Heading South

The next few days were spent through Mexico. In Tampico, on the Gulf coast, we decided to drive into the historic heart of the city. This ended up taking over an hour, but we were rewarded with a wonderful meal at a restaurant next to a canal.

The price for three of us was 120 pesos, which is less than $10. We hoped that would be the way of things to come.

Getting out of Tampico was easy, thanks to an amazing cable-stayed suspension bridge taking us from the crowded downtown across the river to a mostly rural south bank.

After the bridge came the road to Veracruz, a road which taught us what driving in Mexico is really like. It is long, two-laned, twisty, and hilly, and we averaged 35 mph travelling it. We will have to write a whole blog post about driving in Mexico, but let’s just say, every day is an adventure.

Our goal for the night was a place we found in the Mexico camping book. It was a hotel and campground in the village of Cerro Azul.

It has green grass, trees, and road noise. The owner is colorful, and after reading in the book description about how the clientele was mostly male and most only stayed part of the night, we dubbed it the “Chicken Ranch”. One of these days Grace will figure this out. Except for the road noise, it turned out to be a pleasant place to stay. We never did see any other visitors.

Not needing an alarm to wake us up because of the road noise, we were on the way again early. Costa Esmerelda, or the Emerald Coast, took us to the beautiful blue ocean with beaches and really green vegetation. We did not stop, though, since it was still morning and we wanted to visit our first ancient ruin.

El Tajin flourished from 600 to 1200 AD, and the modern park was spectacular. It has step pyramids, ball courts, and carved panel after panel of fascinating glyphs. The depictions of self-sacrifice looked painful, even gruesome. It was here we met the first gringo we had seen since crossing the border, an older Englishman who was traveling Mexico via local bus and carrying only a backpack. He warned us to be extra careful in Guatemala. We still wonder why, because Guatemala turned out to be both friendly and safe.

Next came Veracruz, a major port city containing the most expensive-looking real estate we had seen since Texas. Two of the campgrounds we were considering were now posh, gated communities. The last one we tried, Cocoadventurea, was wonderful. It was on the beach, had a swimming pool, showers, grills, tables, and no people other than the security guard. We went to the pool after dinner and discovered the frogs and crabs liked it, too.

After Veracruz, we finally got on Mexico’s toll roads. These really helped us put some miles down. They are expensive, we spent US$50 in one day. One wonders if they would make more money by lowering the tolls, because they were mostly empty. But we were able to travel at an average speed of 60 mph, which got us to the southern state of Chiapas in no time.

In Chiapas, we used iOverlander to take us to a campground next to a parrot-filled sinkhole. To get there, we had to drive through the small town of Ocozocoautla de Espinosa, where we saw our first tuk-tuks. The two-passenger, three-wheeled taxis proved to be very common in Chiapas and later in Guatemala.

We left town on a dirt road, eventually coming to a tollgate operated by the local vigilante society. They were very friendly, and after asking where we were going and extracting a 10 peso (70 cent) toll, we were past. Driving these dirt roads transported us back in time. The farming was done with a lot of manual labor, where the machete was used to for everything from clearing brush to cutting down weeds.

Pigs and chickens ran free. Clothing become more traditional.

We arrived at Sima de las Cotorras, which Google translates as “Chasm of the parrots”.

Admission was nominal, camping was free, there was a great trail around the sinkhole, and on the far side, there was a restaurant with the first free WiFi in several days. Dinner was good, cheap, and largely silent as we caught up on our email and planned our visit to Guatemala.

Early in the morning we were up to watch the daily departure of flock after flock of parrots from the sinkhole. It was one of those amazing sights you won’t soon forget. The noise was incredible. After the show was over, we were got on the road. San Cristobal de las Casas, in the cool mountains, was our lunch destination. We arrived on market day. In the main square, all the vendors had pastries and candies, the latter of which attracted the attention of lots of bees. Up the street, we found clothing and hammocks, and bought an extremely well made hammock for 800 pesos, and a blouse for Grace for 60. Both were total bargains. The town is an architectural gem, and attracts tourists from all over the world.

Leaving town, we drove up over 8000 feet into the pines and through towns with specialized crafts. One made pottery, and there were dozens of kilns and cords or firewood scattered throughout. Another made furniture, and some of those pieces were ones we dearly wished we could bring home. The women’s dresses got very colorful, and the preferred form of transport became the pickup truck. They all had fencing around the bed, and would be loaded with as many as 15 passengers standing the in the bed. The trucks got decorated with lots of extra chrome and fancy paint jobs.

Our final night in Mexico was spent at Lagos de Colon National Park, which was back in the woods with lots of water crossings, waterfalls, and, as we found from our GPS’s, was less than a kilometer from Guatemala. Although we still had to drive an hour to get to the actual border crossing, this was really cool. We could also see the high mountains of Guatemala, too, which further excited us for the next day.

#Mexico #ElTajin #Tampico #Veraruz #Chiapas