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Published: October 2nd 2006
Hey y'all! I hope life is treating you well wherever you are!
24 hours ago I was looking out at the Gulf of Mexico, letting the saltwater tickle my toes, and enjoying some great fish empanadas...
"We should travel this weekend..." --that's pretty much how this all started... James suggested we take a weekend trip, because he doesn't want to go back to Australia having regretted staying in Monterrey every weekend this semester. Soooo, Christin, James and I went back to my place, looked through the Lonely Planet Guide book and checked out a few places at the recommendation of our most recent
mesero (waiter). We looked at Real de Catorce, Zacatecas, Tampico...
Since none of us had yet been to the BEACH in Mexico, we decided to travel to Tampico, which is located in the southern tip of Tamaulipas state on the Gulf Coast of Mexico. In the early 1900s, Tampico became the world's biggest oil port after the discovery of oil in the area, and the area remains an important place today in the oil industry today.
We booked our bus tickets very late Thursday night (actually very very early Friday morning). We would leave
Backpackin' it!
Okay, so this is probably as close to "backpacking" I'll get here in Mexico...Friday afternoon at 3pm. We weren't sure exactly how many hours it was to Tampico, it looks pretty close on the map. We guesstimated about 4 or 5. We later found out its a 6-7 hour bus ride.
We left Monterrey without any solid plans, without hotel rooms booked, just the recommendations of lonely planet and some
ganas (desire) to see the beach and explore a place away from Monterrey.
We arrived in downtown Tampico around 10:30p.m., caught a taxi to the downtown area where we would spend the night, and checked into the Hotel Plaza. It cost us $10 a person for the night. Lonely Planet gave me the impression the rooms were small but sparkling clean and homey. What we found was a teensy bit different. We walked into a room that seemed it had been built to fit two double beds without much other room to spare. It smelled of... well, it smelled of I don't even know, but it wasn't good. Luckily no
cucarachas. Christin and James saw a little lizard scuttle behind the mirror though. That was sort of cool. We dropped our stuff off in the room, and headed outside to find
Hotel Plaza
Our semi-sketch room the first night some late night dinner. There was some TV show being filmed in the
Plaza de la Libertad. We walked over to the
Plaza de Zócalo and found a place with sandwiches, etc. We explored our surroundings a bit, but headed back to the hotel to rest up for our big day... The plan was to stay in this dirt-cheap hotel the first night, then find us a reasonably priced hotel on the beach the second night.
I didn't sleep so well Friday night. Out hotel was right on a busy street. Trucks zoomed by, taxis beeped their horns constantly, it sounded like there was some construction going on as well. There was a mysterious bump in the middle of the bed I shared with Christin. But hey, $10 a night? We explored downtown Tampico a little bit. First had breakfast at VIPs, then looked for a Tourism Office that no longer exists. Checked out the
Catedral, and then went to one of the bigger, nicer looking hotels to see if they had tourist information.
I've learned while here in Mexico, that the first time you ask someone a question, they usually say no, or aren't very helpful. After
you explain a little bit more or just show them that you're in need of whatever it is you're looking for AND that you can speak Spanish well, things change. For example:
me: Hi, I was wondering if you have any tourist information here...?
lady at front desk: ohh, no...
me: Hmm, well, we wanted to go to the beach today, and we're looking for information on the area. We looked for a tourist office that's at the
Palacio de Gobierno but apparently it's not located there anymore.
lady: No?
me: So you don't have any brochures or other
información turística here?
lady: *asks one of her coworkers, they open up a door behind the front desk, and she hands me two guidebooks to downtown Tampico and to the beach area of Tampico-Ciudad Madero*
Now... was that SOOO hard?
We went back to our hotel, looked at the info a bit, packed up, and got a taxi to the beach area. It was about a 20-30 minute ride and cost us about $3.50 US in taxi. Sweet. The plan, since this was our amazing spontaneous weekend, was to get dropped off at the first resort, and basically
View
View from our hotel, of another hotel. go door to door inquiring about rates for the night until we found something that tickled our fancy.
We had the taxi driver bring us to Club Maeva Miramar, the first hotel. We couldn't even get past security. He told us there were no available rooms. Discouraging... The next hotel,
Hotel Doña Juana Cecilia was too expensive for our tastes and wallets. Stopped at this amazing Grecian-looking resort, even MORE expensive. Things got discouraging... the next one,
Villa Capricho was a different story... It's a smaller looking, thatched roof villa looking hotel. First the woman at the front desk gave me some outrageous rate of about $2,100 pesos ($210US)/night. Sooo I asked if there was something cheaper. James was willing to sleep on the floor if we could only get a room with one bed. Then she said something about $180US...
No. But eventually she ended up showing us a room with a HUGE king sized bed and two futons, as well as 1.5 bathrooms, a kitchen/dining room area, and a TV... The three each ended up paying about $30 for the night, which was a very good deal.
The woman that was at the front desk during
most of our stay was pretty amazing. Everytime I'd ask her a question, she'd ask me what I needed. For example:
me: Hi, when is check out time?
lady: When do you need to leave?
me: Well, our bus leaves at 7pm, so maybe like... 3 or 4?
lady: 3pm is good.
(and you'll later find our we actually ended up staying in our hotel room until about 8:30pm that night)
me: When does the restaurant open?
lady: What do you need? I'll go get you a menu...
This whole day we had no concept of time until the sun had set. I assume we got to the hotel around noonish, and within the hour we were on the beach. We played some soccer, jumped around in the waves, and took a walk all the way down to the Malecón, a road strip of 1340 meters build during Porfirio Diaz's administration to allow ships to enter the Río Pánuco from the Gulf of Mexico. We walked there without sandals or shoes, so when we got up onto the very hot cement, we had some trouble walking... Came back to our orange chairs on the beach across from
our hotel and relaxed a little longer. Another dip in the ocean, then back to the hotel where Christin and I tried out the beautiful pool and jacuzzi and James sat poolside with some Doritos. Showered, dressed, and walked down the strip for dinner. Seafood tacos. Fantastic. Later on that night, we looked for some nightlife, and FINALLY as we were about to head home, we stumbled upon the club next door to our hotel which had apparently become THE place to be in the beach area. There was techno music, then a cover band that did Daddy Yankee/Belanova and all the popular songs here right now. We made some Mexican friends (Fabián, Felix y Felipe), danced some salsa and reggaeton, and enjoyed being around young people. Around 4am, we decided it was bed time. Just as I was settling down, security called our room, and our new Mexican friends were at the front of the hotel to see if we wanted to go down to the square, where apparently anyone who's anyone goes, parks their car near, and basically hangs out and dances/parties some more. We were exhausted by this point, but I said thanks for the offer. We'd
Catedral
Cathedral in downtown Tampico see them again if it was in the stars.
Sure enough, the next day, we're lounging on the beach after an amazing lunch of
mariscos (seafood), and a car pulls up in front of us in the sand "¡HOLA!" Fabián and Felix. They take us around the area, show us some other beaches a little bit further north, and also to
Laguna del Carpintero, a lake where a lot of families go to eat, relax, or celebrate special occasions. We rented a few paddle boats, and luckily didn't get eaten by the crocodiles that live in the
Laguna. They also offer us a ride to the bus station for our 7pm bus back to Monterrey. Alas, we encounter a problem. Fabián's car gets a flat tire. With under an hour to go until our bus leaves (the bus station is a good 1/2 hour away), I decide to call the bus company and see if we can get on a later bus. Success! We're on the 10pm bus. Fabián finds us a taxi back to the hotel and tells us they'll fix the flat tire problem (he didn't have a spare with him so they had to wait for
a friend), then come to the hotel and take us to the bus station in downtown Tampico. We waited until around 8:30, no sign of the guys, so we grab our backpacks and head up the road looking for a taxi. Finally get a taxi after about 10 minutes of walking, and turns out the bus ticket change was no major problem.
And there we are... three sunburned, exhausted kids, in a bus station, different day, different city. This time with some more memories, a few more friends, and a place to stay should we ever return to Tampico (Fabián's
casa is our
casa apparently).
We got back into Monterrey around 5am this morning. Good thing I have no class or work on Mondays! This weekend was by far my favorite weekend in Mexico-- and mostly because we went without a plan and ended up having an amazing time and making some new friends along the way!
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ChristinJ
Christin Marshall
I'm really glad you wrote all this.....
Congrats on your book... I mean blog. I sent my folks the link because I don't think that I would have anything to add if I blogged it, thanks friend.