán for the Eclipse, for about four days, then drive back to PV.

I'm reading mixed reviews on the safety of this area.  Travel bloggers are saying it's safe.  The US State Department says NOT to travel in Sinaloa, Mazatlán's state due to violent crime and kidnapping. 

Does anyone have any perspective on this?
TIA

I don’t know anything about Sinaloa, but I live 8 miles from the border with Baja California. My best advice would be to talk to someone who lives near the highway you are planning to take and to stay abreast of the news. With Mexico, cartel violence and the crime situation can evolve rapidly. What was safe 2 months ago, may not be safe now. Places that were risky in the past might be safer now because they government made some type of agreement with the cartel to keep the local population safer. Or the cartel might be having a beef with the officials in a particular town and you don’t want to get caught up in that.

I wouldn’t trust travel bloggers unless they are embedded in the community. They tend to have a certain bravado about not being afraid but if they aren’t fluent in the language and connecting with locals outside of the tourism industry, there is a lot of stuff under the surface they don’t know.