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Published: April 14th 2009
April 8, Wednesday
This was a day to split up and have a little "alone" time. I hopped on the bike after a fruit breakfast and rode across town to the BMW dealer. Luis tried to help me find someone that had a decent gps map of Mexico, as the Garmin had informed me that Mexico was not in North America, therefore it wasn't on the North American map that I had purchased. No luck with that, it would take Garmin sending me the smart chip by mail, so I decided to just keep on figuring out the routes as we've been doing. I headed for the twisties to Xalapa. This town is up in the mountains and boasts the second largest archeological museum in Mexico, Museo de Antropologia. Once I arrived in town the process began to figure out where the Museum was. As I rode the "main" road into the city, I noticed a children's museum, so I quickly turned into there and asked the man at the gate. This took while and several tries in "espanol" to get across to him that I wasn't looking for his museum, but he gave me some vague directions towards the
other side of town. I needed to get back on the boulevard going the other way, but there were NO turn arounds, even illegal ones. I ended up turning off at another exit, then asked at a Pemex station, and got some better directions. My basic idea was that it was on the other side of town was correct, and with a twenty minute ride through town in much traffic, and a little confusion on the far side of town, I finally found a place to park and walked into the "unmarked" museum. There are many tribes from the various areas of Mexico. We tend to lump them together as “Aztec”, but that was only one of the tribes. The Totonaucans, Mixtlans, Oaxcans, Olmecs and Mayans are just a few examples of similar but different tribes, all with considerably advanced cultures. The buildings are amazing. The art is beautiful and the amount of work that went into the carvings etc prove that somebody had the time to do that work instead of “surviving”. Two hours in the museum was enough, especially as all the information was in Spanish. I stopped for something to eat at a restaurant and balneario (swimming
pool) and it was fun to watch the kids play just like all of them the world over. Back in Vera Cruz, I met up with Rafa and Carmen and a couple other bikers at another restaurant. I got to meet the owner of the Hotel Colonial, and his son, and a few others. A late night, then back to bed.
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