Day 3 Tampico to Coatzacoalcos.

Day 3 Tampico to Coatzacoalcos.
9-7-08

6:30 am and it’s time to get up. My body just does not want anything to do with getting back into a car today. Can’t we just take a day off from driving and stay here today? If Tampico was nice or not so crowded and had a decent beach, I might entertain that thought but today is the day that we are going to try to push ourselves through to Villahermosa, 683 miles.

No breakfast for me, I was too tired to think about eating. Forget the vitamins, too! I just need a cup of coffee. I checked out of the hotel, paid my ridiculously over-priced bill of $182 which included the room, free happy hour from 6-7 pm, free internet, very bad Italian food and a couple of margaritas and hopped in the car for the day’s journey. A journey it was...at first. We were lost on how to get to 180 heading south and we drove for an hour trying to get out of this city, which I will be polite and call a hell hole. Finally we stopped to ask directions and found a Mexico Mapsco! A real life Mexico Mapsco! WOW! We hit the jackpot! Opened it up and there it was...all the directions that I would ever need to navigate my way around Mexico. http://www.guiaroji.com.mx/ (so that is what is printed on the book). It was raining pretty hard this morning, harder than I thought because many streets were flooded or completely under water. Maybe Tampico just does not have a good drainage system.

When finally finding the Hwy that we were supposed to be on, we came upon a toll. $28 pesos. Cool...must be a pretty good road ahead. WRONG! After about 5 miles, I began thinking, “I paid money to drive THIS road???” Not only did we have to contend with not knowing where we were going but also tons of potholes, enormous topes and flash flooding! It’s going to be a great day.

One thing that gets your attention going down the road south of Tampico is men hearding their goats to the roadside. Why, I wonder? Why does it seem as though all of Mexico’s goats, cows, pigs, horses and chickens eat at the roadside? Is this mere culture since there are so many roadside taco and pollo asado stands?

The 2nd checkpoint was about 1 ½ hours south of Tampico in Naranjos. We pulled over...we know the drill at this point but the Police did not ask us to see our papers. What? Don’t you want to check them out and ask where we are going and why there are two Gingos driving through Mexico? Well I was not going to force my papers upon anyone but what do they want? Word of caution...ALWAYS act like you do NOT know Spanish, even to say hello. After the Policeman spent 3+ minutes trying to tell us he wanted money and beer, he gave up because we kept saying that we did not understand. Whew...got out of that one.

Cerro Azul is a cute little town with a decent sized population. It’s a pretty remote town but everyone seems to be in a hurry. This can’t be Mexico! Where in the world are they rushing off to? Are they late herding their goats, have curfews or are they just anxious people? Regardless, the mountain views are spectacular and half of the town in located in a little valley. There’s a military camp on the south end of town off of 180 and this is one of the very few towns that post big yellow highway signs with arrows pointing to the over-sized topes. I bet this town would be a lot of fun during festivals but there is not any place here that I would want to stay for the night though.

I sure wished it would stop raining; it’s hindering my ability to take pictures.

There are tons of auto repair shops along hwy 180 between Tampico and Tuxpam. I am quiet surprised that the people of this town are not living like Kings, in large houses, each with a staff of eight! The roads are so terrible between Tampico and Tuxpam (which is a semi-large town), that I am certain that these shops do ALOT of business.

We are doing pretty well on gas considering the monster load we have in and on top of this truck and climbing all of these mountains; averaging about 16 miles per gallon with a fill up in Dallas, San Antonio, Matamoras and Veracruz. I did not realize that Mexico was so mountainous. I took a picture of a mountain that had clouds on top of it...we were at eye level to it and you can actually see the clouds right in front of us! It was amazing. I would literally say that I could reach the sky and touch the clouds. It was very cool.

On the south side of Tuxpam we took the toll road. $26 pesos. FINALLY, a concrete road with no issues!

Military check point (some are police check points and some are military) and toll #3. $30 pesos. There were tons of people pulled over at the military check but they did not ask us to pull over. Probably because they did not want to deal with two gringos from the US that would not understand anyhow what they were asking...better not to waste time on us. PERFECT...so we kept driving.

Toll #4 in Gutierez Zamora. $18 pesos.

We have been anticipating on getting to the point on our drive in which we could actually run alongside the coastline and see the Gulf of Mexico. I heard rumors that there are beaches and waves crashing and you could see this going down the road. I was excited to know that we finally arrived in Costa Esmeralda, the town that would begin our short drive along the coast. BUT...IT WILL NOT STOP RAINING ENOUGH FOR US TO SEE ANYTHING!!!! We can barely see 5 feet in front of us much less see the Gulf that is 50 yards to our left. UGH...Oh dear Lord please do something. Finally, the next adjacent town, Casitas. Lots of small hotels and restaurants on the beach. Some hotels are nice, some are rundown but there’s a Best Western and a new hotel under construction (I did not get the name). I’d stay here for a night if I’m passing through town.

Military check point...are you kidding me...these guys are not leaving covered shelter; it’s pouring down rain. So we keep driving.

All along the hwy of 180 south of Tampico you see banana groves with bananas hanging from the trees that the workers must have just picked. There are orange tree groves everywhere and many wild orange trees just growing randomly. Do banana peppers grow on trees? I swear I saw a tree, only one though, that had the biggest light green peppers that you have ever seen hanging from it. I could not get a picture since Dave was so cautiously passing a big truck at the same time as we are going down a two lane road. Oh, that’s not the only time that he has done this...He figured out that he should just closely follow this ADO bus that would just start passing big rigs on a mountainous two lane road...What was going to happen to us...the bus would take the impact of the oncoming car, he said. Needless to say, I thought my life was ending on numerous occasions today...I thought I’d better say more prayers for me and definitely needed to say more for that idiot bus driver. Just as I was beginning to feel sorry for the bus driver because I thought he was an idiot and he was probably just having a lapse in good judgment today, he pulled into a roadside bar! The last thing is IDIOT needed was a beer! Fine...he was on his own!

Toll #5 in Nautla. $18 pesos.

4 pm and finally a break in the clouds. Thank God because this rain is making me want to take a nap! Besides, this rain has worked its way to my headboard on the top of the truck that is not only wrapped in plastic but also moving blankets and secured with duck tape. Oh I hope it’s not ruined! We will have to lug it inside tonight, unwrap it and try to salvage it.

So we came upon a town called Santa Ana with an old Mexican guy standing in the middle of the road selling what appeared to be fruit. “Let’s buy some”, I say, “I think that they are yellow cherries”. Who knows how much they were so Dave gave him $50 pesos, knowing that should cover it and we drove off. I opened the bag in excitement as I LOVE fresh cherries and I don’t recall ever having a yellow one. I popped one in my mouth, anticipating the pit to be there when all of a sudden I grabbed the trash bag...spit, spit, spit. UGH, what is this???? These things taste like crap! Here, try one. Of course Dave was a chicken (he is not a fan of fruit anyhow) so now I am stuck with this bag of yellow balls of God knows what, trying to pass themselves off as cherries!

Just north of El Viajon, right on the coast, sits the CFE plant (Mexico’s electricity provider). What a view they have; one side mountains, one side the Gulf of Mexico

Toll #6. $30 pesos

Now we are coming up on Veracruz...should we stop and stay here tonight?

Toll #7. $37 pesos

Hello Veracruz. WOW, this city is flooded! Bad drainage I suppose. Goodbye Veracruz; let’s try to push through as far as we can.

Toll #8 $70 pesos.

Wait a minute...you have to pay to get into Veracruz AND pay to get out of it, too? And does it seem as though tolls are more prevalent the further south we drive? I wonder what it would take to own my own city?????

Toll #9...good gosh, maybe I should take more pesos out of the bank!

So we are traveling down 150, south of Veracruz and the roads are great but we are beginning to feel the effects of being in this car too long. I’m getting a bit grumpy and I am ready to find a place and call it a night. Our goal though to try to make it into Villahermosa tonight and on to Playa tomorrow...so I thought. We pulled over to top off the tank with gas and asked where hwy 145 was. In my attempt to understand the directions given to me in Spanish, we realized that we had past our exit by about 30 miles! YIKES! Okay...don’t get mad, it’s okay. We just turn around and head back..no problem. Back through toll and finally find the exit. perfect. Now we need to make up some lost time. Let’s get to Villahermosa as fast as we can. Fast was not the correct adjective for this road.

Toll # 10 $150 pesos!!!! Holy cow! This road better be fast and awesome to drive down. By this time it was dark and we were doing something that we said we wouldn’t; we were driving at night. Tip...learn target driving prior to driving in Mexico and be especially careful as the higher the toll fees, the worse the roads (so it seems). This one was bad. Now to their credit, they appeared to be working on them but I guess we are in Mexico and everything is in Mexico time.

Toll #11 $140 pesos! WOW, $39 usd on 30 miles of stretch. Oh well...we were on the expressway when we could have easily taken the scenic route again. No thanks. The expressway only allows you to exit in about 9 places from once you hop on to the time you reach Villahermosa.

By this time exhaustion has kicked in and we just want to find a place to stay. As much as we want to keep going, we’ve been on the road for 14 hours, of which three of those hours were because we were lost. We stop in Minatitlan because the Mapsco says that this is a city of 100K-500K people. Perfect, we should be able to find a hotel here. We drove around the city for about an hour and it was not much bigger than Playa. All I can say is that most of this city is very dirty so when we finally found the highway again, we headed to Coatzacoalcos, which is a city about the size of Cancun. When we first arrived in Coatzacoalcos, it looked very clean; it was almost midnight. At last, a Best Western; this should be okay. We pulled in, went inside and paid for a room...$70 usd. The security guard took us to our room and said not to worry about our car, the stuff on top or the bikes because he was going to be there all night and would watch it for us. Thank you, thank you, thank you was all that I could say.

We got into the room; very dated but appeared to be clean. No big deal. Dave went across the street to get water while I stayed behind to shower. I turned on the water on in the shower and guess what...No hot water! You’ve got to be kidding me! I still need a shower and I am not in the mood to attempt my very poor broken Spanish to the front desk to explain that I need another room. Cold shower it was and now time for bed. Off goes the bedspread (ugh...in a hotel like this, they probably do not wash them often), keep one light on just in case, and closed my eyes. I have to say...a little freaked out but when looking back on it, the room wasn’t THAT bad.