It was hot in Veracruz. Very hot. And humid. As I was taking North out that morning, I noticed that Veracruz reminded me a lot of Hawaii. The temperature, the humidity, the palm trees, the overall tropical feel of the place.
I also noticed a lot of dogs running around loose. Fortunately, none of them came over to say ¡Hola! to North while he was doing his business.
And speaking of North's business - I asked Mina where I should dump it after I had picked it up. She said I should just leave it by the side of the road, and someone would come by to pick it up. So I did, and sure enough, someone did.
We had breakfast at:
...a corner food stand near Mina's house. While we were eating, Mina told us that she had heard that there was a big storm in Mexico City on Monday - we got out just in time.
We took a taxi into downtown Veracruz to take a trolley tour of the city. We were early, so we spent a little time shopping. There was a mercado near the trolley stop, with a long line of tiny stalls, some selling nice things, many selling cheap tourist stuff. Terry bought some turquoise jewelry for a friend, and Malena bought a purse.
There were also street vendors. Lots of street vendors. And they were the most persistent I've ever seen. They just didn't hear you when you said "No." They'd keep up the sales pitch, no matter what you said. You practically had to threaten mayhem to make them go away.
Veracruz is a port city, of course, and the trolley stop was also near the docks, so I got a couple of pictures of cargo ships:
Then the tour trolley arrived, and we all got on board:
The tour itself was a little disappointing. Of course, it was all in Spanish. Terry tried her best to interpret, but because the trolley was open sided, it was hard to hear her, so I'm afraid I didn't get much out of it. And the guide wasn't all that descriptive, so Terry didn't get much out of it, either.
I did get this picture of a restaurant along the beach:
...one of many restaurants with the same thatched roof look. I also saw a number of kids playing futbol (football, or as we call it, soccer) on the beach.
After we got back, we wandered back to the mercado, where I bought myself a guyabera (w) , a kind of shirt popular in Mexico (you'll see me wearing it in some upcoming pictures).
We then wandered some more, and had drinks and snacks at an outdoor cafe. I was interested to see a truck pull up to the curb, loaded with big blocks of ice:
The Iceman Cometh
And then we wandered still more. We walked through a plaza where there was a Toy Drive going on...
...and saw the Palacio Municipal (municipal palace, i.e., City Hall)...
...and a cathedral...
...not nearly as ornate as the one in Tepotzotlan, but still quite grand, with a high, vaulted ceiling. We stepped inside, and I took a picture of the altar:
Unlike the Tepotzotlan cathedral, this one was a working church. There were people praying, and lighting candles. On the sidewalk outside, we passed a woman selling religious artifiacts, and we bought a wooden rosary for a Catholic friend of ours.
We then took a taxi to Mandinga, a small lakeside town a little south of Veracruz. This town is known for its collection of restaurants featuring music and dancing. Which leads me to another short digression, this one on music.
There is a style of music popular in Veracruz known as son jarocho (sohn hah-ROH-cho) (w) . Even if you've never heard the name, you've almost certainly heard the music - the best known example of the genre is a little something called "La Bamba." Terry and I have a couple of albums of sones jarochos, and enjoy them very much.
Well, as I say, Mandinga has several restaurants featuring son jarocho music and dancing. Of course, we didn't know one restaurant from another, so we just went to the one the taxi driver took us to, called El Ventilador (The Fan). We got a table looking out over the water, and looked around for some musicians. There was a group of them - just heading out the door. We had someone run and catch them, and we paid them to play for us for half an hour:
It was terrific. Terry and I recognized several songs from our albums. At one point, Hector told them to play La Bamba, and told them to play it "for Grinnell." Shortly after they started, I was surprised - and greatly amused - to hear the words "for Grinnell" among the lyrics!
The gentleman at the far left of the first picture, wearing glasses, introduced himself to us as José Gutierrez. He said he had lived in the U.S. for several years, and had recorded an album for the Smithsonian Folkways label. After I got home, I checked, and sure enough, he wasn't kidding. Here's a link to a web page about Sr. Gutierrez, which includes a video clip of him playing and singing. (Incidentally, we went ahead and bought the album. It's very good - if you're interested in the genre, this album is a good introduction.)
The instrument that he was playing looks like a guitar, but is actually a jarana (hah-RAH-na) (w) . At one point, I asked him if I could hold it. It has five strings, which are the same notes as the top five strings on a guitar, so it was just playing a guitar with a missing bottom string. I proceded to impress the man by briefly strumming his instrument in a credible son jarocho rhythm. It occurred to me later that I should have asked them if I could play a song with them. I wish now that I had.
In addition to the musicians, there were also two dancers:
You can't really see it in the pictures, but each dancer had a square of wood, which she would place on the floor, and proceed to dance on it. It was sort of a Mexican tap dance, called zapatear (za-pa-tey-AR). Alas, the dancers weren't as exciting as the musicians. They looked bored. One of them tried to liven things up by dancing with a beer bottle on her head:
...but it didn't help much.
Looking out the back of the restaurant at the lake, I noticed a tree which appeared to be some kind of nut tree. I asked, and was told it was an almond tree. The only other almond trees I'd ever seen (to my knowledge) were planted in neat rows in orchards that I would see along the side of the road while driving through the San Joaquin Valley. It was nice to see one growing wild.
Almond tree, very pretty...
For dinner, I had something they called Tinga La Mandinga. This was plate of mixed seafood and rice served with an adobo sauce, a spicy sauce popular in Mexico (and also, incidentally, in the Phillipines).
After dinner - and after we bought some dulces (candies) from a street vendor - we took a cab back to Boca Del Rio, and made one more stop. Just a couple of blocks from Mina's house, there's a retired Mexican Navy ship called the "Guanajuato"
It's now a naval museum and floating bar/restaurant. We had intended to visit the musuem, but alas, it was closed by the time we got there. So we had a couple of drinks in the bar:
...and then walked back to the house, where I proceeded to have yet another adventure, this one involving laundry.
When I go on long trips, to save space in our luggage, I don't pack enough clothes for the entire trip. I pack enough for about half the trip, and look for an opportunity to do laundry. Well, remember what I said about the "work in progress" nature of Mina's house? She had two washing machines, but the newer one wasn't working. So I had to do my laundry in the older one, as follows:
First, I had to fill the machine with a garden hose. Then, I added detergent, and the clothes. Then I started the machine, and let it run for about ten minutes. Next, I had to drain the water from the machine. There was an outflow hose attached to the side of the machine. While the machine ran, the outflow hose was held in an upright position by a metal clip on the side of the machine. To drain the water, I removed the hose from the clip and laid it down on the ground, allowing the water to drain out. This took quite a while. When the machine was empty, I filled it with fresh water for a rinse cycle, and turned the machine on again for about another ten minutes. Then I had to drain the water again. And then, I had to remove the wet clothes and wring them out. By hand.
Finally, I hung the clothes on a line to dry. But I was concerned that it might rain in the night, so I hung the clothes on a line in the garage. Hoping against hope that they would be dry by morning.