Tulum/Coba/Cenote Azul (Bacalar)

Ahora estamos en un pueblo que se llama Bacalar, que tiene una laguna bien grande y dicen que tiene siete colores, es muy bonita, y el cenote mas grande de la zona que se llama el Cenote Azul. Nadas y se ven todos los peces porque es completamente transparente, pero al mismo tiempo es como estar flotando arriba de un abismo – impresionante! Saben que tiene por lo menos 90 metros de profundidad, pero todavia nadie llego al fondo y probablemente tenga 130 metros o mas! Nos hace pensar en eso que decian los Mayas, de que los cenotes son como portales a otra dimension o al mundo de los espiritus….
We finally decided to rip ourselves away from the beach and begin our trip toward Chiapas (back into the mountains). We are now in a town called Bacalar where there is a beautiful lagoon that they say has seven colours, and the largest cenote in the region called the Cenote Azul. It is huge, and apparently at least 90 metres deep (no one has ever been able to reach the bottom and know for sure). It makes me think about what the Mayas used to think, that cenotes were the way to reach the spirit world, or at least a portal to another dimension! You swim out and can see everything, but it is like you are on top of a huge abyss. For the past few days we have been bumming on a Tulum beach with no mosquitos because of the wind, we had some fires but we are usually in bed by around 8 pm and up before the sun rises. Gustavo has been playing some futbol with the other campers and Mateo’s been hanging out with his buddy Tibu, either on the beach or at their fort at the fallen palm tree or getting cocos to drink. Ari and I went out pretty far with the snorkel stuff, and saw some interesting fish, including a ray and a weird one that looked like a cow (!) that Ari calls a box fish, for some reason. The other day some people saw a nurse shark out there. It is usually pretty quiet here, except for Sunday when the beach gets totally crazy so it is where many locals come to enjoy themselves on their day off.
On Tuesday it was raining and windy (and we were out of food and water) so we decided to go to Coba, which is a town about 40 km inland where there are some Mayan ruins and three cenotes (underground caverns with crystal clear waters, some don’t even know how deep. If you don’t know about them find out – they are very cool!). We passed by one called Cenote de las Calaveras (skulls), but after reading up on cenotes (and the fact that sometimes the Maya used them for human sacrifices) we decided to pass on that one. At one of them we went down a 18 metre spiral wooden staircase, and then the cenote itself was 40 metres deep! Couldn’t go to ruins because it was raining and getting late (even though it is relatively warm here, it still gets dark too early in January!) but we did stop at a laguna in Coba where you can see crocodiles. Actually, it looked like there were both alligators and crocodiles…but I would not want to meet up with either one when swimming.
Los ultimos dias hemos hecho playa, Gustavo hasta juega futbol, y Mateo juega con un amigo que se llama Tibu. El otro dia Allison y Ariel se fueron lejos con el equipo de snorkel y vieron algunos peces, pero no es tanto como en el arrecife en Mahahual. El domingo se lleno esta playa de una manera loca, con todos los Mexicanos con el dia libre, una fiesta total. Martes hizo frio y viento y lluvia, asi que nos fuimos para Coba, unos 40 km par adentro, y fuimos a tres cenotes impresionantes. Estan todos debajo de la tierra y en una tuvimos que bajar 18 metros por una escalerita caracol! Habia un cenote llamado El Cenote de las Calaveras, pero despues que leimos que los Mayas a veces hacian sacrificios en los cenotes (por ser lugares sagrados) decidimos no entrar en ese! No pudimos ir a las ruinas porque se nos hizo tarde y estaba lloviendo, pero ya vamos a ver mas ruinas pronto. Despues pasamos por una laguna donde habian cocodrilos y pudimos sacar unas fotos!

Tulum

This is it! We found our little piece if Caribbean paradise, and the hard part will be leaving! When we got into Tulum the other afternoon we were reminded of why we kind of ran away from here a few years ago – there seems to be a lot of really expensive spas/resorts – a hotel room costs $300 a night, and they wanted to charge us $70 to camp in some palapa type thing on the beach - but, again, we persevered and found a beautiful place to camp on the beach (for free) inside the Sian K’aan Biosphere Reserve, between Tulum and Boca Paila (check it out on a map if you can). During turtle nesting season (May to October) many of these beaches are protected for them, but luckily for us they are away frolicking in the sea which allows us to frolic on their beach! There are some other Canadians, Americans and Europeans camping here as well (with kids) and there is a very nice vibe. The photos speak for themselves….no reef here, but there are some great waves for body surfing! Apparently there is a reef to snorkel 12 km down the road, so tomorrow we might head over there. We are also just minutes away from the Laguna Campechan, clear waters and lots of birds and fish to watch. No swimming though, as there is a quicksand type bottom and apparently crocodiles! At the entrance to the reserve (4 km up the road) there is a great cenote that we checked out yesterday, crystal clear water, colourful fish (including these neat Cichlids) in the middle of a mangrove jungle. We finally were able to rinse the salt off ourselves! And we got fresh water to do dishes with there too. I think this is the place to stay for a few days, with some side trips here and there – we definitely want to explore more cenotes, as they are very magical places. But there is no need to go up further north to the disneyfication of Cancun, or the grooviness of Playa del Carmen. We will chill here until we need to start making our way south again, through Chiapas and to the Guatemalan border.

Esto si que es el paraiso! Estamos en Tulum acampando en la playa por tiempo indeterminado. Econtramos terrible lugar en la reserva biosfera de Sian Kan’n entre Tulum y Boca Paila. Hay otra gente acampando tambien y nos estamos haciendo amigos. No hay arecife, pero las olas estan buenas para nadar. Ayer fuimos a un cenote cerca de aca, y estamos sacando agua dulce de alli. Tambien hay una laguna Campechan con muchos peces y cocodrilos a 5 minutos caminando! No creo que vayamos a Playa del Carmen, ya que encontramos este lugar que es perfecto. La idea es quedarse por aquí y en una semana empezar camino a Chiapas. Tal vez salimos a recorrer mas cenotes en la zona, porque estan increibles y por todos lados.

Mahahual

Por fin, sol y playa! Por lo menos por un par de dias, porque estan anunciando una ola de frio (que por supuesto nos seguio desde Canada)! Llegamos a Mahahual el lunes cuando ya estaba oscureciendo. Despues de preguntar en un par de lugares pensamos que nos ibamos a tener que ir porque era todo muy caro, pero se nos ocurrio preguntarle a un loco que vimos frente de una casa un poco afuera del pueblo, y nos dijo que la mama es duena de unos terrenos en la playa y que nos podiamos quedar alli y pagar mucho menos. Esa noche los nenes se enloqucieron y abajo de las estrellas, alumbraron caracoles, cangrejos, pepinos de mar, erizos, corales y cucarachas de mar entre las rocas con una linterna. Al otro dia, nos levantamos con el sol para mirar el caribe. Gracias a William y la familia, terminamos en una playa hermosa, con arena blanca y en frente hay un pequenio arrecife para hacer snorkel! Pasamos todo el primer dia en el agua, y vimos corales preciosos, un monton de peces, una raya enorme (que susto!) y hasta una anguila. Esta todo medio roto y lleno de basura todavia por un huracan que paso hace un anio, pero lo estan reconstruyendo. Estamos al lado de donde vive el hermano de William, que es buzo, y aca tienen dos perros, dos gallos que nos cantan de maniana, un lorito verde (el Chavo) y un gato negro que viene a chuparnos los platos sucios cuando estamos durmiendo. Es bueno que estamos medio alejado del pueblo, porque llegan muchos cruceros y cuando estan alli se llena con turistas que bajan a alquilar motos de agua, 4x4, motitos, taxis, etc. y andan como locos por todos lados. Despues se van y queda re-tranquilo el pueblo de nuevo. Lo mas loco es que en el barco les dicen que esto es una isla, y se lo creen! Al otro dia fuimos al pueblo para ver como era porque habian dos cruceros, y nos quedamos impactados con la cantidad de gente haciendose masajes en la playa, trencitas, comprando souvenirs….era surrealista. Mateo se llevo a sus instrumentos y toco algo para los turistas (le sacaban fotos y le preguntaban como llego a esta “isla”!) De mas esta decir que hizo unos cuantos dolares! Comimos en un lugar chiquito que hacen comida bien casera, con tortillas de maiz hechas a mano. De tarde volvimos a la playa y los nenes hicieron un castillo de arena. En un momento dado, aparecieron una familia entera de delfines, muy cerca de la orilla. Parecia que nos estaban llamando entonces nos pusimos los equipos de snorkel bien rapido y saltamos al agua. Ya se habian ido los delfines, entonces salimos del agua. Apenas nos sacamos las mascaras aparecieron de nuevo, y se quedaron mas de una hora alli en frente nuestro, entre la playa y el arecife, jugando y saltando (hasta los bebes!). Fue increible! La mama de William lo estaba mirando todo y despues nos dijo que es muy raro que vengan delfines por aca, y que pareciera que lo estaban haciendo por gusto, justo para nosotros! Fue muy especial. Pero todo se termino cuando una lancha llevando turistas a bucear paso bien rapido y cuando les senialamos que bajaran de velocidad, pensaban que estabamos saludando y nos saludaban con sonrisas idiotas. Lo unico malo aca (aparte de los turistas) es que, como estamos rodeados de manglares, hay muchos mosquitos – especialmente en las horas que se pone y sale el sol, entonces hay que esconderse todos apretados en la combi. Vamos a aprovechar el dia medio frio y nublado para viajar hacia Tulum para ver un par de cenotes y unas playas alla.
As you can tell from the photos, we finally got a couple of days of sun on the beach! But if it makes any of you shivering, snowbound readers any less jealous, there is a cold front on its way (apparently coming from Canada, no less). We made it to Mahahual just as the sun was setting and it was getting dark on Monday evening. After trying at a camping place on the beach where they wanted to charge us around $20 for a small parking spot squished in beside other campers, we drove a little bit out of town along the coast and asked a guy that was about to get into his jeep where a cheaper place to say would be, and he said we could just park on his mom’s property for 50 pesos a night (less than $5) and that he would take us there in the morning! That night it was already dark so we just stayed there in front of his place and popped the top of the westy. Before bed, the kids were amazed when they explored a bit with a flashlight in the tide pools among the rocks in front of us and saw: sea snails, small tropical fish, sea urchins, sea cockroaches, lots of dead corals, crabs, brittle stars and sea cucumbers. The stars were incredible! We couldn’t wait to get up the next morning and see the water, so we were up at sunrise to start our first day at the Caribbean. William came by to show us their place a bit farther from town and on a white sand beach where we could park – paradise, and all for us! We are staying beside the little house where his brother (a scuba instructor) lives and they have been building a cute little tree house here for William’s niece, Dafny. Mateo is again accompanied by lots of animal friends: there are two dogs, Ninio and Pinto, a parrot called Chavo, and two roosters. Oh, and a black cat that only come out at night to rummage in our dirty dishes! There also just so happens to be a coral reef right off the shore, so we spent the entire first day snorkeling and saw all kinds of stuff. Ariel went out to the reef and back at least 5 times that day! We saw: parrot fish, stingrays, angel fish, damsel fish, some little unidentified fluorescent blue and yellow fish, wobbegong, bigger sea urchins, flounder-type fish, eel, and many others. And of course, some beautiful colorful coral, which is unfortunately in rough shape because of the hurricane that destroyed the whole town last year. The beach is really quite messed up too, and the mangroves all around us have been burned up by the sea water and sun. They have done a pretty good job reconstructing in the main boardwalk area, because they get lots of cruise ships. Mahahual is a strange place, because when the ships are docked, masses of tourists come down off the boats and roam around, renting jetskis, off-road vehicles, jeeps, golf carts, getting massages, hair braids and buying overpriced souvenirs for a few hours, and then they are gone and the town becomes silent again. The funny part is that apparently the captain tells them that they are on an island, and they believe it! Today there were two ships in at once, and we went into the town to check it out. Mateo took his instruments and busked for some of his fellow Canadians (who asked him how he got on “this island”!). Thanks to Mateo’s proceeds, we ate lunch at a local place that was really good with handmade tortillas. Later we were hanging out at “our” beach trying to decide whether and where to snorkel (it was cloudy) when a whole pod of bottlenose dolphins (including baby ones!) swam by really close to shore and beckoned us in. We threw our snorkel stuff on (literally) and jumped in the water, but they disappeared once we got in. As soon as we got out of the water, the pod reappeared and spent over an hour playing and swimming right there between us and the reef. It was incredible! William’s mom was watching the whole thing and later told us that the dolphins rarely come and that it seemed like they were showing off just for us! The party was over when a tour boat filled with cruise people (ignoring our signals for them to slow down) came ripping by, waving at us and smiling like idiots. The only bad thing about this place (besides the hordes of floral shirted tourists) are the mosquitoes who come out of the mangroves; for an hour around dawn and dusk you have to hide indoors or else you will be eaten alive. It is a bit cramped in the bus, but we just end up going to bed and waking up with the sun. We have a bit of a fresh water scarcity too here, so we need to find a place to rinse the salt off of ourselves! It is a bit cold and cloudy today, so I think we will take advantage and move on to some cenotes and a beach that we heard about close to Tulum where we can probably hang out for a while.

Mas Calakmul...

Calakmul

Estamos en Chetumal, en camino a Majahual que esta en el caribe. Pasamos dos noches increibles en las ruinas/biosfera de Calakmul – al lado de Guatemala. Las ruinas fueron impresionantes, y vimos monos (arania y ahullador) tucanes, y otras aves. Conocimos a una gente muy buena onda en el parque. Casi nos comen unas hormigas en un momento, y Mateo y Gustavo se tuvieron que sacar la ropa completamente para que no los picaran! Suerte que no habia nadie en la vuelta. Mas despues…ahora a la playa! Despues ponemos mas fotos y video de los monos (p.d. la copa que tenia Mateo era un cocktel de mariscos, que lo compartimos entre todos!)
We are now in a coffee shop in Chetumal, on our way to Majahual on the Caribbean Sea! We feel the need for some beach and sun….We just spent two nights in the biosphere reserve of Calakmul, and we loved it! The ruins are 60 km in, but 20 km in there is a place to camp run by a man who works there, Miguel, and since we stayed there for two nights we got to know him a bit. We got up at the crack of dawn yesterday to drive the remaining 40 km and be the first ones into the ruins. It was amazing – the photos speak for themselves. We also saw toucans, howler monkeys, spider monkeys, and lots of wild peacocks. We didn’t see any jaguars or other cats, but we could smell them! We came out to the parking lot for lunch, which we ate with a nice family we met in the ruins, and then we went back in for the afternoon and saw lots of monkeys playing in the trees. At one point we were so deeply absorbed looking at an unidentified, large bird of prey that we were almost devoured by a colony of stinging ants. Mateo and Gustavo had to take off all of their clothes behind the ruins to get the ants off! Luckily we were almost the only people around. We met some really nice people, Canadians and Mexicans, and we will put more photos on later. For now we don’t have a very good internet connection – we also have some video of the monkeys, so stay tuned (hopefully there will be internet in Majahual)
p.s. that was a seafood cocktail in front of Mateo – full of crab, shrimp, octopus, clams, oysters, etc! The kids were not all that amused (especially about the octopus, since it’s endangered)

bat-pig-dog

Lluvia/Rain (Veracruz and Campeche)

We have a really bad internet connection right now, so we can only post a few photos for now - next time we will add more. Here is what we have been doing the past couple of days:

Jan 15 -This morning we woke up to, a) rain (will the sun ever come out?) and, b) the Quebecois guy we met in Texas, Philippe, riding his bike down the lane to greet us! He was passing by and saw our vehicle and decided to stop by and say hello. We had a nice chat and were happy to share our breakfast of champions with him and with Mike, and then we parted ways and finally got on our way. I am sure we will meet again soon! Since we had such a late start, we did not make it as far as we had hoped today. We drove through Veracruz, which we thought is a really nice old colonial port city, the oldest in Mexico, apparently founded by Hernan Cortez :-( in 1519, and it reminded us a bit of Montevideo. It kept raining and we kept driving along the coast to a cute little town called Alvarado, between a lake and the gulf, where Suzanne and Quique told us there was a great seafood place called “La Palapa de Mauricio” and (of course) we had a feast of seafood there. The owner was really friendly and gave us a T-shirt as a souvenir, and told us that this is a really safe place and that we should just park anywhere on the street close to the main square and we’ll be fine. We took him at his word, and we are now parked a couple of blocks from the zocalo (which is really quite beautiful) right on the boardwalk. We just shined a flashlight into the water and saw a bunch of needle-nosed fish and a baby shark! We are parked right in front of a coffee chain place called The Italian Coffee Company, which has wi-fi access (thanks for the tip, Mike!), hence the blog update! It is very illuminated here, so I think we will be fine for the night. The kids are playing music and we are keeping dry. We are hoping to get up as early as possible and head toward the Yucatan Peninsula - hopefully it will not be raining there! En este momento estamos estacionados en la ramblita de Alvarado y aprovechamos para dormir aca en la combi porque hay luz y es seguro. Despues de salir mediotarde del lugar en la costa Esmeralda, solo pudimos manejar hasta aca. De maniana nos encontramos con nuestro amigo Phillipe, el loco de la bici! Estaba pasando por la carretera y nos vio y vino a saludar. Comimos breakfast of champions con el y con Mike, y salimos. Pasamos por Veracruz, que nos parecio muy linda – una mezcla entre Montevideo, Punta del Este, y Piriapolis - y seguimos para Alvarado. Fuimos a un lugar llamado “La Palapa de Mauricio” a comer mariscos, recomendado por Suzanne y Quique. Ahora estamos por dormir aca, frente de un café Italiano que tiene wi-fi. Hace un rato, despues de pasear por el zocalo y estacionarnos en la rambla y prepararnos para comer algo y dormir, nos dimos cuenta que iluminando al agua un monton de peces se acercaban, entre ellos, habian peces agujas, y tiburoncitos. Bueno, ahora vamos a pasar la noche aquí, y maniana salir hacia el Yucatan.
Jan. 16 – As it turned out, we parked in front of a nightclub, so it was pretty noisy all night long! The wireless also kicked out at one point, so I was unable to post the blog. But we managed to sleep a bit and got going again by 7 am. Today we DROVE ALL DAY (except for a brief reprise to send a fax, have a much-needed oil and filter change, and do some grocery shopping) and now we are in a crappy and overpriced RV park in Isla Aguada (close to Cuidad del Carmen) in Campeche. Sorry that all the photos are literally snapshots taken out of the window, but we are feeling in a bit of a hurry to get to the sun (which we haven’t seen since Real de Catorce, if you can believe it)! We are making a quick meal and are about to go to bed, because we hope to reach the Mayan ruins of Calakmul tomorrow, which is on the road to Chetumal, where we hear that after exploring the ruins we can camp out with jaguars, toucans and howler monkeys! We are very excited….stay tuned for the next installment!
16 de enero- Hoy nos despertamos en la rambla de Alvarado viendo pelicanos tirarse al agua. Comimos un dsayuno ligero de barras de granola y yogurt a las 7 de la maniana y nos fuimos.
Entramos a las montanias y llovia como loco. Aprovechamos y mandamos un fax en una papeleria en un publo chico y tambien cambiamos el aceite en la combi. Despues de eso, seguimos en camino a ciudad del carmen. El resto del dia era manejar y manejar y manejar hasta llegar a este lugar llamado isla aguada, donde nos estamos quedando en un trailer park llamado freedom shores(que es demasiado caro para lo que ofrecen). Comimos una cena de pasta y broccoli con salsa thailandesa de trader joes y ahora a la cama…..maniana a las ruinas de Calakmul!

Ariel y Mateo escriben...

Hola soy yo Mateo, hace 2 dias me compre un sombrero mexicano, aca hay unas fotos. Aca estamos con unos perros chiquitos que parecen una mezcla entre murcielagos y chanchos. Cuando estuvimos acampando, les dimos pan a unas mojarritas y se lo comieron todo en 5 segundos.
Hi it’s Mateo again
2 days ago I got a Mexican hat. Here are some pictures of me with the cowboy hat. Hope y’all like them. We met some small Mexican bat pig dogs that eat coconuts. There are pictures of them too. Yesterday we were camping and we fed some minnows a piece of bread and they devoured it in 5 seconds!!! hey it's me, ariel. send more comments because it is nice to know people are following our trip.
i am sitting here at the edge of the pool watching interesting birds. They are a mix between a pidgeon and a sandpiper( do you know about them, mary?).
some english people in an rv took the small white dog to england with them and mateo is feeling a bit sad. we ordered pizza from the town an hour ago and it just arrived(too bad there is no "half an hour or its free" policy ).......
my parents washed the westy today while mateo and i went down the slide into the pool....
now we are in the westy after a dinner of coconut rice(the coconut was picked and cut by mateo and i a few minutes before cooking it), tamarind shrimp and avocado salad
post comments!
Hola soy Ariel
Manden mas comentarios! Ahora estoy sentado en la combi. Es bastante comoda para ser tan chica. Estamos los 4 sentados aca. Desde que llegamos, todavia no salio el sol!!! La playa esta linda pero todavia un poco revuelta. Igual, la piscina esta calentita.
Recien comimos una cena muy rica de arroz de coco fresco, salsa de tamarindo, camarones fritos y ensalada de aguacate (palta).
Mateo esta un poco triste porque unos ingleses se llevaron a uno de los perritos a Inglaterra. Creo que va a tener una vida mejor que comiendo cocos o basura....
Por favor manden comentarios!!!!
Hasta luego....

La Costa Esmeralda, Veracruz (via la Huasteca Potosina)

Sorry that it has taken so long for us to update the blog, but it has been a very eventful couple of days and we have not had access to internet! The morning of the day we left Matehuala was a complete disaster: in the bustle of getting packed up and ready to go, our camera was left in a place that it should not have been, and it quickly disappeared. Without pointing any fingers, let’s just say that we have all learned a very valuable lesson in responsibility and about taking care of our belongings while on this trip. It was actually surprising how upset we all were about the loss of a material object, as we do not usually get so attached to things. But we talked about it a lot, and figured out that it is not so much about the camera as an object as about what it has come to represent for us - a tool enabling us to share our travels with others, which we had never really taken so seriously before. I think the biggest punishment was the fact that we had to spend two whole days before we were able to get to a large enough place to buy another one (and having to fork out that cash so far from the end of the month hurt a bit too - ouch!) and, alas, you will not be able to see any photos of our two days in the magical region called la Huasteca Potosina, which you can check out on google or here to start: http://www.vivanatura.org/Huasteca.html. To top it off, as we were busy crying and lamenting the loss of the camera on our way out of town, the attendant at a gas station overfilled our tank and gas started gushing out from the back left hand side of the bus - and I mean gushing. The guys at the station panicked becuase the motor is in the back with these vehicles, and Gustavo was just about to turn the key. They helped us push it over to a nearby mechanic's place. He said that there is probably a loose tube or a hole near the top of the tank, and suggested that we take it to a mechanic in a larger town and have them look at it. Now we know that we can't fill the tank more than 3/4 full. Saliendo de Matehuala tuvimos un dia muy complicado. Primero, nos dimos cuenta que perdimos la camara. Fue una tragedia para todos. Es dificil de explicar el bajon general que sentimos los cuatro cuando viajabamos por dos dias viendo opportunidades para sacar fotos. Pero, de todo lo malo siempre tiene que salir algo bueno y la leccion de responsabilidad que aprendimos es enorme. En medio de esta tragedia, mientras nos lamentabamos, el que nos lleno la nafta en la estacion Pemex lo lleno demasiado y empezo a chorrear por todos lados. Por suerte habia un mecanico a unos metros de ahí y sin prenderla, empujamos la combi hasta el taller. Pareciera ser que nececita una nueva junta, pero, por ahora la vamos llevando asi sin llenar el tanque demasiado.
From Matehuala to Cuidad Valles our descent from the mountains into the jungle (and through the tropic of Cancer) was absolutely spectacular, as we moved from scrubby desert to green, green jungle. The whole area is mostly sugar cane plantations (you should have seen the trucks piled high with sugar cane falling all over the place!) and fragrant orange groves. We didn’t go to the falls at Tomasopo, because we came out on the other side of it, but we visited a couple of other waterfalls, which are everywhere and are this amazing blue transparent colour from the mineral deposits (here are other people's photos of the area: http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/506628336ejpiJj - don't you love the internet?) We were lucky to find a small trailer park/restaurant place called “El Banito” close to Ciudad Valles, which wasn’t open for the season and at first the guy didn’t want to let us stay there, but two women sitting at a table at the restaurant convinced him otherwise when the kids told them that we had driven all the way from Canada. So, in the end we had the whole place to ourselves, with bathrooms and three thermal pools where the water constantly flows in and out from an underground spring! So, even though the air was a bit cool, we had nice warm clay/sulphur smelling baths under the full moon and among the banana trees, which made our skin go really soft (and my silver rings go brown – any advice on how to fix?). The manager of the place eventually warmed up to us, and he gave us a brochure about attractions in the area, as well as a promotional DVD. One the famous places in the area is el sotano de las golondrinas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R2j0I0C7MA . We left our parachutes at home, though, so did not go to it, but apparently at dawn and dusk, millions of swallows swarm in and out and it is an amazing sight. The women at the table happened to be the owner and the administrator from a local cattle ranch called Ganaderia Romar, who sell these really fancy bulls and reproductive cows called Simbrah, bred especially for the heat (in this region there are a couple of months of the year when it gets up to 55 degrees Celsius – apparently the chickens just keel over from the heat!) Sofia (the administrator) gave us tons of advice about places to visit in the area, and she invited us to come and get a tour of the ranch the next day! It was a real learning experience for the kids and for ourselves. When we told her about our camera, she offered to let us use hers, so here are some photos that she was kind enough to email to us today, and she told us where to buy a new one in Tampico. After the ranch tour, we headed over (and up – again!) to a little town in the mountains called Xilitla and I swear it was painful for all of us not to have the camera! Surrounded by jungle, mountains, orange and coffee groves, it was one of the most picturesque little towns we have ever seen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xilitla,_San_Luis_Potos%C3%AD. There are also some really trippy sculptures there, made by a surrealist artist called Edward James. We happened to be there on a Sunday, which was the day the square is closed to traffic and becomes a bustling market with all the women in their traiditonal clothes, so we ate flautas and gorditas there with the best salsa verde I have ever tasted. Mateo was thrilled because he finally found a Mexican cowboy that he liked and that fit him, and now he won’t take it off – I swear he even takes it up to bed with him! He is starting to get used to everyone calling him guerito, after we explained to him that it is usually meant as a term of endearment. We bought some veggies for dinner and stopped at an internet place to check emails quickly, and were pleased to find that the people in this town were all so friendly and curious in a very good way. Actually, everyone we met in la huasteca potosina was amazing to us. The morning we were leaving, the caretaker of El Banito gave us an entire bunch of bananas that he had cut off a tree with his machete that morning (no kidding, there are enough bananas on this thing to last us for two weeks!) which we now have strapped to the roof of the westy with bungee cords! As they ripen we will fry one or two of them up for breakfast, to eat with eggs, beans and rice –breakfast of champions! You should have seen the looks we got yesterday driving to the gulf with the bananas strapped to the roof! After heading into Tampico to buy our new camera at this fancy department store chain called Liverpool (bananas in tow) we wanted to get out of the city and so we headed south.
La peor parte de perder la camara era que por dos dias estuvimos en un lugar muy lindo, sin poder tomar fotos, llamado la Huasteca Potosina. Un lugar lleno de cascadas rodeadas por selva, grandes plantaciones de cania de azucar, piscinas termales y estaba en epoca de naranjas. Saliendo de las montanias fue impresionante. Fuimos de un lugar arido hasta un lugar en medio de la selva. Llegamos a un lugar llamado El Banito. Un restaurante de 50 anios que tenia un trailer park atrás. Tambien tenia 3 piscinas termales donde el agua entraba y salia constantemente (igual que las mojarritas). Nos quedamos por dos noches y nos tiramos al agua las dos. Cuando llegamos ahí, el hombre que trabajaba en el restaurante no nos quiso dejar entrar pero dos senioras que estaban alli, y despues de escuchar que veniamos de Canada, lo convencieron que nos dejara quedar. Una de las senioras que se llama Sofia, que es administradora de una estancia llamada Ganaderia Romar, nos invito a que fueramos a visitarlas el otro dia. Cuando fuimas nos ensenio la estancia y sus animales y nos recomendo pasar por varios lugares en la zona: el sotano de las golondrinas, puente de dios y un pueblo en las montanias llamado Xilitla. Lamentablemente, no tenemos fotos pero pueden encontrar informacion en el internet. Sofia nos saco unas fotos en la estancia que pueden ver aquí. Gracias Sofia! En Xilitla Mateo compro un sombrero tipico y todo el mundo lo llamaban güerito. Demas esta decir que no se lo saca ni para dormir. Antes de irnos de El Banito, el cuidador nos regalo un racimo gigante de platanos que lo pusimos en el techo de la combi. Mientras viajabamos a Tampico, nos dimos cuenta que todo el mundo nos miraba. Despues de pasar por Tampico y comprar una camara (mas que necesaria) en una tienda gigante llamada Liverpool (gracias otra vez a la recomendación de Sofia) llegamos a la costa esmeralda. Tambien pasamos por Papantla y Poza Rica (una zona donde hay mucha vainilla).
We went through the vanilla town of Papantla, but found it hard to find a place to stay with parking so we kept driving to the Emerald Coast (a little stretch of highway 180 between Guadalupe and Casitas, where there are tons of trailer parks and hotels and beach access). It was getting dark and it took us a while to find somewhere that was both open (it is low season) and would not charge us too much. We had seen this little place called Yuri’s de Alba recommended by RVers on the internet, so we stopped in here and met Mike, a guy from the US who came for a night and stayed for two years, and is now the unofficial administrator for the place (he helps out a woman whose husband died last year and left her with lots of bills and three kids, including a diabled daughter). It is very reasonably priced, has a pool with two waterslides, hot water showers, coconut palms (Mateo is learning how to open them with a machete!), a mama dog (Ari calls her bat-pig-dog) with two puppies, and is less that 50 feet from the beach. I can't wait to go for a long run in the morning! You can also pay Mike $2 and get wireless access – hallelujah! I think we’ll hang here for a little while to save some money, and hope that the sun comes back out eventually. For dinner tonight we got some fresh snapper and some local garlic and chili sauce, wrapped it in banana leaves and grilled it over the fire. We were getting a bit tired of rice so we made fried potatoes and onions, and a salad with avocado and tomato to go with it. The kids drank coconut water from the trees and Ari commented that we are pretty well on the 100-mile diet already!
Ahora estamos acampando en un lugar llamado Yuri’s de Alba. Hoy nos baniamos en la piscina que tiene dos toboganes gigantes porque el agua del golfo estaba un poco revuelta. El lugar tiene palmeras con cocos y hoy comimos un pescado con una salsa de ajo, chiles y lima, envuelto en hojas de banana y hecho a la parrilla (hasta yo (Ari) comi) con papas y una ensalada de avocado y tomate. Por fin pudimos hacer un fueguito.

Mateo burning some energy!