June 23 - The road south of Veracruz

Yesterday felt like the first day of vacation. We’ve basically been driving south all day, every day for a week. We got up yesterday, packed up, and called Grandma Sanborn about our Central American insurance policy. We were able to get a Mexican insurance policy written immediately on Saturday before we crossed the border, but the Central American policy takes some time for processing, something we didn’t read about in any guidebooks or blogs, even though they all told us to get the policies from Sanborn’s when we got to the border. So Janet called Sanborn’s on Skype (the called dropped 4 times) and actually got a helpful young girl (not Grandma). She said she had gotten the paperwork we had dropped off on Saturday and that we would be able to have the policy within the week, which is good news. We didn’t want to be stuck in Mexico and we definitely didn’t want to be driving through Central America uninsured.

With that good news, we headed an hour down the road to El Tajín, an ancient city built around 1000 BC by someone… they don’t know who. It was pretty cool to see our first ruins and it was actually kinda cloudy, so not unbearably hot. Also there were hardly any other people there yesterday morning so we almost had the place to ourselves. After Tajín we headed into Papantla, a nearby town, and had some great tacos at a restaurant on the zócalo (the main square). We also had helado de tres Marías, which was one giant scoop each of vanilla, chocolate, and fresa.

Heading out in early afternoon, we only drove a couple hundred kilometers to a campground on the beach just south of Veracruz. Here, we literally had the run of the place. We set up our tent near a nice palm-thatched pavilion, cooked our salmon, beans, and sprouts and made a creative sauce of spicy Chinese mustard and honey for the fish. It turned out to be quite a good meal. After dinner we took some beers down to the beach and sat watching the waves, bats, moths, lightning bugs, lighthouses, and ships. After a bit it began to rain, so we of course continued to sit there and enjoy our beers and enjoyed the lluvia too. It was a great ending to a great day. Back at the camp, the air was pretty warm and stagnant, so we decided to move our cot (mine) and air mattress (Janet’s) out of the tent and under the pavilion, draping our mosquito nets from the rafters. We watched the pilot episode of My So Called Life that I’d downloaded to my laptop and drifted off to sleep to the sound of the olas (waves).

This morning I went for a couple-mile run on the beach (awesome) while Janet lifted her two-pound weight (for her rehabbing wrist) and made pancakes and coffee for breakfast. We took a few hours to repack the car, finally getting it packed in an organized and efficient fashion, and drove into Veracruz. Veracruz is the first rich city that we’ve been to: there are Audis and Mercedes on the roads and a lot of American chain restaurants and big resort hotels. While driving toward the center of town, I took a left and somehow ended up in the wrong lane. After driving into another wrong lane to avoid oncoming traffic, a man on a bike was facing me down just shaking his head in shame at the horrible gringo driver. Then a bus turned almost into me, and I darted off down another side street. Now normally in this story, I would feel like an idiot for making that mistake and driving like a stupid tourist. But as I headed out of there, I realized that for some reason, this road had the lanes reversed from every other road in Mexico and for that matter, 90% of the rest of the world, and had you drive on the left. There was of course no sign to indicate this as I made the turn.

A short aside: Mexico apparently has a gigantic signage budget (much larger than their road construction/repair budget) because there are signs on the highways every couple hundred meters telling you all sorts of useful information in general: wear your seatbelt, drive slowly, don’t drink and drive, obey the signs, respect the signs, don’t mistreat the signs and of course, don’t destroy the signs. The poderes que sean however don’t really see the need to properly mark things that specifically pertain to the situation at hand, like the speed limit, or when streets are one way. The latter is particularly obnoxious as often the only way to figure it out is to look down the street to see if all the parked cars are headed the same direction. And when I wrote about the topes the other day, I forgot to mention Janet’s favorite tope-related situation, the sign warning of topes that aren’t actually there. Yep, they have signs that cry speedbump.

Back to the story. Soon after that driving incident, we found a parking spot and headed to lunch. Janet and I shared the pulpo cebollado (octopus & onions) and the filete a la Veracruzana (fillet of fish in a sauce of tomatoes, onions, olives, and chili. The octopus was a bit chewy but the pescado was excellent. Janet jotted down all the ingredients to try to replicate it back home. After lunch we decided to take care of paying for our tourist cards. When we crossed into Mexico, we filled out forms much like the typical landing card one fills out when flying internationally. According to the guidebooks and the lady at the border, we just needed to take them into a bank at some point and pay a $20 fee. We had tried to do that yesterday in Tampico, but the bank teller had told us something incomprehensible about going to city hall and in Spanish at 120 kph, I didn’t understand. Apparently though in Veracruz, every speaks Spanish exactly as I learned it, because I understand pretty much everything anyone told me today. So after stopping in at BanMex, we learned we needed to go to Migración, which was fortunately just a few blocks away. At Migración they printed off forms to give to the bank when we paid. Also we needed to get copies of our payment receipts in triplicate, plus one copy each of our passports and the original forms we had gotten at the border. Back to the BanMex, we paid the fees and got all of our copies (after asking very nicely and looking like pathetic foreigners) and walked back to Migración, convinced the guard to let us in even though the office had closed 30 minutes earlier (at 2 PM), and got all of the paperwork straightened out. Our first taste of papeleo (red tape). Fortunately, Mexico is supposed to be the easiest country for border crossings and such, so we’ve got a lot more papeleo to look forward to.

After that run-around, we went to a café to get café lechero. Veracruz is a big coffee growing area and so the coffee here is nice and fresh. The waiter brought us large glasses with a shot of espresso on the bottom. Then a minute later, another waiter came and poured hot milk from a long-spouted tea-kettle, pulling the kettle up 18 inches or so above the glasses as he poured. ¡Qué delicioso!

Now on the road headed 150 km south of Veracruz for a couple of small towns where there is apparently a festival tomorrow. Pretty excited about that.
Para los que hablan español: ¿cómo se dice “u-turn”?