awesome times on the gulf coast

wow, in 3 days we have been in 3 such incredibly different places... unbelievable. This trip to the veracruz area is definitely surpassing what we dreamed.

>Veracruz

We arrived in veracruz in predawn dark on sunday morning and checked into what seemed like a potential fleabag hotel in the potential worst of dirty port towns. Wrong! people in veracruz starting with our hotel owners are so warm and the town has such elegance. we woke to tropical sunlight, walked out into soft breezy air into an incredibly active port but with lots of character and amazing amounts of music.

Veracruz was re-created in the mid 1800s during the age of elegance and the gilded age was its last heyday. So its small downtown area is laid out in excellent style. Although the main streets are a little crowded, it has a network of small walking pathways between hidden plazas. the overwhelming feeling is that you are in kind of new orleans -- 2 and 3 story grand buildings with wrought iron railings, doorways that enter in large entrance halls with ornate carved ceilings, grand stair cases and huge gilded mirrors.

The main plaza in particular has everything tropical you want... lovely grand palm trees, huge cupolas, cigar stands and about 7 different sidewalk cafes to choose from. There are several grand hotels. We had paid 350 pesos for our hotel, el faro, but since it is such low season, we found we could have paid 550 pesos for a grand room in the Hotel Imperial overlookiong the square that normally goes for 950 pesos so from 85 to 45 dollars.

for breakfast, we went to a restaurant at the border between the malecon, which is a very long portside promenade where you can watch major shipping vessels load and get on boat cr uises and watch vendors and sidewalk painter s, and the downtown area. The Cafe de la Parroquia serves excellent coffee... if you want it black you get Cafe Americano, if you want it with milk you g et a hug e glass mug and then people come around with tin teapots full of steamed scalded milk and hot coffee to fill it for you. we had some local things our hotel told us to eat - gordas and picaditos I think... mainly we got to have such fun, the place had about 12 outdoor tables and 40 indoor tables and was packed, packed with locals and some mexico city tourists.. as well as a local group of middle aged harley r iders. In came a guy with guitar, a guy with huge harp, and two dancers woman in white with big wide skirts and man in formal white, who do this flamenco like tapping dance the area is famous for. Meanwhile, clowns, santa and endless vendors of quote rolex watches and quote rayban sunglasses entertained everyone. it was hard to find tim e to eat. the crowd was fairly elegant, there is a cuban sophistication around.

For dinner and after, we were mostly sitting in plazas listening to big bands play danzon, the dance music of this area from the 30s and 40s. very romantic and the older folks dancing wore sophistication even if their clothes were simple.

There was danzon music in the big plaza, late at night ... but it was hard to hear! that{s because there was also mariachi, ranchero, son jarocho, karaoke, and maybe 3 ot her types of music being offered by strolling musicians. and cuban music, and cumbia

as you can tell we really liked veracruz. we liked the total blend of cultures.

however... our next day was even bett er we got up early and went to the town of Tlacotalpan

> Tlacotalpan

this is a river town, that in the 1800s was the major center for its whole area. the coast around veracruz is very flat and there are lots of tidal ponds and huge lagoons... and in the 1800s roads could not be easily built with just manpower which was in short supply anyway. so where the major river of the area, the papaloapan, joins another river just in f rom the coast, a town kind of like Brazils Iquitos and Manaos, sprang up. From inland, coffee, chocolate and fruit came down, and sugar was harveste d all over the area. So the landowners became very rich. They built a town along the river in the french style or something, with wide boulevards and lined them with houses with shady arched arcades. Over t ime in the area, the tradition has come up to paint the houses with brilliant colors... orange, tangerine, lime, lemon, cherry, violet, grape, turquoise. often each house has 2 contrasting colors. Anyway... Tlacotalpan has streets of tremendous color on wide streets that are perfectly clean... the area makes victorian style cedar furniture with wicker seats and backs, making rocking chairs, dining sets and formal living room sets. So these colorful buildings have iron railed windows and when they are open to let in the br eeze, you can see... everyone seems to have a formal living room with curved bent wood rockers and cameo portraits on the walls. and its like you are in the 1890s. there is even a huge old theater that opened in the 1890s, with gilt balconies and private boxes. The first presentation seems to ahve been wagners rings.

Now, no one makes a living on sugar or coffee and all the produce goes to veracruz anyway, and the small city-t own is a ghost town, practically. The slow wide river flies by and second class buses come by, and fishermen go up and down the river and not much happens... except the cows graze and ... people play music. not so much any more but once a year the place floods with people who love the local guitar-based music, Son Jarocho. young people have to move away to make a living.. which is sad.

I see craig has just been writing about our great experience at the casa de cultura. A few more things about tlacotalpan: great place to spend one night and day... we stayed in the best hotel the Dona Lala, which was expensive for us off season 775 or about 65 dollars but it was a huge corner room on the second floor looking acr oss the street at the river and it had great kingsize bed, clean and sleek and a flat screen tv to watch old mexican movies and american movies. Up the street from the main plaza on the street that goes up river there is a hotel RIGHT on the water wich looked nice. We ate pretty good whole fish at one of the MANY restaurants that hang over the river with balconies of tables, there are lots of restaurants because of the huge crowd the town g ets every year on february 2nd, we had it with mojo de ajo which is garlic sauce which is always great, and with chilpotle sauce which was VERY hot and smoky. washed down with Indio beer and limonadas. However, at dinner time ALL the riv er restaurants are closed. there is a place to eat on the main square (the square is VERY pretty and serene, with two white churches and three fun bars) but the food is not good. So eat well early.

we had no trouble getting to Tlacotalpan by a Cuenca bus from Veracruz, and no trouble getting from Tlacotalpan by a good more first class type Cuenca bus to our next stop, San Andres Tuxtla and Catemaco and the nearby town of Santiago Tuxtla.

going up the river is fun... horacio charged the 2 of us, 100 pesos per half hour.. but we went up the Papaloapan... if I did it over I{d ask to go up the San Juan because it probably has more wildlife, more people line fishing from boats , and fewer views of riverside homes of the rich and famous (an odd thing about Tlacotalpan, it has an odd connection through its past wealth and a major composer, Augustin Lar, to the rich famous and politically connect ed in mexico, which may be why it has a very nice clean bur nished feel to it--- maybe its upkeep has to do with its wealthy visitors. anyway it{s a real nice place. nothing tawdry and people are SO helpful in a nice way, no one is conning you or trying to get something from you, they do want you to spend money there of course but they are proud of taking care of tourists, they say.

> The gulf coast scenery

So... the first imp ression I had of the coast , was FLAT. then from veracruz to T lacotalpan i could see how pretty it is. And varie d. There are big lagoons and cane fields and green sand dunes with cows, and lush tropical growth and yet some cactus also. The roads oft en seem to run along the coast dunes and the big rivers and lagoons inland, are low. the roads might even run on embankments... I get the impression at one time there was not so much solid land along. when we went up river at Tlacotalpan, we saw grassy banks, mesquite trees, cows munching, horses in up to their hocks, big white herons

Today coming from Tlacotalpan we g ot into sugar cane land and past ures with cows and cowboys on horses, and, finally we got started abruptly uphill into this amazing area, the tuxtlas. its a big volcanic outcropping I guess. There is one high cone and many smaller cones and ridges and hills. Its wilder, greener, there are tall trees of all kinds and as you climb in to the hills, it gets to look like upland maui or the way guat emala used to look, or like california in the higher coast hills when its very gr een. there are cows and sheep and areas of jungle and clear rushing streams. Its pretty neat. the main tourism focus of the area is a very large lake at Catemaco, 6 miles across, like a mini lake tahoe in a basin of volcanoes. might be a big caldera lake. i t has a black sand and basalt shore . the town of Catemaco is ok but dominat ed along the shady lakeside with fish restaurants and many many flat boats like pangas that are jus t there to take tourists to see the lake, its islands and some so called eco resorts. There are also fishermen, casting nets from their boats

One more great thing about the whole area... is the ongoing love of colorful houses. Its amazing, the combinations. tonight at sunset we were walking by a house painted the exact color of cherries... awesome in the dusk with a girl in pink sitting in front of it.

> adventures in Santiago Tuxtla

Catemaco is ok but a bit disappointing ... in that you get a lot of touristm stalls, a lot of would be boat ride givers, and overpriced food, in a site that is pretty nice but would be nicer, wilder and 20 years ago. so, we hopped on a bus today, to go back down the road 12 miles or so to the first of the 3 towns. Santiago Tuxtla gets no tourism visits except from people who want to see the Olmec heads and museum of the local finds, and it is charming to us... a vibrant , modest, not overwhelmingly wealthy but very self respecting town. We were really lucky to be steered by earlier bloggers, a chance meeting with a lonely American who moved here t o be with his local girlfriend, and our experience at Tlacotalpan, to go up to the Casa de Cultura. Oh! I see Craig has written about this! and we will youtube it.

> ok what he has not written about, is, the festivals! the holiday season is coming. in tlacotalpan we saw our first posada, a terrific juvenile event, with 6 year olds dressed in shiny sateen costumettes, being joseph, mary and the 3 kings, walking the streets trailed by a guy playing recorded mexican carols from a loudpeaker mounted on the front of his bicycle cart. he and all the adults were really enjoying the tykes. they were great. later that evening, we saw a huge crowd of about 50 bicyclists following a blaring siren and a truck with the Virgen of Juquila on it, and some motorbikers too, doing their antorchista pilgrimage like we saw last year in Merida. Today we caught a glimpse of 2 huge puppets agin, this time a skeleton and a large red satan. we look forwar d to seeing more. all the plazas are having blazing red decorations, and there are larg e biblical scenes going up everywhere in the plazas. today we wanted to go into the church devoted to the virgin of carmen, in Ca t emaco, and girls wanted us to buy bouquets of basil and roses, that you are supposed to use to make a cross on the glass enclosing the statue then smear the basil on yourself somehow. and, someone was painting christ{s crucifix. oh there is á parade going by ! gottta go and fireworks too


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well.. you can read from craig we joined a procession for the virgin. what he didn{t mention is that at the end of t he procession, people absolutely filled the church here, and, there was the most heavenly singing, of the same song. and the priest swirled clouds and clouds of copal incense around (the same incense that the aztecs and their associates used exactly in this same villge of tuxtla, (which is a very old world, nahuatl, means somet thing like field of rabbits... ) for centuries... and the huge virgin was lit by backdrop of silver and blue vertical glitter from ceiling to floor... beautiful! the music was absolutely magical. tears in the eyes...