LA VENTA ZOO, BOTANICAL GARDEN AND OLMEC SCULPTURES

The Olmecs are an ancient civilization believed to have inhabited Mexico and other parts of Central America up to 10,000 years ago. There is a La Venta archeological site in an island in the middle of one of the rivers here in the state of Tabasco where most of the large basalt volcanic rock sculptures have been found. Some have been moved to Parque La Venta we just visited.

The Olmecs transported the heavy stones by floating them down rivers from the mouontains of inland Tuxtla.

This is one of many Olmec thrones. The deity is in lotus position and has a jaguar headress.

This is one of a very few representations of Olmec women.

The chidren bein carried are in full motion.


Olmec warriors distorted their craneums to flatten and sink in the part between the eyes to make them appear more like the sacred jaguar. They also cut their upper lip in an artificial harelip to mimic the central split in the upper lip of the jaguar.


Olmecs hunted porpoises and specially the manatee, using the fat, skin and bones for many purposes.

I don't know who or what this is, but someone said it was in the lemur family.

La Venta park has a few native species. Here is a mother spyder monkey and her baby. her baby clinks tight and gives the mother full motion as she climbs and swings. These monkeys have long prehensile tails that they use for tree climbing and travel across the canopy.

VILLAHERMOSA - COMBI TO LA VENTA - OLMEC SCULPTURE

Here we are gathering at the campground in Villahermosa (beautiful village in Spanish) to visit the famous "La Venta" park. La Venta is a combination zoological, botanical, and Olmec civilization cultural center which contains enormous carved heads and other religious sculptures.

The Wagon Master asked me to help lead a convoy of one Combi bus to lead, a bunch of RV toads, and the tail Combi where I was in CB contact with the wagonmaster and the toads. I was the interpreter between the Wagon Master and the Mexican drivers above
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This is a Ceiba tree. Ceibas are very large straight trunked trees that form a flat top canopy. Ancient Mayas believed (among a lot of other absurdities, unsurprisingly) that a Ceiba was at the center of the earth, that connected the earthly world to the spirit world above.

This is a cacao tree, an evergreen native of the tropical Amazon that propagated to Central America. Maya priests would make a cacao drink mixed with their own blood as an offering to their gods. Cortez was the first European to taste a Cacao beverage in Tenochtitlan during the conquest by the Spanish of that Aztec city - now Mexico City.

VERACRUZ BREAKFAST AND WATERFRONT SHOPPING

We started our whirlwind tour of Veracruz and surrounds by boarding a tour bus that took us from the campground through the Southern suburb of Boca del Rio to Veracruz.


Notice the distinctive Mexican new house architecture in this picture. This is a new development south of Veracruz.

Here is a side street in todays Veracruz. Veracruz is the port where Hernan Cortez, the Spanish conquistador, first landed in Mexico to convert the natives to the Catholic faith and claim their lands and riches - like gold - for the King of Spain.

From this port, Cortez made allies of peoples being oppresed by the dominant Aztecs of the empire - their capital in Tenochtitlan.

The Spanish could conquer Tenochtitlan and rename it Mexico City only because of the internal weaknesses of the Aztec empire and recruits from their oppressed neighbors.

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All caravaners were taken by bus for breakfast to one of the oldest and best coffehouses in Veracruz.
The Gran Cafe de la Parroquia was full of Mexicans enjoying a Lechera (similar to the Cuban Cafe con Leche or the French Cafe au Lait). They also had great empanadas filled with picadillo. The empanadas were freshly made and delicious, but made with a toasted tortilla, and not flaky layered pastry like the Cuban empanada.

The coffemaker was imported from Italy a century ago.

After breakfast we had a minute before the tour bus picked us up for the next stop at La Antigua, a waypoint in Cortez's drive towards Tenochtitlan. We picked up a few T-shirts from Veracruz.

FREE DAY IN VERACRUZ

The Mexican Government builds a large number of single family homes where all the houses look essentially alike. Below is a pretty row of houses built on the Veracruz waterfront for Social Security recipients. Each house has a different bright color.

This evening we had a chili dog at a tamale cookout.

Ted and Teri roast hot dogs on the open firepit. Notice the fellow roasting for a whole group with a rake. The fire was quite hot and therefore you had to be upwind, or else you might roast your face in addition to the hot dog.
After roasting the hot dog we come to the tables where we put the hot dog in a tortilla and added chili and other garnishes. It was delicious but a little messy.

FIRST DINNER IN VERACRUZ - LA PERLITA

After driving for most of the day, we park and then get ready for a welcome dinner to Veracruz in a seaside restaurant called La Perlita (the Little Pearl). We get in the towed cars and tow trucks - ours included - offering rides to the restaurant, and drive through narrow streets ending at a sandy beach. We have to drive a couple of hundred feet in the sand to reach the parking for La Perlita. Fortunately the sand is tightly packed and our truck does not sink in it.
Above, Teri and Anne walk ahead to the restaurant entrance. We walk in front of the boats used to catch the fish for our dinner.
The dining room is on the second story. Here Anne, Ted, and Teri wait for the meal to be served.

ON THE WAY TO VERACRUZ

As we drive south from Costa Esmeralda the landscape becomes much more tropical, and often reminds me of vistas of the Cuban countryside. I even saw a "campesino" in the traditional white garb consisting of a loose white cotton shirt and loose pants and sandals plus a straw hat. The cloth is coarse and unrefined, but it is suitable to the heavy work and intense heat of his occupation. It looked like a picture from the past. Unfortunately I did not get his picture. That seemed to be a clear throwback to Spanish Colonial garbs also used in Cuba.
This is sugar cane, pineapple, and banana country. We found large sugar cane plantations being harvested in the traditional way: first scorch the leafy parts of the sugar cane with a field fire, then go in with a crew of machete wielding campesinos and load the sugar cane stalks by hand on trucks that take their load to the "ingenios' or cane sugar refining plants nearby.

The only difference between that picture and that in my mind from old Cuba is the use of trucks instead of ox drawn carts. and cargo trains.
Above is a heavily laden truck with sugar cane.
A hardware store named "Ronzon"
The burro is a main means of transportation. You often see them tied to the roadside grazing.

EL TAJIN (CITY OF DIVINE LIGHTNING) RUINS

This morning we boarded a nice Mexican touring bus with washroom and comfortable seats. Vicki was our guide. She was a matronly lady that spoke English, Spanish, French and German (her native tongue) quite fluently.

When she discovered that I was born in Cuba and that I speak Spanish fluently, she surprised me by speaking coloquial Spanish with a distinct Cuban (Havana) intonation - she is quite a joker and a little brash. She explained that her father is Cuban! She used the Cuban slang expression "C-YN..ooo!" (something like DANG! ). "YN" is the best approximation of the Spanish sound of the same sound in Italian, for example in the last name ViGNola. That sound is the Spanish n with a tilde on top.

The bus took all 43 of us plus Vicki to the ruins of the ancient Olmec city of El Tajin and its majestic ruins.

For a long time the Totonacs were believed to have built El Tajín (Totonac: "lightning"), because they inhabited the area at the time of the Spanish Conquest. The great city had however already been abandoned for at least 300 years before the Spanish arrived. It may originally have been a late Olmec or proto-Mayan settlement, set up in collaboration with the Huastecs. When founded, around ad 200, its builders were evidently much influenced by Teotihuancán. It took until about ad 600 before an independent culture evolved. El Tajín's own influence then began to spread, in time being felt even in Teotihuancán. The city reached the peak of its development between ad 700 and 900.



This is a model of the city, built in the highlands north of Veracruz in an area of vanilla plantations.
This is our Toltec guide. He spoke broken English, but was evidently very well educated and knew a lot about the ancient history of his country. He is standing here in the great market plaza. The pyramids have a solid core, and served simply as high bases for sacred buildings - built of palm planks and fronds at the top of the pyramid. Only the high priests, top rulers and astronomers were allowed in these buildings. The society was a theocracy of the worst kind, with scientists and knowledge workers (astronomers and scribes) as enablers of power brokers and wielders (the usual throughout history).
It was an agrarian society based on corn, beans, and starchy root cultivation. There were two plantings per year, and the high priests and rulers declared the start of planting and harvest based on divinely given information (of course, supported by the information from the astronomers and knowledge workers). They did not have the wheel, metalworking, nor cement technology, and they had no pack animals. The horse was introduced by the conquering Spainards. It was essentially a late stone age culture.
Here our guide describes one of the 18 futbol courts in El Tajin. Futbol was a soccer-like game played by two teams of 6 players and a rubber ball that weighed well over 6 pounds. The game had heavy religious meaning and was essentially a religious rite. The ruling class and nobility sat on the flat area above the shallow slanting ramps at either side of the court. Everybody else sat farther away. The player was allowed to contact the ball only with knees, hips, elbows and shoulders.
Twice a year, just before the start of planting ,the team captain of the winning team of a special religious game was sacrificed to the gods of fertility. It was essential that his blood was spilled on the ground to guarantee soil fertility ( and to keep the natives in shock and awe ). The team captain was drugged with hallucinogenic peyote, and was seated at one end of the court in a dentist chair like posture. The other team members held him in place, and because the obsidian knifes that they had were not capable of cutting the vertebral column, the victims neck was first broken, and then the second in command would cut his throat and decapitate the victim.

The relief above shows the scene.

Here Teri walks in front of the house of the ruler god of the city of El Tajin.

TAMPICO TO COSTA ESMERALDA

Costa Esmeralda (the Emerald Coast) is well named because of its tropical emerald waters, vivid green landscapes full of coconut trees, royal palms, orange trees and banana trees. This is not yet the area of beautiful subtropical Caribbean white coral beaches, but it is a great start. However, to get there we had to got through a steeplechase of tough driving for many hours.

We were ready at 6:00 AM. So far these are the worst roads we have found in Mexico. The potholes are real craters. I would say that they pose a greater danger to the suspension of our 5th wheel than the infamous TOPES (speed bumps) found at the entrance and exit of each small town and at schools and pedestrian crossing sections of the highway.

Today we came across two wrecks. This one was a rear-ender at a tope. The other was caused by reckless driving by someone in a pickup truck. We have witnessed much passing over double yellow lines as we approach a hilltop where you cannot see who is coming. One time a large semi began to pass us in a no-passing zone and he had to put his exhaust brake and began pushing us to the shoulder while ducking oncoming traffic.
At the river, the scene was reminiscent of some pictures of the river villages in Vietnam or China.
As we approach our campground we begin to notice a definite shift to more tropical vegetation and deep green landscapes. This is definitely the more beautiful Mexico so far.
Beautiful countryside.
Oranges and bananas everywhere. We stopped to buy oranges and they were selling them cheap. They were small but very sweet. The Aztec looking saleswoman told us they were Cuban, but I guess she meant from Cuban seed-stock.A banana plantation.

CIUDAD VICTORIA TO TAMPICO

This is our first refueling stop at a PEMEX. The petroleum industry is nationalized in Mexico, and PEMEX is the only gas and diesel stations in the country. They are widely distributed and are almost always together with an OXXO convenience store. Diesel costs about $2/gallon which compares with $3.40/gallon in parts of Texas.
Passing through many small and poor towns. There are many taquerias. There is a lot of mud around, as in small towns only the main highway is paved. We see a lot of donkeys. Many are tied to the side of the road grazing. Here is a "campesino' walking his dog while he rides his donkey.
As we travel south we encounter more mountainous terrain as we are near the Easter Sierra Madre (Cierra Madre Oriental). Here you see the other 5th wheel in the caravan belonging to Canadians from Ontario.

That evening we arrive at a hotel parking lot for the evening. This is our evening meal at the hotel restaurant. Below is the events area of the hotel. You can see our satellite internet dish at the top of our RV behind Teri.

The next morning we have to depart at 6:45 AM, at the crack of dawn because we have a long and difficult drive.