Chaos Leaves Town

From Catemaco we headed due east to Chetumal, spending the night in a Pemex station that had long lines waiting for fuel. I’d fueled up 2-300 miles earlier and could easily make it to Chetumal so I spent that evening cleaning up the grassy area in front of the station rather then waiting for fuel. It was a mess of plastic bags, cups, bottles, papers and the like people had tossed out of their windows and since it was my front lawn that night, I didn’t mind spending 45 minutes picking it up. Filled two big bags with trash then brought out my lawn chair and a beer and enjoyed the distant sun sinking into the jungle, I could swear I saw steam rising as it set.

Next day we’re on our way and pass this odd suspention bridge. Cool design.

Around noon, we stopped along side of the hiway for lunch:

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On of the many types of flowers right around here in the jungle:

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When we arrived at Chetumal, we had time to stop and do some shopping in a giant mall, then tripped out to the property of one of the travelers. This land was inhabited by the Maya for a thousand years and on this property, there is both a platform for a house, tons of broken pottery on the ground, and a small pyramid. Wow. It’s not everyone who can say that their property is an archelogical find.

Where I parked:

The ancient mound where there use to be a house, the current property owner is allowed to build over it or around it but not dig into it:

Another view of the mount behind the modern palapa with it’s hammocks:

Next day, I rode my bike up the road maybe 2 miles from where we were staying, to a Mayan ruin site…I don’t recall the name and a quick check of my guide books turns up nothing, but it is an improved site, with a parking lot with restrooms, and a charge of $50 pesos to visit. It took me from 7:30 am to around 10:30 at a leisurely pace, without having to dodge any other tourists, to circumnavigate the entire site. This is one of the estimated 12,000 ancient ruin sites all over Mexico. This one I would call…cozy. It was a working town until the Spaniards arrived, murdered a bunch of people, forced many into slavery, then built a giant church on the grounds to show how powerful their god was to the natives. The church is interesting in that it has a couple of huge arches incorporated into the building. The Maya seemed to never figure out the arch, they built what’s actually an inverted V, like this ^ only steeper, and it could not carry much weight, or they just preferred to ignore the superior load bearing abilities of the classical arch for their own reasons. Whatever the case, they didn’t use the arch. Or wheels:

This was the first pyramid I was able to climb in Mexico…:

An example of how the jungle can cover huge buildings, there is another large pyramid just up this trail but it’s totally invisible until you’re nearly on top of it:

The top of another pyramid, this one has (had) what appears to be a home on top, the sign said that it was a female gods home or something like that:

A thousand years ago, this plaza would have been devoid of trees, but filled with merchants and shoppers:

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This is what the sign said is one of the rulers dwellings. There are several bedrooms, and a large kitchen nearby. These rooms are on top of a large but not very high pyramid overlooking a plaza, with a religious pyramid on the other side of it and administrative pyramids on either side. There does not seem to be what we would call a living room in the dwellings I’ve seen. But the weather here is so fair, I’d imagine people, including the rulers, would hang around outside until time for sleep:

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That was just one of the thousands of towns and cities that the Olmec, Toltec, and Maya built over here in the Yucatan.

A day or two later I moved over to a nearby RV park intending to stay a month or so…but the place wanted $32 per night and the weekly rates were not much better. They never told me what the monthly rate would be. Anyway, I didn’t see much in the area that would be all that interesting anyway, so I headed on up to Cancun and Chichen Itza. But here’s a few pictures of the RV park anyway. The ocean was pretty nice:

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The several Mexican cemeteries we have passed in our 3-4 weeks here have been interesting to see at 40 MPH but I wanted a closer look, so when we stopped for a break right across the street from an old cemetery in the suburbs outside of a big town, I wandered over there with the camera to get a few shots.

Their cemeteries are colorful, cramped, with many heartfelt expressions of love chiseled into the granite markers. We visited a few days past the day of the dead so there were many flowers still there, adorning the graves…

The small buildings are really shrines to the departed, and the more money you have, the bigger and better the shrine is. There were above ground crypts as well, some going back to the 1800’s.

Many of the cap stones and shrines showed their age by style and weathering, but mostly the care and tending of these rest spots implied that the Mexican people visit their departed loved ones often, and bring gifts along with the flowers. One thing I did notice is that the tiles used in the construction of most of the shrines were nicer then most of the types of tile I’d seen in stores and homes I had visited in Mexico.

While I don’t know the burial traditions of this place, I think anyone would get a sense of how nice the people really are by seeing how they care for these family members. I wonder how far back their traditions go…

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Back on the road, and a couple hours later, we stopped at a Pemex for lunch. I found this guy living in a diesel air filter. I wanted the filter so I dropped it out and watched it scamper under my rig…too quickly for me to get another shot.

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Then the weather started to close in again and we drove through a couple of drenching squalls:

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This is one of the rain swollen streams we crossed, one thing they don’t lack here is rain:

After we left Xalapa, we first headed east then south to Catemaco. It is a picturesque town on the shore of a lake of the same name. When we arrived, there were no other RV’s in the park that we could see, but the lake was inviting and we settled in for the night despite the lack of sewers or running water at out spaces. They were also asking too much and we negotiated a better price for several days. Meanwhile, we arranged for a special boat ride the next day for $350 pesos for six people. Happily, a German couple arrived late in an older Class A, Horst and Anna, and they joined our little group the next day for a lake tour.

How we all parked in this little space:

The restaurant where we had great food at a great price, 1/2 the cost of in the US but high by Mexico standards of pricing:

The boats the tourists take to tour the lake, ours was arranged for the next day:

Up the street:

Dusk over the lake. It’s just across the street from where I’m parked:

Next day our boat waiting for us:

And we’re off:

The greyhound surveys, seemed he was a natural sailor:

Lazy birds:

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This area has been inhabited for thousands of years. It was in ancient times, a resort area. Although there are few ruins, there is some reason to believe that at one spring at the north end of the lake, bubbling warm fresh water through mud, has drawn people for centuries for soothing mud baths. There were constructions that have been rebuilt and reproductions of ancient statuary akin to the works that would have been here a thousand years ago and have been reset at ancient positions, though the actual statues are long missing. We toured the area, it’s called an ‘eco preserve’ area by locals, and some of the profits from our tickets are put back into preserving the flora and fauna. The pictures you see here are of the rebuilt buildings and reproductions of typical statuary, mostly historically accurate in that they are appropriate gods and goddesses of the indigenous peoples of the area. These first few pictures are as we motored the lake near the western shore for views of the egrets and a few nice estates.

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Their are 3 kinds of birds in this shot…we were told that the two smaller species, one mostly black, and the other mostly white with yellow feet, sometimes get drunk and walk on the wild side, producing the larger and heavier 3rd type of egret that was nearest the top of this tree. It’s dark with yellow feet, and they always seem larger then their parents. Or so the guide told us. You can see that it appears twice as large as it’s neighbors near it as well as larger then those perched below.

The weather was a little spooky, what with the clouds rolling over and sometimes threatening to rain, but it was mostly mild with a temp around 74F and no rain all day…

We approach the sanctuary:

Pay our $35 pesos and cross the suspension bridge with our guide:

A restored walkway:

One of the ceremonial circles:

A little local color:

This goddess takes on the sins of the petitioner or something, that’s the meaning of the black around her mouth. At first I just thought she needed a shave.

This was the sweat lodge. Water would be poured onto hot rocks for steam:

One of the interesting buildings that I forget the meaning of:

This use to be the area where they got the mud, now I’m not sure:

Some kids enjoying a swing:

There’s a gator out there somewhere. They were almost hunted to extinction by the locals but these are protected:

These lizards are rescued from the wild as eggs, grow up here, then are released at age 3 or 4. They handle that treatment well and after release are hunting on their own quickly. The locals eat to many of them which is why they need to be protected here:

On our way back from the ‘Eco Preserve’, we passed Monkey Island that some idiot thought would be a good place to release a few imported Indonesian Short Tailed Macaques. They’ve been overfed ever since but have never made it from this island to the mainland. The 2-3 year old animals are captured and sold to zoos all over the world., which maintains the tribe population at around 20 individuals. One alpha male, female adults, and then the kids. Tourists have been overfeeding them since they got here. As you can see, they are fat, but not as unhealthy (I’m told) as they use to be because of a change in the treats the tourists are now allowed to give them. Before there were too many treats, now it’s protein instead. As you can imagine, the dog went nuts when he saw these little hairy people…but the monkeys could have cared less:

That tour only took 3 hours so the rest of the day we wandered around downtown Catemaco while I looked for some stuff called Microdyn. It’s based on iodine I believe and it’s used for purifying water and veggies. Took quite a while to find it, had to go to 4 stores. This town is a quintessentially Mexican village. I’ve been through many villages down here now and this one really gets my vote as one of the more interesting and attractive. But for you Gucci wearing types, it is very rustic as well. But there are some 3-4 star motels here. I’m glad I made it up here.

One of the aggravating things about RV’ing in Mexico is the lack of consistency. For the money we would have been paying for our spaces here, compared to the US, or even a better Mexican RV park, we would have gotten 30 amp, water, and sewer, or at least a working dump station. Maybe even cable. Here, we got 20 amps, no water unless you wanted to drag a bucket over to the restaurant, and a dump station you had to back up too, and that was higher then where you could park a rig like mine to use it…and sewage doesn’t flow uphill. They tried to charge us way too much, but we were able to negotiate a pretty good price since it’s the off-season and the place was empty when we got there. The campground ended up having my Class A, another Class A, two Class C rigs, a couple class B camper vans, a truck camper, and even backpackers, who used a tent. They mostly all arrived later in the day and the next day so we considered ourselves lucky to get the discount when we arrived and the place was empty. Plus we ended up staying 5 days for a look around so that made them happy. Like I said, I stayed indoors most of that time watching and listening to games and working on the blog, while it rained buckets, but I got a good sense of this place when I did go out. It was great staying here.

After we left the Emerald Coast, we headed on up to Xalapa. This is a city with all the amenities including one of the largest collections of Olmec giant stone heads at their museum. It was off our track but the ladies wanted to visit with one of their friends that has a place down in Coatepec, which is just south of Xalapa.

So we arrive there late afternoon, settle in at the parking lot of a Sam’s store and spend the night. Next day the women head off to their friends place and I take a taxi half way across town to the museum. I got there at 10am and wandered around for 4 & 1/2 hours. Could have been longer but I was suppose to meet the women at 3pm and follow them to Coatepec to camp. Well, the road was so bad and the boondocking site so small in Coatepec that we decided to bag that excursion and stayed on the Sam’s parking lot for another night there in Xalapa.

The city itself is just your typical semi-modern Mexican city so I didn’t take any pictures of it, and we were having some rainstorms though the area so it was sort of gloomy.

When you first walk into the museum, this Olmec head is right there. They didn’t have any brochures to hand out so I’ll have to go by memory for this part, I think this head is considered the 7th best out of all they have:

This one is even better, it spoke to me while I was standing there, almost made me wet my pants, stupid ghostly Olmec head voice:

These guys were pissed at something:

These things weighed tons so they are not worried about a visitor walking off with them:

So you know, we are getting progessively older as these pictures take us for a walk through the museum. Starting over 800 years ago and going back to 4,700 years BPE. I won’t say much about these pieces since their descriptions were in Spanish so I don’t know much about them, occasionally there were brochures available in English so I can describe some pieces. This is a picture of the other wing of the museum, I’m still in the first part of this main wing when I took this shot out of a side door, just to give you an idea of the size of the place. They have some of the heads in their own alcoves with other pieces, they look like little courtyards in the tropics:

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This is a panther, stylized as you can see. The mouth is like a pathway to the other side:

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Here’s one of the altars:

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Can’t remember for sure…father holding dead son?

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One of the more interesting figures

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This is a clay figure of someone after they have had their skin flailed, no explanation of why you would want such a statue, maybe as a warning?:

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These following clay figures are all over 1,000 years old and are an excellent example of the type of creative art they had going on back then, wouldn’t I love to have one of these:

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Here’s a couple shots of El Tajin, where a lot of the pieces here in the museum came from, and that I visited a few days before:

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This piece is the most macabre in the museum, this is a clay representation of a torture victim. They would be tied up like the clay figure, with those big ropes, with arms placed in those cones (they’re hard to see, there are like horns near the ear and they are behind the head) so you would have your arms up behind your head and tied, with all the weight of the rock, the whole thing is made out of rock, except the rope then ?, shiver:

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These skulls and artifacts were presented here like they were found in a group grave; it may have been raided, not known:

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This guy with the huge woody is wearing the skin of a victim, seems happy about it:

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Anyway, hope you enjoyed the visit to the museum. Sadly, the Spanish did an excellent job of stealing all the gold so there are none of those types of artifacts here. There are some pieces at Chichen Itza and I’m planning on going there next, don’t know for sure where that museum is yet but I’ll try to find it soon.

After spending the morning touring the El Tajin ruins, one day is probably enough, half a day not enough, we went on without Woody (he headed on down to Panama), to the Emerald Coast. This area is well worth the visit. We got here just between the seasons so where we stayed they had few guests. We stayed two nights to recharge our personal batteries and to get on-line (it takes some effort to get the satellite set up and running and all, so if we’re not going to be in one place for at least two days, we usually bag it and don’t set up at all).

Anyway, here’s where we stayed. Note that there are several RV camping spots all up and down the coast here, all bordering the ocean. Many choices, good facilities, good nearby services and food, etc. It’s a place where you could settle for several months if you wished:

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As you can see, not to popular with the tourists at this time of year:

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The Caribbean shore, where in days of yore, Spaniards came to exploit, er, explore.

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We’re hanging here at the La Ceiba RV park in Catemaco (Caw-tea-maw-ko) another day or so, it’s Sunday, Nov. 19, 2006 and I’m trying to catch the NFL games today. I have ordered streaming audio of all the games over the internet and then I’ve got the TV tuned to an early game, Oakland vs. Kansas City, shown on a local station (with audio in Spanish). The sources are out of sync by about a minute so I watch the play on TV, and a minute later, listen to the play by play from the computer. Strange, but no stranger then the stuff you do. Yes, I can see you through your computer screen.

Anyway, here are some more pictures of the ancient city of El Tejin.
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They tell me that there are 17 ballcourts here but I only found two so I am no longer sure what I’m looking for when it comes to ballcourts. Most of the hoops that are traditional on either side of a ballcourt have been stolen and the rest removed to be placed in museums. But still, I would expect to see a wide narrow area with viewing stands on either side of any ballcourt. I suppose you folks should come here and see for yourselves. Why is the hoop stolen so often? It’s because of the macabre history of the hoops, and their artistry. During ritural games, sometimes lasting for days, the teams would use the head of someone bested in battle or the head of a sacrificial victim. The human head pushed or tossed through the hoop would count as a score, sometimes ending the game. Much like todays basketball. Every member of the loosing team could be killed. Kind of an inducement to play really, really hard. Many players died during games. Other games appeared to be just for practice where the teams tossed handmade balls of flora through the hoops to score. Thanks to the Spanish, we can only guess at most of the daily history since they destroyed all the written codicies and we only have bare sketches and their biased opinions of some of the daily life here.
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Thought that I would take my own picture with the neat structure in the background but I miss timed, that’s why I have a stunned look, it’s called the Pyramid of the Niches and is said to have 365 niches (it’s crumbled some). The pyramid was painted red and the niches black. It would have been impressive when built for sure:

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The pathways and plazas shown here are original. Very comfortable to walk on, not the bumpy plazas of old Europe or the ancient roads of the Romans (I’m told), though this place has some roads like those too, the main road into this complex is rough cobblestone:

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Well, that’s all the pictures I have of El Tajin. Tomorrow we are getting back on the road so I’ll not be on the web for a few days. After that, I’ll put up pictures of this place, Catemaco, quite the lake they have here. It’s been raining heavily for the last couple days so we’ve kind of stayed indoors mostly. But the first whole day we were here, I got some good shots.

If you can’t get enough of the ruins, here’s a link to another site that has more pictures:

El Tajin Archaeological Ruins

We settled here in Catemaco next to a large lake and have spent a couple days relaxing and checking out the town. It was overcast when we got here, the day after a major wind storm that caused lots of fallen trees and power lines, etc. It’s been intermittently raining most of the day so I took this opportunity to do some budgeting and computer work while trying to figure out why the Oregon Ducks football game was on the radio for 35 minutes and then after a glitch on my end stopped playing. Then all I could get from the radio station was a commercial loop. Very maddening but the Ducks are loosing big time anyway so no biggy to me I guess. Damn it.

I’ll get some more of those 100 pictures I told you about up here today while I’m enjoying the Prairie Home Companion. Here’s a link especially for you foreign readers, since you may have no idea what the show is about. Each show is 2 hours long and they are mostly comedy and music with some old fashioned monologues thrown in. Anyway, the shows are archived and available for free as streaming audio in English on-line:

Prairie Home Companion

The first day in Mexico it was getting wet and that evening we stopped and stayed at a Pemex station for the night.

Here’s a shot of our rigs and the weather:

The next day was more of the same weather:

We passed this huge statue in a grape growing region:

Here’s one of the many swollen rivers we passed over that day:

Finally we arrived at the El Taj’in ruins in the highlands:

We were sort of mobbed by salespersons as the weather was poor we were among the few that visited that day.

Here’s a view of the museum from where we parked for the night. Since we got there late in the afternoon, we stayed on the museum parking lot for a mere $6 US. Next morning we headed into the site thankful that it is free on Sundays.

A look at the booths the vendors use to sell you all sorts of trinkets:

The walk to the museum:

The entrance to the site:

Another view of a couple pyramids:

The following pictures speak for themselves, note that these ruins are over a thousand years old, and were inhabited then abandoned then re-inhabited then finally abandoned for 800 years. Anyway, enjoy:

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Ahh, I’m finally here, the place I’ve studied and read about and seen pictures of nearly my entire life. It does not disappoint. The Mayans built this place, I believe over a thousand years ago:

A shot of Sam to give you an idea of scale, plus she’s cute. Here she’s pointing out her great dimples to me, as if I didn’t know already:

One of the several ball courts (17) here at the site, this one is the most well defined:

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Here they (archeologists) are protecting the place with a roof since there are a lot of fresco paintings all around this building. The thatch roof helps keep it dry:

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A view from the hill top, where the elite lived in the cooling breezes, looking down over the city. Even up here, in the quiet part of town, there appear to be plazas where the elite could stand high over groups of people and lie to them, just like today:

Up in the elite part of town:

Look carefully at the lower half of the picture, those are frescoes painted over a thousand years ago:

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Sam talking to the scientist we found up on the bluff sweeping up around the covered building. He knows five languages and kept Sam occupied for 40 minutes. Since I don’t speak Spanish, I wandered off after 20 minutes or so:

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These following shots are just a few other buildings I happened to pass while wandering the site:

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This shot is of a stair well that I thought was particularly interesting. Seems meant to be intimidating:

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Well, I’m kind of tired so I’m going to take a break. I’ll put up more tomorrow before the football game.

We’ve been on the road in Mexico now for a week, we crossed the border on Nov. 7th and today is Nov. 13th. The first travel day we went to a small town right on the Caribbean coast named La Pesca and stayed right there on the beach for 3 days. It’s a Mexican tourist destination and the beach we stopped at has hosted as many as 70,000 on vacation weekends. But it was nearly deserted while we were there.

The first set of pics is of three of our four rigs and the RV park we stayed at in Mission, Texas:

This next picture is of two of the group members, Woody on the chair and Sam there in the foreground. Woody was born in Panama, joined the US Marines there and spent his 30 year career in the US. He has a thick accent, speaks Spanish first and English second and is driving back to Panama to visit all his relatives. He wanted to travel with us for a while since he had never driven an RV in Mexico and wanted to know the ropes.

Sam was born in Colombia, moved to New York at 1 & 1/2 and speaks both Brooklynese (though she grew up on Long Island) and Spanish. She is traveling down to a remote place in the Yucatan to stay a few months and maybe take a management job, if it’s offered.

Not shown is Kathe, she’s a land owner in Mexico and has been across the border at least 20 times, speaks fluent Spanish and English and will be trying to sell homes on her property to women that would like to retire down in Mexico.

We’re all traveling together to sort of help each other along with accumulated knowledge and mutual assistance.

Our first stop inside Mexico after we passed the border and border checks, this is what passes as a rest stop, we had lunch here. That’s Kathe there in the middle of the picture and her rig behind:

Just a random shot of the roadway and the typical flora and fauna, lot’s of moisture in this area. Nothing like the West coast of Mexico at this latitude, which is basically a desert:

Late in the day we arrive at the beach in La Pesca for some boondocking:

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Just a shot of my rig:

Then the jetty:

Then there is that finger of ocean water that was creeping up the beach while we wandered around, and patterns of wetness all the way up the beach. There was a friend of Kathe’s that came by and told us the dredging done recently in the channel was causing this problem, so we move to another nearby beach:

Here was my first overnight boondocking place:

And a general shot of the area, note that on busy weekends there are nearly 70,000 Mexicans here, obviously, this is the off season for this beach. If you look carefully you’ll see all those little grass covered shelters in the picture all the way up the beach. They’re rented for $50 pesos per day:

After settling in a little, I wandered over to the beach, it’s around 100 yards from where I parked, and took the following four pictures. It’s sunset and these are mostly looking somewhat east:

As you can see from my shadow, I’m very tall:

Dawn the next morning:

Still dawn, but you can see there are some tourists, Sam & Woody. We did see a lot of Mexicans drop by. In fact we helped a family that had dropped their car alarm remote into the ocean, so they couldn’t get their SUV started to drive home. I silenced the siren and Sam was able to activate the starter with the same secret procedure as works with her alarm. We got hugs:

That’s Kathe’s little 4 wheel drive runabout. I added a little hidden switch to deactivate it so a bad guy would have trouble hot wiring it:

A couple days later and we leave the beach and pass through La Pesca. It’s a typical little town of 3000 near the beach: