Hey guys,
Today I awoke super sleepy in Tampico! Dad got me up around 8 am so we could leave early to ride to Veracruz, Mexico; a 500 km day. We figured if we got there today we could get back on our schedule (we were running late due to the rest day yesterday) and maybe even knock a day off our journey.
We had a great breakfast with Jorge’s family: eggs, yogurt, fresh juice and fruit before saying our goodbyes to the Andonie family. We soon packed up the rest of our things and were on the road by 10:30 am. We filled up the bike with gas and off we went…and promptly got lost looking for the bridge that leads out of town to the south. We rode along the river and found our way into a parade route of some kind but the police who pulled us over kindly told us how to get back to the bridge. Getting out of Tampico was kind of hard. We got turned around several times in all the traffic and it was hard to see the other roads; in cities like Toronto, there aren’t many trees and houses right next to the highway so it is easier to see the road signs whereas in Mexico (or at least the part of Mexico that we are riding through), since most of your highway travels are spent trying to pass huge transport trucks, you often couldn’t see the signs saying “Bridge next right” or “Next exit a dead end!!! Do not take it!!!” You would almost always end up taking the wrong road. In Toronto only about one or two out of ten vehicles on the highway are transport trucks; here, I would say four or even five out of every ten are transports! Plus, Canadian highways often have two or three lanes; most of the highways to Veracruz were only one lane, so if you got stuck behind a transport… unless you could pass it then you were stuck behind it until one of you exited. The fact that our GPS had really old Mexican roads that didn’t exist anymore, we were pretty much on our own navigation-wise. Once we made it out of Tampico, we took the scenic route to Veracruz (AKA the only route) and it truly was scenic!
There were mountains that seemed like volcanos, ready to erupt at any moment, and there were flowers of every colour (literally) everywhere and there were rivers and streams and swamps and the ocean and jungle and coconuts and bananas and so on… and potholes. Potholes. Everywhere. Not. Fun. Every few feet there would be a little baby hole, or a biggish crack in the pavement or a big puddle. We didn’t mind those. But then there were the HUGE potholes that we mostly avoided but every little while, we would be behind a bus or car and not see the hole in time, hit one and scare the living daylights out of me! I would simply be sitting there, leaning against the back bag, chilling all happy-like when I would notice, say, a beautiful bird, for example. I would let my mind wander as I’d stare at it for a moment, smiling at it, thinking… THWACK! THUMP! After I had recovered from my mini-heart attack I would look back at a seemingly harmless, shallow puddle that turned out to be DEEP and ROUGH. I hate potholes! Dad spent most of the day exercising his shoulder muscles by weaving in and out of the many potholes.
Every once and awhile the highway would pass through a little town for a few kilometres before continuing along. The towns were almost always poor, tiny and a little sad. And there to greet us at the entrance of each village would be these ridiculous speed bumps called topes (or Sleeping Policemen, as the locals call them). Sometimes there would be 20 or 30 of them through one town. Since we were riding along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico a lot of the houses were flooded and some of the beachfront homes were completely destroyed because of recent storms that had hit the area. Most of the towns had stray dogs everywhere which was really hard to watch because some of them we missing limbs, or patches of fur, or they had crooked faces or they walked funny. They were also fairly smart; they would look both ways before crossing the road and they seemed to have a special route to follow. Some of them looked really sad but a few of them would be following people or chasing a ball with the people who lived there…but the majority of the dogs looked hungry, tired and disabled.
The road to Veracruz is basically a blur other than a few details. It began to rain shortly after we left Tampico so we put on our rain suits and settled in for a long rainy day of riding. I remember there being lots of toll stations at each major bridge we crossed, so every half hour or so we would stop, park, get off the bike, dig out the wallet from inside Dad’s jacket under the rain suit, pay the dude, get on the bike and ride away but it was usually 15 pesos, which was just over a dollar in Canadian money. We stopped several times for gas as Dad likes to keep the tank above half full when traveling down in this region. The only thing I had to eat on the road was a granola bar that I shared with Dad, a tootsie roll and the odd drink of water.
The bathrooms at the gas stations were kind of horrible. At one of the worst ones you had to walk in and grab toilet paper from the front of the room before you went into the stall. My toilet didn’t have a seat and when I flushed the toilet water sprayed all over the place; thankfully the stall door didn’t have a lock so I wasn’t trapped in there with an explosive toilet. The soap was a whitish-blue powder and to turn on the water you have to push a little lever on the bottom of the spout. Of course, the sink also spat out water in all directions. To top it all off, there weren’t any paper towels left. Meanwhile, in the men’s bathroom my father was (attempting to) flush one of the urinals but it overflowed! There was a little elderly lady who I guess worked there and she was standing there outside, waiting for Dad to finish so she could clean up. We gave her a nice, big tip for her patience and understanding… sorry if we broke your toilets, Mexico! So, that was an experience…but it was better than the side of the road!
The rain stopped around 4:30 p.m. while we were riding through a really cool area with a huge cliff on our right side. As the rains stopped, a really strong wind replaced it, making riding a real challenge for Dad. When we finally spotted Veracruz in the distance it was already dark out (we had been riding on and off for the last seven or so hours) and as we were coming over a mountain we could see all of the lights like little stars in the distance. As we were marvelling at the sight a HUGE wind gust came. Then another. And another. Soon the wind was raging all around us, like a tornado. It was getting harder for Dad to ride because the bike was tilting over… and the road was still slippery from the recent spitting of rain. I’m sure that wasn’t fun for Dad…
Gustavo Valdés of the BMW Moto Club of Veracruz, an Angel in the Night!
As soon as we arrived in Veracruz, in the dark, rainy night, the first thing we did was stop at a shiny newish movie theatre so we could get out of the wind and see if there were any hotels nearby. We found several on the iPhone but we couldn’t in reality as their mapped locations didn’t match Google’s. We searched for a place to sleep for the night but hotels on the north side of the city were scarce and Dad could hardly see with the combination of a dirty visor from the day’s ride and the dust blowing around in the dark and all the wild traffic. We soon found a McDonald’s so we could have some food and check our emails indoors, out of all the crazy cross-breezes.
After a while, we arranged for a member of the Veracruz BMW motorcycle club to come! Once he arrived, he took us to a hotel and told us that it was all taken care of by the club! We didn’t have to pay or anything!
We thanked him, settled in and used the wifi until we fell asleep.
Bye guys!
~Holly J
Besides a hotel stay near the beach, the generous outpouring of support from the wonderful BMW Moto Club Veracruz included this incredible array of shirts, hats and stickers
Our relieved smiles after Gustavo’s welcome appearance on the north side of Veracruz!
This is me guarding the bike while Dad checks into the hotel…