The Cactus Trip Diaries

We covered about the same distance as yesterday, yet arrived at our hotel, the very nice Fiesta Inn, right on the Malecon at around 13:00 hrs. Why? we had left the mountains and were now on a dead straight Cuota (toll road) averaging 110 kph. The terrain was similar to Holland or Norfolk, driving through hundreds of flat scenery, planted with sugarcane, rather than sugar beet. The only time we came to a halt was the ‘milking stations’, the toll boots where the authorities took some more money of us, but well worth it as an alternative to the Libre (free road) this time.

We’re here for two nights. The weather is has changed. It is still very hot, hotter than in Tehuacan and very humid. But there is a firm wind blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean, as we made a trip to some of the views: a model of a pre-Columbian monument and the piers to the harbour. All the palm trees had been bent by the wind, which suggests that it was quite a regular feature. Sand from the beach stuck to the sweat on our skins and Alain, in shorts, appears to have been given a good going over by midgets or similar during breakfast in Tuxtepec, while I have one bite on my left hand. Alain now smells of lemon like a living Deed commercial and has gone to long trousers, but the damage is done.

It seems that every time we stay in a somewhat more expensive hotel, they have a wifi connection that takes over my laptop. I have battled for two days to regain access and suddenly, this morning, working sequentially through the various wifi options, things suddenly came back, hence today’s double treat of blog backlogs. Now, if I can only remember what I did for the next time it happens!

A day of not seeing a single cactus! Well, that was expected from our research when we failed to find many field records for the state of Veracruz, and then to the north and farther inland, back in hilly terrain.