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!