Tampico

We're in Tampico at Chip and Lucas's apartment. It's kind of nice to not be sharing that tiny pop-up camper with the boys, and Jane is enjoying a full sized kitchen and real laundry facilities. I think she misses doing laundry.

Let's see, our last post was from Tulum, on the caribbean. We stayed one night at Cenote Azul which was a huge sinkhole from a collapsed cave filled with blue water. It was chest deep for probably the whole sinkhole (we didn't swim across the whole thing to find out), but the water was so clean and not salty (a welcome change from the ocean water). We had some European neighbors that arrived at the campsite just after us, and pitched their tent (I'm not kidding,) 10 feet from our camper even though the grassy area by the cenote was huge. I guess their personal boundaries are much smaller than ours. From there we drove to Palenque, another huge Mayan ruin. Very large, with the usual huge pyramid temples, the ones at Palenque are well preserved, especially the tops or roof combs, which are missing from most of the ruins we visited. Also, Palenque had more rooms in and on top of the temples than the other ruins we visited. To tell the truth, Jane and I are about ruined out, but the boys love climbing all the temples and seem very interested, so we went to one more ruin. They certainly are more impressive than we're used to in the Gila.

We spent two nights at the Mayabell, a bar, resaurant, rooms and camping place near the ruins. They were having an employee party the night we arrived, the (amplified) music went until 3 am. If you have a choice, taking the camping spot nearest to the bar just because it's easy to back into is maybe not such a good idea. The guy who seemed to be hacking up a lung next to us was a nice touch too. The Mayabell, and the ruins themselves, were overrun with Europeans and Canadians. It was kind of strange seeing all these white folks, none of whom were speaking English. Even the Canadians were speaking French. We heard howler monkeys which sounded very strange....not monkeylike at all.

After leaving Palenque, we put in a big day of driving to get to the town of Alvarado, on the coast. It was twilight when we got there, and we didn't want to keep driving looking for a place to camp, so we got a motel room. The next day we got to the Emerald Coast of Mexico, just north of Veracruz. When we arrived, we discovered that the alternator was no longer charging the battery on the pickup, so I had to find an auto electric shop in a neighboring town and get the alternator fixed. It was around 4:30 in the afternoon when I found the auto electric guy, and by six I was back on the road, with a new rotor in my alternator. Parts and labor, $35. Try that in the U.S.

The wind blew ferociously all that day, and the next morning the waves on the beach were huge. Anothe norther blowing through. It seems like all we have to do is think about going to the beach and the wind starts howling. The boys don't seem to even notice. The next day (yesterday), we started heading towards Tampico. We bought a really huge sack of oranges for $5 and some big tangerines and drove through the town of Poza Rica where we were immediately pulled over for "running a red light" even though the light we could see wasn't working. The cop tried to tell us to go to the "hacienda" in el centro (the big house downtown) and pay the fine. He'd keep Dean's drivers license, of course. We pretended we didn't speak much Spanish, (well Jane did, I don't have to pretend) and he finally got disgusted with us and waved us on. Not 5 minutes later another cop (all of these guys are on foot) whistled at us to pull over so we pretended to be deaf and blind and sailed right on past him and the other 2 policeman that were spaced down the block....all of whom once they heard the first cop whistle at us started whistling and waving their ticket book for us to pull over. We'd about had it with cops, so we just sailed on by. We hadn't done a thing wrong.....the cops just wanted to buy lunch with the bribe we'd have to pay them.

It's a bit sad to be heading back from our big adventure. We're already thinking of the many unfinished things we left behind in the rush to leave that will be waiting for us back home. But the closer we get to the US, the more Dean complains about the strange Mexican ways.....the lack of toilet seats is a main topic of conversation. Why can they spend big money building things like visitor centers and museums at the ruins, beautifully designed and impressive public buildings, but they can't spring for toilet seats on the toilets? It's a big day when you find a toilet that actually has a toilet seat and it's pretty much a miracle if it has a toilet seat AND toilet paper. Another gripe are the billions of speed bumps we've driven over. Almost 300 one day. Just when you think you're heading out of town, there's always one more. . . and often one more after that. On the other hand, they probably save a lot of pedestrians. There are way more pedestrians, bicyclists, and motor scooters here of course, and seemingly every Mexican except the ones who drive annoyingly slow are 15 minutes late for the most important appointment of their lives, and have to get there RIGHT NOW. The truck and bus drivers are downright scary. If they didn't have speed bumps, no one would be safe from those guys. And lots and lots of military checkpoints. At the last one we had 2 guys climbing in and digging through our camper shell and trailer (the trailer was shut down so he had to crawl on his hands and knees)for over 10 minutes. We of course have wet underwear and t shirts strewn about in the camper shell that we washed that morning. Usually the soldiers take one look in our camper shell and close it,not wanting to even touch anything in it. You always feel kind of nervous even though you're not hiding anything (that's Jane writing, it makes me mad because I see the M-16's and humvees and know that it's my tax dollars at work). But that's just part of the Latin American experience.
We're going to take the boys to the beach today and then celebrate Joe's birthday with Lucas tonight. Jane's been baking cakes and such all morning (when she wasn't doing laundry). Then tomorrow we'll head for the border.