There are just Some Days!

Okay, today has been a very difficult day.  R thinks that by writing, it will be cathartic for me … I just want to go to bed.  But with that opening, I know I can’t … so … to proceed.  

We were up around 5 am and down to breakfast at 7 am.  Unfortunately, breakfast was running a bit late, so rather than have the breakfast buffet, we had scrambled eggs, bacon and refried beans … definitely not good for me, as beans and I don’t always agree.  At any rate, out the door by 8, and sorry to leave our really lovely hotel!

 Back to the 180 toll road, and heading south, this time, towards Veracruz, through which we needed to go to get to Santiago Tuxtla, our location for the day.  It was a long drive – a little over 5 hours, but we made it by a bit after 1 pm.  We settled into the Posada Dona Angela – a small but very attractive place on a side street and decided to head first to the town center.

 

While first ending up on a dead-end street and needing to turn around in an empty pedestrian-only square, we eventually found our way to the town center.  Found parking fairly easily, and – right in the middle of the square, was the biggest Olmec Colossal head yet – Monument 1!  He is HUGE, and very, very impressive.  From there, we returned to the town’s museum, which is fairly tiny but contains another Olmec head for our collection!  Yay!  The weather is really nice and humid here, which is something that we’re really not used to – but we are SO close to the coast, I don’t know why we’re surprised!

 

La Cobata, the largest and first head discovered!

 

Lovely town square!

Colossal head inside the museum

From the town center, we decided to try and bag one more head for the day – at Tres Zapotes, a place that had once been a major Olmec center.  To say it was in the middle of nowhere would truly be an understatement.  I thought, seriously, that Emmy was leading us astray once again, but it turns out, that we were actually on the right road – it was just very, very rough and uneven – unpaved, certainly, but add to that the fact that this is a very agricultural area with huge sugar cane trucks and tractors everywhere, the road was truly a mess.  

 We finally reached the small town that is Tres Zapotes, and were able to find the museum – miniscule in size, but fortunately, it was open.  I know it will surprise everyone to learn that we were definitely the only people there!  The museum was actually at the site of what had once been the archaeological site of Tres Zapotes – and it’s difficult to imagine this tiny place being a major center of Olmec occupation, especially after visiting the huge site of El Tajin yesterday!

 

Museum piece at Santiago Tuxtla

 

At any rate, there was their head, along with a few photographs from the Smithsonian that were taken at the time the head was discovered and first excavated (late 1800’s).  Turns out that a farmer had discovered it in his field – came across the crown of his head first, and dug that out, and the rest, as they say, is history!  

  

Colossal Head at Tres Zapotes

Outside museum at Tres Zapotes

"Good" section of road!

 

Several large sculpture pieces from Tres Zapotes

The road into Tres Zapotes was truly terrible, as I indicated.  And when I came out of the sanitario (ladies room) and walked back to the museum area, I was greeted with the news that the security guard had noticed that our right front tire had problem.  Great … just what we needed.  Apparently there was a gouge in the side wall of the tire, making it dangerous to drive, and needed to be changed.

 The security guard drove us around the corner to a tire place (and I use the term very loosely…) that could help us.  Well, that would have worked out well, had the spare tire in the trunk been the same size as the tires on the car – but – surprise!  It wasn’t!  And this car only as 16,000 miles on it!  So, they ended up putting the wrong-size spare on to the wheel and put it on the car.

 As this was going on, I was making contact with the emergency number we had been given by the car company.  They did some checking and advised us not to drive the car over 60 km … great … and gave us permission to buy another tire or to take the car back to the closest place – Veracruz, 2½ hours away, and exchange it.  Ugh.  

 We fairly slowly made our way back over some of the worst roads I have ever had the misfortunate to drive over – and it took forever!  Turns out, as I didn’t want to go back the way we had come, I mistakenly insisted we return by an alternate route – which took twice as long, and was twice as bad a road!  It was AWFUL!  Between the pot holes and the ruts – oh, and did I mention the HUGE trailers of branches passing (barely) the trailers of sugar cane?  It was incredible, and I really did not think we would EVER get out!  After quite literally kilometer after kilometer of white knuckle driving, avoid topes (speed bumps very occasionally, as there were very few villages…) and HUGE pot holes, and churned up mud and more rocks than you could count, R said “turn right” – and I was quite literally driving through a farmer’s field!  It was unreal!  The ONLY reason I did it, though, was that I could see an actual HIGHWAY at the end of the field, so I went for it!  How I managed NOT to take out the underside of the car, I still don’t know!  We finally made it back to pavement … and I swore, never, ever, ever again …

 Hmmm…. Successfully made it back to our Posada, and decided it was time for dinner.  Unfortunately, our Posada’s restaurant was closed tonight for some undefined (to us!) reason (we may be the only guests here, as we haven’t seen any other people!)  Upon inquiry, we were given directions to AxMole, which was down to blocks, turn right and then one more block.  Sounded dangerous to me, but we decided to try it.

Surprisingly, we came upon a really lovely restaurant – modern and really excellent food!  R started with an excellent tortilla soup, and I had a pretty boring chicken soup.  We both had the same main courses – fabulous arrancha (they call it flank steak but the cut is thicker than what we get at home) perfectly cooked, with a mélange of potatoes, cherry tomatoes and onions.  Everything was great!  We also split (although we couldn’t finish) a slice of raspberry cheesecake, which was also every good!

 

 

Chicken soup

 

Excellent cheesecake

Really good flank steak!

R's very tasty tortilla soup!

 

Back to the Posada and will deal with the tire question in the morning.  Thinking of a trip to the tire store in San Andreas Tuxtla (about 20 minutes away) and if that fails, see if we can get the car back to the Veracruz airport.

 So, until then!

m

xxx