Dreamers Rise An Open Notebook And for those who choose the twisty road, prefer it to the straight Let joy beat out old misery, as love will conquer hate. Illustration by Henry L. Stephens from The Goblin Snob (ca. 1855) A sort of electronic broadside, composed of rants and reviews, conceits and speculations, and whatever else feels the need to be here. Issued as chance will have it. Incidents of travel (VIII) On the subject of Highway 186, which heads more or less due west across the Yucatán from Chetumal, my memory is in agreement with my map and guidebooks: there was nothing much there. The Sanborn's log advised us that there was only one town on the route — Xpujil — that had a gas station, and that there were no accommodations until Escarcega, 154 miles along. In between was a stretch of nearly uninterrupted forest, with a few partially excavated ruins here and there which we probably didn't bother to check out, being a bit ruined out at that point in our travels. A few miles out from Chetumal we came to a routine checkpoint, where soldiers with automatic rifles peered in the window and asked if we had any armas or drogas. We said that we didn't and they agreed that in all likelihood we did not and waved us on. We had gassed up in Chetumal, I'm pretty sure. In general it was a good idea to keep your tank full, particularly in remote areas. During the three weeks we spent in Mexico we pressed our luck a few times — though we never actually did run out — and there were a couple of stretches of nervously watching the mileage gauge, calculating whether there would be enough to get us to the next town. The oil and gas industry was a government monopoly, and the Pemex stations were the only place to fill up. Gas was cheap, but unleaded fuel, which our car was supposed to take, was not available. This seemed to make no difference to the car's performance — perhaps it even helped it — but it made filling up tricky, as Mexican pumps lacked the specially designed nozzle that in the US was supposed to prevent drivers from putting regular gas into cars that were by law required to run on unleaded only. The makeshift solution was to hold the intake lid open with a screwdriver and point the discharging nozzle in the direction of the hole, an occasionally messy but ultimately successful procedure. According to Sanborn's, certain Pemex outlets had a reputation for dishonest dealing, while others had particularly clean rest rooms and other amenities to offer. We followed their advice, avoided the suspect stations, and had no trouble. The oil industry, which had been nationalized in 1938 by President Lázaro Cárdenas, was an emotional issue in Mexico, a source of wealth and pride in independence of foreign control. The nationalization evidently didn't sit well with Sanborn's, though; the pages on Belize that we didn't wind up needing note without irony that “you'll be pleasantly surprised in Belize when you drive up to a gas station -- it'll be Shell or Texaco or Esso, just like home!” Our Toyota was a bit of a novelty in the country, as the Japanese manufacturer apparently had yet to make any inroads into the Mexican market. I recall that we saw plenty of Datsuns, but the compact car of choice — including for taxis — was the original Volkswagen Beetle, which was still being produced in Puebla at a plant that we were to pass later in our trip. We spent the night back at Palenque in the same hotel as before, and may have made a brief return visit to the ruins, though I'm no longer sure. It may have been the next day, as we continued west towards Veracruz, that we took a brief detour to have lunch at a lakeside restaurant. My memory here is a little vague. Mexico does not have many lakes of any considerable size; this might have been Lake Catemaco, which was along our route, but it's also possible that I'm simply transposing a memory from another stretch of our trip. In any case we had our tamales by the lakeside and continued on our way. As Gulf Coast cities go, Veracruz was infinitely more appealing than Villahermosa. It was a good city for strolling, for live music, and for eating, and I regret only spending one night there. We stayed a few blocks out from the center of town in a place called the Hotel Baluartes; whether it had any connection with the identically named hotel in Campeche I don't know. We ate dinner after dark in a restaurant off the Plaza de Armas, where I undoubtedly had seafood, which I was eating as often as I could those days. Before we left town the next morning we stopped for coffee at the busy Gran Café de la Parroquía, taking a table outside and awkwardly participating in the curious service ritual of the place. This involved placing an order with the mesero, who poured out a small amount of dark, strong liquid and departed, then tapping the sides of our cups with a spoon to draw the attention of another waiter, who filled the cups to the brim with steamed milk. And so, accompanied by a cacophony of tinkling spoons from the tables surrounding us, we sipped our coffee in the Veracruz morning. I had a vague recollection of stopping briefly at El Tajín, a Totonac ruin to the north of the city of Veracruz, but looking at a map I suspect the visit to El Tajín exists only in my imagination, as it would have been several hours out of our way. After leaving Veracruz we had two options for returning home. The most direct route was to continue almost due north along Highway 180 until it intersected with Highway 101, by which time we would have only been a couple of hours from the border. For whatever reason we had been advised against taking that route, however, and so we headed inland, back towards Mexico City, intending to skirt the city and pick up Highway 85 for the northward journey home. We drove west out of the Gulf lowlands on a steep and winding two-lane road into the mountains, passing the inevitable underpowered trucks, until we reached the modern toll road to the capital. (To be continued) March 1, 2008 [ Permalink ] Previous page Next page Home Index About Email me