Not a chance. I've already mentioned how humid it was. I had to put on wet underwear, socks and jeans. Of course, as hot as it was, the underwear and socks were dry from my body heat in very little time. The jeans, however, were damp most of the day.
We spent this day taking a side trip to Lake Catemaco (w) , about two and a half hours south of Veracruz.
The previous day, while taking a taxi from Mina's house to downtown Veracruz, we were talking about our plans for the trip to Lake Catemaco. The driver, overhearing our conversation, volunteered to be our driver/guide for the day. After some discussion, we decided to take him up on his offer. I was slightly miffed - I suspected that Hector and Malena were a little nervous about my driving, after my misadventure on the way out of Mexico City. As it turned out, though, it was just as well, for a couple of reasons, as we shall see.
Our driver's name was Lobo, which means "wolf." His real name was Lobsang. He showed up at 7 AM, and we took off for Catemaco. I had a map of the state of Veracruz, which I had picked up the same day I got my Mexico City atlas, so of course I was following our route on the map all day. We rolled on down the coast, past miles of sugar cane fields, and through several small towns. Along the way, we passed numerous roadside fruit stands:
Another thing you see a lot of in Mexico is street vendors. I've already mentioned the ones that accosted us in Veracruz. But you also see them standing in the road, anywhere the traffic slows down - intersections, toll booths, etc.
Some are selling magazines, some are selling candy and snacks, some are selling fruit. I even saw a couple selling dogs - live ones!
Most of the towns we passed through had speed bumps in the road. If you ever go driving in Mexico, drive very carefully over the speed bumps - some of them are killers. In one town, I was amused to notice street vendors standing ON the speed bumps. Like I said - anywhere the traffic slows down!
After a while, the road began to climb up into the hills. We were really getting into the rural areas now. And eventually, we got to Catemaco, where the first order of business was to find a restaurant for a late breakfast. We found one called La Panga, right out on the lake:
I made sure I had a seat facing the water. As we ate, I saw a flock of birds swooping down over the surface of the lake. I saw a bird dive straight down into the water and come up with a fish in its mouth. And I saw a beautiful, long necked white bird fly down and land on the pier, and I actually got close enough for a picture:
There were a large number of tour boats all along the lake shore:
And one of the tour guides made a sales pitch to us as we ate breakfast, and convinced us to take his boat tour after we finished eating. But first, we got him to take our picture:
And there I am, looking resplendent in my brand new guayabera. Anyway, we all got on the boat:
...where our guide, Armando, obligingly took another picture of us
...and I took one of him:
And away we went, sailing, sailing, over the bounding main. Or something. Don Armando regaled us with facts and figures - the lake is roughly an oval shape, 19 by 16 kilometers across (about 12 by 10 miles), 25 meters deep (about 82 feet), and 300 meters above sea level (about 984 feet). We saw many items of interest as we sailed along:
There were several islands and islets in the lake:
...and one of them was covered with birds:
...which Armando informed us were Canadian. I asked if they had their visas. I also had this mad urge to yell "La Migra!" as we went by, and see how many of them flew away! I've been living in L.A. too long...
I also took some pictures of water plants:
Then, at the far end of the lake, we came to Nanciyaga, an ecological reserve. We pulled up to the dock:
...left North with Don Armando:
...and met our tour guide, Alejandro:
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Scattered around the place were various statues of Olmec gods, beginning with the monkey god Tuxtla:
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...with his head cut off by some amateur photographer. We saw several others along the way:
...including the namesake of the place, Nanciyaga herself:
In no particular order, here are some other things we saw:
An Aztec calendar (or as I called it, Stonehenge South)
A temascal, or sweat lodge
An Olmec tomb
A prehispanic theater
An iguana (in a cage)
A casa de limpia, or cleansing house
Take a look at the doorway curtain of that house. From a distance, I thought it was a beaded curtain, made of rather large beads. Later, I had a chance to get a closer look at a similar curtain, and discovered it wasn't made of beads at all, but...
Snail shells!
The streams running through the park contain mineral water, and at one point, we were invited to drink some - from cups made of folded leaves:
The guy in the red and white shirt is Lobo, by the way. I never did get a chance to get a good picture of him.
Of course, when you have mineral water and lots of dirt, you get mineral mud. We were offered the opportunity to get mineral mud facials. We declined, but some other park visitors couldn't resist the chance to get their faces dirty with parental permission:
Angels with dirty faces
This was a fascinating place, and I can't completely do it justice in this log. If you want more information, they have an excellent website. Also, while surfing the web, I found another website with some good information and pictures.
Incidentally, our guide told us that the place has recently been used as a location for movies - "Medicine Man," with Sean Connery, and Mel Gibson's Mayan epic "Apocalypto."
After leaving Nanciyaga, we got back in the boat and headed back the way we came. On the way back, we passed another islet, where Armando told us a group of mandrills lived. (A mandrill is a kind of monkey. In case you didn't know.) At first we didn't see any, and then someone spotted one sitting on the branch of a tree:
But then Armando circled back around the islet, and pulled in near a small cove, and we saw about half a dozen of them:
We then sailed back to shore, bid farewell to Don Armando, bought some peanuts from a street vendor, got back in the car, and headed for our next stop, a waterfall called Salto de Eyipantla (SAHL-to de eh-i-PAHNT-la).
Getting there was yet another adventure. Hector had been there before, but of course, he wasn't driving, and didn't know exactly how to get there. Neither, it turned out, did Lobo. And I couldn't find it on my map. So we drove along, and Lobo stopped every now and then to ask passersby for directions.
We wandered down back roads, and dirt roads, and cobblestone roads, through villages so small they didn't show on the map. We were really in the Mexican outback now. It was along this drive that I saw women walking with baskets on their heads, and the boy plaing naked on the front porch of a house, as I mentioned on the introduction page. I also took this picture of a house along the road:
Finally, we found the place. The road came to a dead end, among a cluster of souvenir shops and small restaurants. We walked across a swinging bridge:
And came to a lookout, overlooking the falls from above:
Then we discussed whether to walk down the stairs - 245 of them, according to Hector - to see the falls from the bottom. In the end, Hector and Malena said that they'd been there before, and didn't need to go again, and Terry decided that as far as she was concerned, the falls looked the same at the bottom as at the top. So Lobo and I made the trip by ourselves. Here are pictures of the falls from the bottom:
There was so much spray, that my glasses got covered with drops. That was OK - the rest of me was already soaking wet anyway. This had been the hottest and most humid day so far. Actually, the spray from the waterfall was rather refreshing.
Not far from the base of the waterfall, I saw this large dead tree. I took its picture, just because I thought it looked interesting. It was so big that I actually had to take two pictures, and merge them into one on the computer:
You can see the stairs in the background of that last picture. And Hector was wrong - there were only 244 of them. When I got back up to the top, I found Terry enoying a drink made of gin and coconut water, served in a coconut shell:
Not to be outdone, I ordered a coctel de tegogolos - a snail cocktail. Yes, you read that right. It wasn't as bad as it sounds. The sauce, of course, was the same kind used in shrimp cocktail. And the snails actually weren't bad. They were kind of chewy. I've eaten calamari and octopus before, and this was sort of similar.
And then we drove back out the highway, and back to Veracruz. And here I need to make another digression.
Back at the top of this page, I mentioned that I was a little put out that the others didn't want me to drive to Catemaco, but that it turned out to be just as well. One reason had to do with logistics. Let's face it - one sighted person leading three blind people can be a little awkward. Having another sighted person along made things a little smoother, particularly at Nanciyaga, where the ground was occasionally quite rough.
But that's a minor issue. The real reason why it was just as well to have Lobo drive us came into play when we tried to find our way to the falls. I mentioned earlier that I couldn't find it on the map. Actually, when we were part of the way there, I did finally find it on the map, and realized that there was a road that led directly from the highway to the falls. And I thought to myself - rather pridefully, I confess - that if I had been driving, we wouldn't have spent so much time meandering around and asking directions.
So when we got ready to go back, I pointed out the direct route to Lobo - politely - and we started to go that way. Only to find out that we couldn't go that way, because the road was blocked off. I forget why - I think it was some kind of political demonstration. Anyway, we had to get back by retracing the way we came. And I finally had to admit that if I'd been driving, we would have spent even more time meandering, and I would probably have gotten upset, and it would have been a bad time all around. So I was properly humbled.
Anyway, we got back to Veracruz, and Lobo dropped us off at a restaurant called La Mera Madre. This was probably the fanciest meal we had all week. I had salmon with a nut crust and a mango and papaya salsa.
Here's a map of the drive from Veracruz to Catemaco:
That night, it got so hot that Terry and I finally broke down and turned on the air conditioner in our room - we had been using the ceiling fan up until then.