If you are ever in the area, we highly recommend the El Tajin Ruins. We have read you could spend a couple of days exploring them, and I am sure that is true. We considered camping in their parking lot overnight so we could spend more time here, but there was no security so thought better of it. We spent a few hours here and headed out because the drive to the Emerald Coast promised to be a long one.
The road from Poza Rica to the El Tajin Ruins was awful, just like the road from Tampico to Poza Rica. The road from El Tajin to the Emerald Coast (Costa Esmeralda) was quite enjoyable though. Depending on what the roads are like from here to the Yucatan we may head inland further south when we come back or return to El Tajin then head inland. We have no desire to experience Poza Rica, Tampico or the roads in their vicinity ever again. The scenery, as usual in this country was beautiful, but the wear and tear on Myrtle and Albert is simply not worth a second look.
I plan to buy Andrew Coe's Archaeological Mexico online and have it shipped home so I can pick it up at Christmastime. We have a lot of ruins to visit this winter, and I have read this book is a must have.
We have so many awesome pictures of El Tajin it was hard to pick just a few for the blog. We got a bit carried away, I hope you enjoy them.
The pictures just don't do it justice. When we saw this amazing view I exclaimed "My kingdom for a wide angle lens"!!!!
When we arrived at the Mar Esmerald RV Park, the attendant told us they have wifi. We didn't check it for ourselves until after we hooked up and settled in. There was no wifi. We chose this park because Church's book said it had wifi and we had read some good reviews from bloggers who have been here. Although, the blogs were years old, we had hoped they were still relevant.
We had an awesome site at Mar Esmerald RV Park with a view of Gulf of Mexico, and we could hear the waves. The sounds of the waves rocks me to sleep at night.
We unhooked Albert and drove further south down the road to check out the other campgrounds. There are a dozen of them along a 20 mile stretch. We learned of the Italian Cafe that gives paying customers access to the internet, so we stopped in there to let the world know we were safe and sound. We planned to go back and blog last night, but thought better of going out onto the roads after dark.
Through the night the water was turned off, we never found out why. When we got up in the morning we found out they didn't have hot showers, even though Church's book says they do. We discussed it, and decided we would stay there another night anyway, after all we could shower in Myrtle and go down the road to the Cafe to use the internet.... and the site was so beautiful. However, Henrico tried to tell us that the price had doubled overnight! The cost was 150 pesos a day, which was reasonable. We were going to ask for a discount because of the lack of internet and hot water, but Henrico tried to get us to pay him 150 pesos EACH! We said no, paid him the 150 pesos for last night and hopped in Albert to go find another campsite. We are down the road, at the Hotel Torre Molino. It is very nice here. They have hot showers, internet, AND our Telcel stick works here. It is upscale compared to the first place, and costs 300 pesos a night. Some of the other campgrounds along the strip were 150 to 200 pesos, but none of them had internet. We decided for one night it was ok to pay a bit more to not have to go sit in a cafe to use the internet.
We met a fellow named Ricardo on the beach. He owns a modest piece of property with coconut trees and ready access to the gourmet foods the Gulf of Mexico has to offer him.
He spoke so quickly, I couldn't repeat back what he was saying, so I asked him how to spell it. He wrote jaivas in the sand. Crab.
He threw out 5 nets, waited five minutes and went out and checked them. We could have saved him the trouble of writing it in the sand if we waited a couple of minutes. Some had a crab in it, some didn't. He would empty them and toss them out again.
Between catches, Ricardo bounded away, up off the beach and came back with a coconut for us. What a nice guy. We gave him 20 pesos, and he seemed quite surprised that we offered him money, but seemingly reluctantly he took them. I wasn't sure if he was expecting it or not, but we felt like we should offer him something.
We haven't taken any pictures of our new campsite yet....just catching up with the blogging and facebooking and emailing! Now it is time to take the camera and go for another walk on the beach. Blog at ya later!
No comments:
Post a Comment