Tampico to Villahermosa

No introduction to this post....Just following the road south.

Got to Tampico in the evening, and decided to go for a beer. What better place than an Irish pub!

Next morning we were hit with a devastating heat, I was dying!! My shirt is drenched. Whatever the quick dry bullshit, the humidity here is close to 100%, the sweat has nowhere to go.

Left uninspiring Tampico, and saw this in a small town, a huuuuge statue:

Spent the night in an ugly oil town, but the seafood plate was awesome!

Mexican auto garage. I hope I won't need one...

El Tajin: A pyramid site, very cool. These guys are only supposed to perform this particular ritual every 52 years or so, but money talks and they'll do it whenever there's enough paying tourists.

Yes, those are OUR pictures, not googled....

And finally we saw the ocean, nice looong beach. And a million empty hotels. I think it started with a few guys making money out of the hotel business, and then everybody else wanted a piece of the pie. And all they got was crumbs....Actually, we noticed this as a trend, a whole street with maybe 15 shoe stores...autoparts shops...etc

This hotel owner was so surprised we asked for a room, he didn't even know what to charge us...
Biker chicks are all over my bike, yeah!

Caroline watches carefully over the little ones.

The hotel owner also had some much bigger chicks. He was using them for eggs and meat. That is one big barbecue!

They were very curious, but i didn't have the courage to get closer..

Location, location, location

Ze Thinker

Ze ozer Thinker

Finally got to Veracruz. Beautiful once, kinda pathetic nowadays. Beautiful architecture left to rot. They don't seem to care much about their heritage, businesses would rather build a new ugly glass and steel office than recondition a clasic.

Here's a few examples:
You can see through the window there's no roof.

This one was acknowledged to be unsafe...

Church looks just as bad

Has to be an attitude problem, even the portrait was crooked.

This nice building was used as a parking lot.

It's even worse looking live.

Had a coffee in the main plaza, sat there for 20 min, but couldn't finish a whole sentence with Caro, half the town came by to sell us stuff.

They like their asses big....really big!

Cooling off with a cervesa

This funny looking thing is actually a transatlantic vehicle carrier. doesn't look too stable, how does it manage not to flip over in a storm? what do I know...

Zen moment? Naaah, my legs hurt.

The jewel of the mexican marine. It belonged in a museum....

....THIS museum

It was big, we have lots of pics, but they would be boring here.

Cadet training facility :-)

Is he still in there? Must have been a pain in the arse to get in an out. Don't worry about diarrhea, use it as an additional weapon.

We were treated with a nice little concert (training, really)

Huuuuge replica

The weapon room had a dozing guard

This could make a nice poster
"Haut les mains"

The animal in me comes out.

And the famous Lechero, which is coffee and lots of milk....more on this later.

Nice little street leading to the main plaza. ALL the buildings on the right are hotels.

Annnnd the big shocker. I couldn't believe my eyes, there's another romanian in town? but it was closed, so couldn't ask.

Enjoying a nice long walk in the expensive area of Boca Del Rio. This is an area that's trying hard to be a chic seaside destination, but just can't pull it off. New buildings/hotels are followed by dilapidated zones. All in a seemingly random arrangement, like there's no urban engineers in Mexico.

An artists' interpretation of a siren.

A much better interpretation...

Veracruz used to be a thriving port and as such had many attacks from European pirates. We saw in the naval museum drawings and replicas of how the fortifications looked like. This is all there's left of it, a little piece in a park. What a shame!

Next day we continued on towards Tlacotalpan, which is a world heritage town. On the way we saw this amazing site, many cows calmly walking on this inundated field. Yep, it's rainy season!

"Hey wuzzup", "nottin' much just swimmin' "

A few pics from the town, probably the first one that was cared for in our trip so far. Beautiful and bright colours!

The church was blue!

Main Plaza

On the road again, towards villahermosaHehehe, gringo, come esta?

Next post:
Disaster Hits, moto blows the engine.....