Blogs from Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico, North America

Distance driven today: 194 miles / 312 km Cumulative distance driven: 5,928 miles / 9,540km Today’s trip: Veracruz to Coatzacoalcos, Mexico Speed bumps driven over: insanely many Yesterday evening I picked up Zoe from the airport in Veracruz J I thought we should take it easy on our first riding day together, so I decided to start with a short trip of around 200 miles, which was supposed to only take 3,5 hours. What could possibly go wrong? Over 7,5 hours later, I was on the border of driving myself insane – yes the pun is intended! Instead of taking the highway from Veracruz to Coatzacoalcos, I decided to take the scenic sea-side road. The scenic route turned out to take 4 hours longer than the highway because it took us through all 147 villages (now ... read more

In the morning we went to visit Karla's neighbor who was always very kind to Karla as she grew up. She used to spoil Karla with mojarra so when we showed up unexpectingly, she took us down to the store, bought some fresh fish and fried up the mojarra. The fish was pretty good too. Unfortunately, while we were waiting to eat, there was a small old drunk man who wanted to tell his life story to me and after about 3 minutes of the story I notice the facts kept repeating and didn't always coincide so that it was all blubberish. And this man didn't quite get the hint that I wasn't interested in the least bit. I was swinging in the hammock on the porch and could care less about his chit chat. We ... read more

We arrived sometime after 1:00 a.m. in Coatzacoalcos. Actually getting into the city is an adventure in and of itself. There are only two roads into the city and finding them is not obvious or well marked. We made a few detours and u-turns but somehow found ourselves in downtown where we wanted to be. I printed out my google maps before making the trip but found that they were useless here. The streets weren't marked, didn't make any logical sense meandering every which way, and intersections with 6 streets coming together with no street light was common. By this time I had lost all courtesy for other drivers so I fit right in here and had no difficulty maneuvering the city streets. Karla remembered by sight the way to go so she directed us to ... read more