windward side.... of catemaco

another great day. this morning we woke up in catemaco, walked down the malecon which is the waterfront (a not very busy street, with some restaurants, launches and a few religious plazas on the lake side) and went up a side street to get a ´pirata´out to the countryside and beaches. A pirata, is a six seater pickup truck, where the back has a domed roof like a conestoga wagon, and on each side are bench seats. loads from the back, with a metal gate, kind of like loading cattle. So if you are sitting on the benches in the back, you can see forward if you look over the front of the cab, at the scenery, to feel the wind blow on your face, and you can see backward, if you look out the hoop behind you, to see where you have been... otherwise you are in an enclosed vinyl tunnel and it´s great people watching just to see who you have as travel companions.

Catemaco is the town that´s meant for mexican tourists, a newish town on a lovely lake, but the town itself is not so attractive, not like the lovely town of Santiago Tuxtla we went to the other night. it´s kinda tawdry. Well... as soon has you head off towards Montepio, it´s instantly great. It´s rural and pleasant and people are very very kind. The whole area is on volcanic slopes and very green, the road winds gently up and over several ridges and drop down to the shore... then up... then down again. up high, it looks like Olinda (Maui upcontry), with cows and trees and jungle, and down low, it looks like Puna or the forests on the wettest part of hawaii, and the shore when you touch it is very nice. The pirata, is a local bus system. they leave every 45 minutes, to go a quite long way out to Montepio the beach and beyond costs about 28 pesos or 2.50 us, and, you get quite a show. not only do you wind out the road (which is mostly paved, except for a few miles where you go through the most preserved part of the jungle, where it is paving stoned=, but, you also pick up and discharge interesting passengers, and, go off the paved road back to quite a few little villages, on your way.

Our fellow travelers loved to initiate conversations with us. if they knew some english, they wanted to try it. The bus takes school kids, high schoolers, a guy taking a big cedar armchair in for upholstering, bundles of banana leaves, all kinds of stuff.

About half an hour out, after you go way up and way down, is the town of Socotepan (or something similar), which is where some fresh rivers feed a briny lake that flows out through a sandbar to the ocean. A large lake, several miles across, with fishermen. in the shores are mangrove swamps, and some freshwater rivers, lots of fish, a few caymans or crocs (not sure waht they are, as the word lagarta, lizard, and crocodrilo, can mean lots of things). However, we did not get off there, instead, we went off into the greenery through jungle and through cowpastures up and down, finally ending an hour and a half later (would only be an hour, if you were not making all the side jaunts and pauses) in a large set of bays. the first beach is montepio, an old sugar refinery was there til the 1920s, and it has pretty brown-sand beaches, very shallow, a great place for dogs and locals and intermittently, a few buses with mexican soccer players and tourists. It´s where two pretty large streams meet and discharge to the water. First we sat in lovely shade of palapas on the beach, which at first had some cute young soccer players... they left... we ate fresh fish and fresh limonadas and a coke for $10 usd... then, we wandered around a bunch, inland, thinking we might make it all the way to a waterfall. We had not realized that actually our little pirata system would have kept going to the town where you easily get to the waterfall, a place called ´revolucion de abajo´(The Revolution came from Below). So we only got to a town called ´2nd of April´. Why second of april? a woman who had some more pepsis for us in another shady palapa, said, ¨"well, it must be called this because we always have parties on that day". go figure.

Wandering was fun. we met a guy with freshly baked bread, yeasty, aromatic, wheeling them around on a handtruck in the middle of nowhere between 2 villages, wanted to know if we wanted some, we told him a new group of mexican tourists had just shown up at the beach, he got so happy and said God Bless you! and off he trotted to find them.

The nicest thing about wandering was meeting a great old guy, about 65, a cowboy, on a palomino. nicest guy. he had lived in bakerfield, or somewhere, for a decade, years ago. Said, I roamed the world, then I realized, this is heaven here. So I came back. He wanted to know if we had any magazines in english so he could look through them. we had a new yorker, not sure if he´ll like it or not. It was like meeting the guy who wrote Hele on To Kauai.... left home to see the world... found out the best was at home.

and, we hopped back on another pirata, heading back home. A new set of side roads, a new set of belongings. Immediately, some kind guy talked to us about how he´d be happy to have us come stay at his beach property, and wasn´t this the best place on earth... a place where you only have to eat, drink, swim, and sleep.... again, same story.. I´ve been everywhere... and this is heaven.

We were told, this is the switzerland of veracruz... I guess because green and cows... obviously they have never been to hawaii!

The beach at montepio is not necessarily one I´d want to overnight at... and I would never go there at a high mexico tourism time as it gets packed. but today it was a long, nearly deserted shore, three or four small spreadout towns you could hardly see... fish to eat... icecream sellers with fruit flavored sherbets... pretty nice

now, back in catemaco... busy,motorcycles, taxis, and... more parades and masses for the virgin! but we are ready to go... on to Jalapa tomorrow.

A word about catemaco... the two hotels that interested us the most were the one we stayed at, the Playa Cristal, which was more comfortable looking in that it was pretty modern, nice roomy layout, clean and not hardly run down yet (even new mexican hotels seem to run down kinda quick), and not expensive off season. the other hotel we liked is on the end of town right next to the ADO bus station. it has a huge garden... its rooms look nice... 400 pesos... but.... the beds feel like 2 inches foam on 4 inches stiff plywood... when you sit on the end, the other end clearly seems to tip up like it would if it´s all a plywood frame. and you´d hear the buses if you were too closer. but it´s right next to the edge of town, and the open spaces along the lake... from a natural setting standpoint, nice!!!!

earplugs -
as in all mexican hotels you need really good earplugs... our gorgeous room at dona lala, had an inexplicable eletric hum all night... our nice hotel the playa cristal at the quiet end of town with only one restaurant nearby was great, until someone set up a huge band in the restaurant for someone´s quinceanera.... ya just never know.... bring earplugs!