Tropical Mexico

If you were in Key West right now and could look southwest for 740 miles you would be able to see GANNET2 parked on the beach staring out over the muddy turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Freedom Shores they call this campground where we pay 300 pesos a night, about $16, for our slice of Mexican paradise. And the laundry belongs to our French neighbors, not us just for the record. 

Monday, the national Mexican holiday honoring Benito Juaréz passed us by in a blur of driving as we made our way across countryside that gave me fits of nostalgia for our south Florida home. I kept saying to Layne “this looks like the Everglades” or “we could be around Lake Okeechobee” as we drove along at sea level surrounded by banana palms, sugar cane and the inevitable coconut palms. 

We woke up in our truck stop parking lot on Highway 145, the toll road to Villahermosa (“pretty city” a misnomer I think) the capital of Tabasco State.

Layne thought the city might be a good place to stop as we could get a night in a Hilton Hotel for 10,000 points and there is also a Costco in the city, the last one on our drive to South America as we won’t be passing by Merida the southernmost Costco in Mexico. I demurred arguing we’d be in Villahermosa in a couple of hours and Belize customs are said to be quite strict and we will have to start getting used to shopping locally. Mexico in many respects is surprisingly integrated with US commerce. 

In the end we circumnavigated Villahermosa pushing south on the toll road - the “cuota” - making miles with our eyes and minds focused on Belize at this stage. Ice cream seller, caught as we drove Highway 180, the coast road to Ciudad Del Carmen:

Yesterday was a cool overcast day with sudden bursts of rain leaving puddles on the ground and moisture in the air like a summer afternoon in Key West. The land is low lying so roads are built up on causeways and on either side we could farm animals grazing in lush wet fields sharing the bounty with snowy egrets, little white spots amid the greenery. I felt oddly at home. 

“These people live in a swamp,” Layne said indignantly as we left the  Highway and took 180, a toll free road clinging to the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. Water was everywhere after the recent heavy rains. We had left behind the aridity of the Pacific Coast in winter and the cactus country of the Sonoran desert.  

As much as I like the tropics, and we are at 18 degrees north here, far below the Tropic of Cancer, southern Mexico is pretty tough economically speaking. Compared to the north these states are less developed, more dusty and shabby and many of the roads seem to have been surfaced with molten lava that has been allowed to cool into any shape it wants. I hope my picture shows the true horror of a road surface squashed into a trench: 

I’ve never seen anything like it, long straight ruts created by endless truck tires, summer heat and zero maintenance. We weaved as we progressed. 

You can also see heavy traffic on the evening of the last day of the long holiday weekend. Google maps predicted more than an hour to cover 25 miles and that was as slow as we drove most of the afternoon. 

The long lines of traffic snaked painfully along but as always most drivers were pretty courteous and patient though we did see some examples of impatient passing and pushing. Road rage and gun waving are not a part of Mexican road culture happily. Even when a truck breaks down and blocks the narrow roadway. We took it in turns to pass patiently. 

I am forced to the conclusion that Covid has caused swathes of damage to this coastal tourist economy. Lockdowns, travel bans and so forth have set marginal communities back. Ciudad Del Carmen, a small barrier island city looked the worse for wear. 

There was nothing too appealing here for us. 

We pressed on finally reaching open water views. The Gulf of Mexico: 
Beach getaway: 

The bridge to the town town of Isla Aguada (“watery island”) wherein lies Freedom Shores RV park. 

And, just like the Florida Keys, the old bridge is a fishing pier and pedestrian walkway - with the occasional moped riding on it to evade  traffic backed up at the toll booth on the new bridge! 

The three dollar toll caused a bit of a traffic back up, one last one, entering the town and we drove around a little to check the town  out and assess our choice of campground. Freedom Shores won out thanks to the easy beach access and smooth waters for swimming in the gulf. 

The waterfront, below. There is another smaller campground here but there is no water access for swimming on the Malecon, the waterfront street. 

One gets the feeling Isla Aguada has seen better days.  

We bought corn tamales from a street vendor touting for business at the toll booth. They weren’t the greatest we’ve had, a little dry and grainy, but they were a side dish for Laynes’s roast chicken bought on the road with Trader Joe’s sriracha barbecue sauce bought in Tucson in January. 

A quick dinner after a long day on the road. Incidentally we couldn’t get Starlink to connect here possibly because of the tree cover while  Layne thought the cloudy day contributed  so we may move around to see if we can find a clear path to the sky in this well shaded spacious tropical campground.

The internet phone signal here is a little weak during the day, with slow connectivity. I’m up in the middle of the night when no one else is online so I got to post this with no difficulty at all. We actually need internet access here to get Rusty’s permit to enter Belize. It’s really idiotic but we have to apply to import him to Belize as  though he were a prize heifer or a flock of sheep.

And the Belize Agricultural Health Authority (BAHA) has a form we email to Belmopan, the capital, and which they should return to us within seven days…once they are sure my coddled dog will pose no threat to Belize’s livestock. Once we have the permit we drive to Chetumal, the capital of Quintana Roo state and get a single year rabies shot and a health certificate from a Mexican vet close to the border who knows what to do. One such is listed on the iOverlander app. With those papers and a US$25 fee Rusty gets to enter Belize, a country with its own population of not well looked after dogs. Absurd. 

Meanwhile a few shots from the road yesterday. Starting with a typical highway  toll booth:

Fried plantain seller at a gas station. They were delicious. 

Lots of motorcycle traffic as usual, with any kind of load including a ladder. 

I needed to pee (too much tea) so I stopped, put on the idiot lights and no one freaked out when they passed. Easy peasy. Also you don’t get labeled as a sex offender for answering nature’s call roadside. Imagine that. 

Not the sunshine skyway bridge in Tampa Bay, but similar. 

Christ the King supplier of fuels. Beats me, I just photograph this stuff. 

Mountainous Highway 175

It was about as tough for me as it was for Rusty to leave the joy and serenity of  El Rancho RV Park.  You meet people on the road, you exchange stories, then one fine morning you say goodbye. Or au revoir, hopefully. It’s a wrench. Bugger; but we did have a committee to cheer us on our way inside and outside the gates. Greg, Duwan and  Lauryn came by to see us off, a lovely gesture at an ungodly early hour. But once outside we met our real friends at breakfast: 

I chose our route to the Yucatán Peninsula so I picked the hardest route to get out of Oaxaca, a twisty thread called Highway 175.  “Be careful,” Paco the RV Park owner said as I discussed it with him. “Secure your home, enjoy the bends and the views are five times more spectacular than you expect.” He was correct on all counts. I’d been looking at these hills for three weeks from the campground and now was the time to drive them. I couldn’t wait. 

I knew we were going up to 10,000 feet (3048 Canadian feet) and I expected to see a variety of flora but I wasn’t expecting a reasonably smooth road with not too many topes. But of course this is Mexico so there had to be at least some speed bumps. “¡Pinche topes!” 

The rule is if Layne wants me to pull over she has to say “Stop!” so that’s what I did.  I pushed the idiot button which fires up the four-way flashers to warn other drivers the gabacho is about to do something idiotic:

In this case a half assed parking job with a chunk of the Promaster stuck in the travel lane. So the other Layne could do some vital shopping. Mexican motorists overcame my flunked parking job with their usual unnaturally  serene calm. In the US I’d have been shot in an act of justified homicide. I love Mexico. 

We ended up with some extremely peculiar leathery Mexican bread along with some surprisingly delicious strawberry preserve. In Mexico? Who’d have thunk? 

Up we went on a road that lacked its fair share of rough patches and potholes and also came equipped with very few topes overall. And one killer stretch of fresh asphalt - be still my beating heart! 

What a glorious morning. We had left old friends and new behind in El Rancho but this was pretty enough to take the edge off the pain. 

“Keep The Highway Clean” and it really wasn’t that messy, most of it. 

We slipped through a village crowded with a basketball tournament which I thought was an eccentric way to celebrate the birthday of the national hero Benito Juaréz. Then we got held up by some rather energetic women lugging a flame for some obscure reason  through the mountains. Hats off to them as we were around 7500 feet under the burning sun. Also a Benito Juaréz thing I assume. Eccentricity is everywhere. 

I said there were few topes, not none. 

We stopped for tea, as you do, at a more or less flat spot at a restaurant that has seen better days. The concept of panoramic vista points and turn outs has not yet reached Mexico, worst luck. 

It was in a scenic spot surrounded by lichen covered pine trees. 

And a rather relaxed neighbor pondering the meaning of life while chewing the cud. 

They must have had quite the bonfire party judging by the size of the twigs in the ash pile. 

Layne enjoying life in a van while presenting me with a Tervis tumbler of Yorkshire Gold. 

After we slipped over the top of the last summit the road continued as it had started unable to make up its mind which way to go:  

But the weather and the vegetation changed completely as we drove into the east facing watershed. What had been a bright crisp sunny day among the pine trees turned into a soggy, gloomy fogged-in tropical rainforest.  It reminded us of a long  ago vacation driving the mountains of Puerto Rico, all lush decay and abnormally huge ferns drooping into the road. 

We could not avoid at least a little unnecessary drama in this motoring backwater, so it was that we found a truck that had shed its load, just like that. Bummer. 

The tow truck driver waved us on and I felt the best thing to do was to extricate ourselves as fast as possible from the scene of his excruciating embarrassment. The driver appeared to be alone so I don’t know who was going to break the news to the owner of the pick up that his problem vehicle was now totaled. 

I don’t normally enjoy rain very much but the heater was working  splendidly and the scenery was just mind boggling. 

Beyond the trees we could only catch glimpses of plunging canyons and everywhere the mountains wreathed in fog were covered in shiny wet greenery just like this. The few visible locals looked like a hardy bunch. 

The temperature hovered around fifty degrees (10 Canadian) but felt colder.  

As we descended I stuck GANNET2 in manual first gear and we maintained our earth scorching average of a rather sedate 20 mph. 

Derrumbes, slides and random sharp pointy rocks in the road were all things to observe and ponder. 

We dodged all attempts to slow our progress including one lane blocked by a fallen tree and finally we arrived in Textepec back down at a reasonable four hundred feet above sea level. The town was being held hostage by a vast covered street market that occupied the Main Street for blocks and required some rather deft use of the idiot button, hand flapping out of the window and some mild steering wheel chewing to extricate ourselves. 

Lunch. What bliss, Rusty walked and snoozing in his bed aboard, a table spread with nourishment and absolutely no internet to interfere with the feast. 

Meat, salad, spicy condiments, beans, hot corn tortillas, and a glass of horchata, the vanilla flavored life giving rice milk drink, suitable to soothe a burning esophagus. I felt like Mole going on a picnic with Ratty in the Wind in the Willows. 

Outside the foul weather persisted but I was immune. We had descended the mountains and our brakes hadn’t burned up. We had punctured no tires on sharp randomly scattered rocks and I was full of lunch and coffee and all was right with the world. My dog still loved me. My wife fell into a carb coma and Highway 175 continued to unspool. 

That was when we met sugar cane traveling at four miles a fortnight towed on creaking trucks and in long caravans  of trailers pulled by asthmatic tractors. Progress was in fits and starts as the road opened up and passing was made possible. 

Check out the sugar cane tractor passing over Highway 145D, the toll road to Villahermosa, capital of Tabasco State. I would pass it on foot hopping on one leg at the rate all that sugar cane moves. 

I’m damned if I believe it myself but while we lunched the dropped pick up truck passed us riding high again on the tow truck and we caught a glimpse of it just before we got on the freeway. That must have been quite the reloading job. You can see it floating rather battered  just above the traffic in San Juan Bautista Tuxtepec below: 

The sun was so low in the sky the suggestion came from the passenger seat, quite forcefully I might add that it was time to stop.

This vast parking lot behind a Pemex near Oluta, Veracruz State, made itself known. 

Naturally the cell signal was feeble so, nothing daunted I pulled out my personal satellite receiver and in five minutes I was well on my way to solving an NYT crossword puzzle. The blessings of science. 

Allow me to point out the only reason this excessively long post is on this page with all these photos is thanks to Starlink with its blindingly fast upload speeds. 

Modern life continues to baffle me with bull shit at an ever faster pace. In less than a week we may be sweating profusely and eating terrible food in Belize. With Starlink in tow of course.