02/01/09-02/02/09....Campamento El Rey, near Veracruz, Veracruz
...Satellite view
El Rey RV Park is listed in Church's book but was not open in 2004/2005. It is now open and has been for a couple of years. It has parking on grass over sand, fairly level with water and power located in most sites. There are cold showers and washrooms available as well as a group palapa. The swimming pool is not functional. This year's rate is 250 pesos/night/spot, a bit high for what it offers. We decided to stay only one night.
Feb 3, 2009….Betty's notes
We left Catemaco for Vera Cruz area on Sunday. The trip there took us through the very scenic Tuxtla mountain area. Johnny had recently downloaded some new GPS software and was anxious to try it out so he and Sherry led. Larry and I were backing him up with our GPS and maps, etc. John was doing great almost to our destination. We were approaching Vera Cruz and were heading for the junction of Boca Del Rio and Anton Lazardos.. Johnny radioed Larry …. Do we turn left here??? Larry says yes and Betty says…..no, no, no, quick, you need to turn right. Well that led to Larry yelling at me saying, "That's not what the GPS is saying!" "What?" "You men and your damn toys" "Church's book shows right here at this junction" I knew where I was going. The others could not understand why I was insisting that we all turn right. I had seldom let them down with my navigating. I kept insisting that the RV Park was 11 km to the right. So we all headed to the right. Well, as it turned out we were all heading to three different RV parks!!!! Larry and John had the co-ordinance on the GPS set for an RV park in Boca Del Rio, which would have had them turning left. Betty thought Larry said the El Rey RV Park that was to the right. And Marilyn thought we were heading for a totally different park!!! What a group!!! We had a good chuckle after we all settled down.
The weather has been stormy off and on since Catemaco. We had thought we might like to do a trip into Vera Cruz. We could see the outline of Vera Cruz from our camping spot at El Rey. We were going to take our small cars there yesterday but then changed our minds at the last minute. We thought we would save the time for a more interesting town that was not so busy. Another storm was brewing so we decided to pack up and head for the Emerald Coast. We left the El Rey at 9:30 and after spending some time having some Pollo Asada for lunch at a road side stand along the way, we arrived at the Quinta Alicia RV Park at Monte Gordo around 2:30 PM yesterday. It was very windy and stormy most of the night. We are camped under tall coconut palms and hope and pray that none of coconuts fall on our solar panels.
While we were getting set up, a couple happened to walk into the park and started a conversation with John. They mentioned that they had been following our web page for quite some time. Larry is very pleased with the comments that people make about his web page. He sure puts a lot of work into it.
Today is going to be a kick back day. The sky is still a bit cloudy and unsettled. A good chance to get things caught up in our units. Marilyn is going to do a stir fry for all of us tonight. I will make some shrimp sushi for happy hour. We only have 75 more kms before we head inland so we decided to spend a few more days here at Monte Gordo just to enjoy the ocean view.
02/02/09-02/04/09....Quinta Alicia RV Park, KM 84, Emerald Coast, Veracruz
...Satellite view
Quinta Alicia RV Park is located at KM 84 between the towns of Monte Gordo and Casitas on the Emerald Coast in the state of Veracruz. It is a tidy, cozy RV park nestled amongst the tall palms with level sites and full hookups in most spots. There is good access to the beach, a swimming pool, clean showers with hot water and washrooms withOUT toilet seats. The owner is very friendly and accommodating. Internet may or may not be available, depending on the private person with satellite access. An internet coffee shop by the Pemex is fast with great coffee. Camping rates this year is a very reasonable 150 pesos.
Meet Ray and Marsha who have been following our website for some time. They are travelling Mexico in the opposite direction we are. Ray and Marsha have a camper and are parked at Del Zorro camp ground just down the road from us, they were out for a walk and just happened to stop by.
We left our camping spot at Quinta Alicia around 9:00 a.m. We had a short drive to the village of Papantla. It was at Papantla that the Spanish discovered vanilla. Mexico is famous for its vanilla. Papantla is also famous for its Valadores Pole performers. In the past this ceremony was performed to the god of rain to bring rain for the crops. It is now performed as a tourist attraction. Not far from Papantla are the ancient ruins of El Tajin. This ancient community had its beginning in the first century A.D. It is believed that the Totonacs started the construction. They had built several pyramids. Tajin means "Thunder" in the Totonac language. We spent a few hours there and really appreciated the knowledge of our guide, Fernando. Be sure to look him up whenever you get a chance to visit El Tajin. He is very well informed on the ruins at El Tajin.
El Tajin will be the last archaeological site we will visit on this trip. I cannot believe that, although we were able to visit most of the major sites in Mexico, we only touched a small portion. The ones we did visit were all so impressive. It certainly has given us an understanding of some of the pre-Hispanic history of Mexico.
02/04/09-02/06/09....El Tajin Ruins, near Papantla, Vereacruz
...Satellite view
As mentioned in Church's book, the El Tajin parking is accessed by a small dirt road that leaves the main road right in front of the statue. You can see the grassy field at the turnoff. It is fairly level with losts of moving room. If it is raining a lot, be careful of soft spots. No facilities, garbage near the first vendors stalls. Rate: 50 pesos/night/rig.
Friday Feb 6, 9 a.m. We left the El Tajin parking lot without incident. It had rained a lot in the night and we were worried some of us may have gotten stuck. Fortunately, we all made it out. We are headed for San Miquel de Allende and Guanajuato. The first large town we came across was Poza Rica. We missed the by-pass and ended up going through the busy downtown area in early rush hour traffic. (We are getting used to this and also used to the police escort out of town!) Bill was tail gunner and radioed up to John whom was our leader that there was a police car behind Bill with his lights flashing. Uh, Oh, are we all getting pulled over? Bill let him pass, then Ben, then Larry. He passed John, still with his lights flashing and kept them on until we were well out of town!!!
The mileage from Poza Rica to San Miquel de Allende is 484 km. We knew we could not make it in one day. The road there is very slow as we go through many small villages and over many more topes (speed bumps). The scenery has started to change from the lush jungle of the Papantla and Poza Rica area which are on the East side of the Sierra Madres Oriental mountain range to the semi-desert terrain of the west side of the Sierra Madres Oriental range. We had climbed over the mountains to a height of over 7000 feet. And it is cooling off considerably.
Around 2 pm we started to look for a place to camp. Johnny was leading. It is a lot of responsibility when you are the leader. You have to keep your eye on the traffic as well as find a spot for all of us to camp. Fortunately, they spotted a Bodega grocery store in Tulancingo that had the perfect spot by a tall brick wall. Well hidden out of the way of road traffic. Betty went and asked permission from the manager of the store. No problem as long as we undertook all the responsibility if anything should happen to us or to our units.
This camping spot gave us all a chance to stock up on supplies. Sherry had made lasagna for all of us the night before. There were enough leftovers to share with all of us again this night. So there we were all huddled under jackets and blankets enjoying our dinner and salad in the parking lot of the Bodega store!!! We must have been a sight for the locals. Man, was it cold. It reached +0.5 C in the night. We had to dig out our warm quilt and put the furnace on. So, you see, it is not all beach and sunshine in Mexico!!
When we are traveling down the road and we have no destination because we cannot find any RV Parks listed anywhere, our plan is to start looking for possible camping spots around 2 pm. Every hour after 2 pm, our criterion for selecting a spot lessens until we get desperate. A desperate spot would be a noisy Pemex station or a spot closer to the highway. Today we were fortunate and around 3 pm we found this Bodega Store with an excellent large parking lot. We obtained permission and here we are. Rate: free.
We are in the high country here, six to seven thousand feet and this afternoon the temperature rose to +19.5C. It was a clear night and this morning at 6 a.m. the temperature was a low +0.5C with 1/4 inch of frost over everything.
Please note on the satellite view, the Bodego Store has not been built yet...(old photo)
Saturday Feb 7, 9 a.m. We left the parking lot around 9 a.m. with the high expectation of making good mileage. Our next big challenge was traversing the big city of Pachuca. Amazingly we managed to find the by-pass and it was relatively easy. We managed to get on the correct toll highway. One has to be careful here as one wrong turn and you would be heading towards Mexico City which is less than 100 km to the south. We could see the horrible brown pollution in the air. Imagine what it would be like in a city that is one of the most populated cities in the world. Mexico City has a lot of history. We would have loved to explore it but the pollution would have caused us a lot of breathing problems.
The toll road ended at Actopan. Ben was leading. Just after making the exit off ramp Larry heard a thump. He looked at the rear end camera and could see our tracker swerving. He radioed to Ben that we had to pull over. We pulled off to the side. Bill and John followed us while Ben managed to pull off about .5 km down the highway. At first inspection Larry thought all was okay. I decided I needed to go into the camper and stepped on the tow bar to enter the camper. It was then that Larry noticed the U-shaped mounting bracket for the tow bar had broken into two pieces. Bill, John and Larry took it all apart. We were parked in front of a Chicken Asada stand and asked where there was a welding shop. Would you believe there was one next door? The guy there could not fix it but (of course) he had a buddy who could. His buddy took off with it and was back with the repaired piece before we could finish our Chicken (Pollo) Asada lunch. Total cost 150 pesos ($15.00 CDN). Boy, we sure thanked our lucky stars as we had been traveling some high mountain roads the past two days.
We managed to travel a further 233 km. With only 110 kms to get to our destination we knew we would not reach San Miquel de Allende before it got dark so decided to call it a day at a large truck stop at San Juan del Rio. We parked far enough off the highway that the road noise was bearable. Ben and Lynette had dinner at the restaurant. The rest of us had some food we needed to cook up. Ben and Lynette said the soup was wonderfully good and so filling. They ended up taking most of their main course back to their unit as they could not finish it all. We had breakfast there this morning. The service was a little slow but the food was quite good.
02/07/09-02/08/09....San Jose Restraurant, San Juan del Rio, Queretaro
...Satellite view
We traveled until 3:15 p.m. today when we came across a large parking lot right beside a restaurant. It looked good and we were 200 ft. from the highway so after getting permission we set up our overnight camp. It was not bad overnight; we could hear the highway traffic with my earplugs there was no problem. Still in the high country our 6 a.m. temperature reached +2.5C. We had an excellent breakfast in the restaurant in the morning before a 9:30 a.m. departure. Rate: free.
02/08/09-02/11/09....La Siesta Hotel, San Miguel de Allende. Guanajuato
...Satellite view
The La Siesta Hotel RV Park as listed in Church's book was quite easy to find as long as you follow their instructions. The park at the back of the hotel has lots of room and sites with full hookup. There was wi-fi available free of charge and we could pick it up easily from our camp spots with our special antennas. Hot water showers and washrooms in the center of the park. Laundry drop off is available at the reception desk. Todays rate: 200 pesos/night/rig.
Feb 11, 2009 …. Betty's Notes
San Miquel de Allende…one of our first colonial towns to visit. What a neat town. The colonial section of town has been declared a Mexican National Monument and justly so. The town was originally built up several hills. It is a very artsy cobbled-stone town. There are over 3000 foreigners living in San Miquel de Allende.
We took the bus (5 pesos each) into town from our campsite. The town square is very interesting, lots of lovely old architecture. The entire city still looks like something out of the 1700's.
We had lunch at Mama Mia's Restaurant. The food and service were excellent. Some of us enjoyed a feast of liver and onions….yummy!
We spent three nights enjoying the ambience of San Miquel. Tuesday was market day. Bill, Marilyn, Larry and I spent a couple hours there. It is at the market places that most of the locals stock up on fruit, vegetables, poultry, meat and clothing as well as some electronics and hardware. The market is held at a field up in the hills overlooking SanMiquel de Allende. Also, on the outskirts of the historic colonial city there are several modern stores.
We all thoroughly enjoyed our stay at San Miquel except Bill and Lynette developed some stomach problems. Lynette recovered okay but Bill is still a bit under the weather. The perils of traveling in Mexico, one has to be on guard whenever eating out. We never know when we will be attacked with the revenge.
