Giant map of Catemaco

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Catemaco to Tabasco

Knocking on some of the remaining wood in Los Tuxtlas, the local rainy season has been extraordinarily mild so far. North and south of here, the story has been different.

Much of the state of Tabasco is now flooded. The Cuota south, and the bypass for Villahermosa seem to be open. and the shortcut to Chiapas is so far unaffected.

Global warning is getting the blame for the rain. Students of history, though, will have noticed that prehistoric civilization of the area occurred mostly atop earthen platforms providing nice views and dry bedding.

Meanwhile more than 55,000 families are affected, and relief efforts are under way.

For each peso you send, these banks will add another one:

More photos:

Los Tuxtlas elevations

Link: www.tuxtlas.com/los_tuxtlas

Drive your U boat to Catemaco

As predicted, on an annual basis, the road south from Catemaco towards the Yucatan and Guatemala is today under 6 feet of water near Covarrubias, on the road towards Acayucan / Villahermosa.

Take the "cuota" to bypass Catemaco and catch us next time.

Happy Trails.

Update:
Road is open again. Come on down!

Catemaco as usual

Mexican and US news go ballistic whenever the phrase"hurricane" occurs.

Tropical depressions, tropical storms, etc, usually are fifth page item like "Storm hits Mexico, thousands die".

Northern Veracruz is experiencing a double whammy of different storms. Major highway travel seems to be un-interrupted. Off roads should be avoided, same as the rest of the year, except this time around you should be driving a u boat to avoid problems.

Southern Veracruz is fine as usual, until a bridge or a hill caves in without notice.

This is the same "international" highway connecting Texas to the Yucatan and also Guatemala for the past 100 years.

Did you ever wonder what "international" means?

In Mexico it seems to imply sharing the same road conditions as fourth world countries.
Happy Trails.






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Catemaco to Minatitlan / Coatzacoalcos

Surprise, surprise, the road leading from beautiful downtown Catemaco SOUTH is in good shape.
For those in a hurry, I recommend heading towards Acayucan, passing by the city, and seeking the turnoff to the southern “cuota” Vistahermosa toll road. Going through Acayucan is problematic, and the free road to Minatitlan bustles with heavy truck traffic.

Coatzacoalcos is like the Brooklyn of forgotten days. HINT: First price is a weekend in Coatza. Second price is a whole week in Coatza.

This bustling oil port has few redeeming touristic features aside from a great location on the confluence of the Gulf of Mexico and the Coatzacoalcos river, modern shopping facilities and an attractive “malecon” beach road.

Most hotels are overpriced, but the seafood restaurants at the edge of the river, overlooking the scurrying ferries towards Tabasco may make the city a worthwhile stop.
Adventurous drivers can embark on a ferry to continue a coastal trip south.

Buses and roads

Getting killed in a multiple passenger bus by a rock slide has got to be the fickle finger of some vengeful god. Why did he not choose one or two 2 passenger Ford Ranger pickup trucks so popular in Mexico?

The recent disaster of almost 40 dead in a land slide in Puebla, Mexico should be a caution sign to anyone traversing mountainous areas in southern Mexico. Let's not even speak about Guatemala, where death by mudslide is probably more frequent than death by intestinal diseases.

The dichotomy of Mexican roads, waffling between 21st century super highways to narrow 2 lane roads along precipices is just another symbol of 100's of years of corruption in road building and failure by Mexican engineers and their political sponsors to provide safe passage to its citizens.

Locally, each year numerous mud and rock slides disrupt the roads leading through Los Tuxtlas. Fortunately no full passenger bus has been affected recently except for a few that fell of bridges and some that missed a curve and plunged down 50 feet.

Fortunately there is a super highway bypassing Los Tuxtlas, at a cost of several days wages for the average local wage earner. That road is so unused and straight, that a blind person could possibly drive it except for those 1 foot deep potholes that unscrupulous Mexican contractors caused to be left behind to remind passing gringos who is boss in this part of the world.

I feel deeply sorry for those mud killed passengers, especially after reading they were mostly impoverished peasants, probably spending an entire day coming and going, to collect the equivalent of a 32 dollar Mexican welfare handout.

Those overhanging cliffs, though, are surely beautiful, especially on the roads through Oaxaca.

It is really a thrill there to stare up to a 1000 foot overhang while navigating a road along a 1000 foot dropoff. What a marvel of engineering that road between Puente Nacional and Oaxaca is. Those Mayans at their Chichen Itza rock piles simply do not compete, irregardless of possibly being declared an international monument today.

Matamoros to Catemaco

Crossing the border from Brownsville, Texas to Matamoros (Killing Moors) is a breeze along the newly opened border crossing at Puente Internacional. Leaving Matamoros is the pinnacle of further venturing into Mexico. You will be impresssed by fast roads leading through Tamaulipas, the state harboring Matamoros.

You will know you reached Veracruz when the roads turn to crap, smiling politicians laugh at you from most available lamposts, diesel fumes compete with your AC, your average speeds drops to 25 miles per hour and the landscape becomes beautiful.

If towing a vehicle or being otherwise out of the norm, Mexican "Federales" Highway Police Officers are some of the friendliest Mexicans you will likely encounter on Gulf coast roads. Locals usually tip these valiant officers 100 to 200 pesos after making their aquaintance. Usually these encounters have no relations to actual traffic infractions.Our last trip with 2 newly Matamoros purchased vehicle towing another, resulted in 6 traffic stops with a total of 2800 pesos in contributions to the Mexican police forces.

The downhill section from Catemaco to Matamoros produced not a single police stop, but 4 "get out of the car and get searched stops" by military personel. My Popoluca's son accompanying me told me it was because I did not smile enough when questioned.

The Texas to Yucatan highway has been around for several hundred years but has existed only a little more than 50 years in a paved version. Until recently, much of the roads seemed to hark to those previous glory days. Improvement has been slow and Veracruz now counts a dozen toll roads with many terminating abruptly and leading nowhere with signs to Mexico City.

Generally speaking, the roads from Matamoros to Tampico are good, with substantial road construction along a small part of the way.The Tampico bypass is open, but not pleasant! The exit to Veracruz City is only marked by a "Tuxpan" sign, and easily missed.The Tuxpan bypass is also easily missed and will provide you with several opportunities to have adventures on never before seen Veracruz roads. Poza Rica is even better to get lost in. Fortunately the roads between Tuxpan and Poza Rica are pleasant to drive.

A curious aspect of local highway construction is two way toll roads. They are usually accompanied by rather large road shoulders, in place of fifty foot drop offs. The locally acceptable norm for passing a car in in your lane, while there is oncoming traffic, is to demand that the car in front of you drives to the shoulder in order for you to pass in the middle of the road. Opposing traffic usually plays by these rules and also moves to the shoulder, and you can safely pass in the middle of the road, frequently along 34 wheel tractor trailers, unless of course you meet a dumb foreigner like me who did not understand this game and sticks to his lane. In that case you might receive a side swiped mirror as occured to me when I first encountered this type of road near Cancun many years ago.

From Poza Rica to Veracruz is fairly easy going amid an attractive landscape. Bypassing Veracruz on the way to Catemaco is easy and well marked, until you get to the Paso the Toro exit, which might send you to Cordoba. The road to Los Tuxtlas at present is better than it has been in 5 years, which might not be true tomorrow.

Total driving and stopping time is 14 hours, taking advantage of the lack of speed controls, or 17 driving comfortably or 2 days, sightseeing.
COME ON DOWN

Catemaco hole in the ground

Living in beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz, I tend to take the surrounding volcanoes as scenery.Today I ventured into Google Earth and tilted my environment a little.

Apparently, there is no Volcano Santa Marta, or anything like that. Apparently a zillion years ago, the entire landscape blew up and left a giant hole with a few remnants hills like Santa Marta, Yohualtajapan, etc. Considering the earthquakes in the Veracruz area in the last few months, I am getting all excited about "living on the edge".

Catemaco Baches

There are several agencies responsible for the maintenance of Catemaco roads. And they all do a wonderful job. But apparently they have saboteurs among themselves.

On a daily basis, unknown saboteurs create so called baches (pot holes) in most roads surrounding Catemaco. Most taxi drivers maintain maps to navigate among the larger ones.

“Mel Gibson”, it has been said, assured his filming crews’ comfortable travel by contributing to the local maintenance effort and had some of the road surface leading to his studios converted into something resembling a road. Meanwhile, some of the stretches of the road to Sontecomapan are possibly large enough to bury the local mayor´s mother in law.

As usual in Catemaco politics, users of roads are banding together to protest the conditions of their roads and plan to possibly burn down the local government or kidnap the local toilet paper distributor to be treated equitably.

Catemaco Hills and Coast

I took a wonderful drive a short while ago, from Catemaco to Perla de San Martin. From there, I headed towards Ruiz Cortines, and broke off on the spur towards El Diamante. I had traveled the direct route from Perla to Diamante previously and spent most of my time opening cattle gates.
This route is absolutely wonderful for someone in a high clearance vehicle preferably with 4X4.
The views are amazing on the road to Perla, with the gulf and laguna Sontecomapan glittering above the greens of the many cow pastures.

Heading from Perla towards Ruiz, the clouds start nibbling on the very bad road composed of volcanic pebbles and sundry rocks barely permitting views of the magnificent vistas of an enshrouded Volcano San Martin, patches of remnant rain forest and glorious exhibits of flowers.
The turnoff to Diamante from Ruiz leads into a pure channel of green, towering jungle foliage, moist with the almost ever present high altitude fog, butterflies larger than my side mirror and plants that I spent a fortune to buy from local nurseries.

Unfortunately that channel peters out into the usual treeless Tuxtlas landscape on the way to La Nueva Victoria.

Inherently the landscape still remains beautiful with gorgeous vistas of the gulf, the flanks of Volcano San Martin, the innocent looks of hundreds of calves, and assorted dried out rocky arroyos.

With the growing season advantages of Los Tuxtlas, this would have been a paradise for sustainable forestry, instead it´s a "gentleman´s" playground of absentee landlord's fiefs and hunting grounds.

At La Nueva Victoria (forget about the turnoff to Montepio, it´s not transversable), the choice was to head back via El Tropico or Montepio.
Montepio it was, with a quick stop at Arroyo de Lisa and Costa de Oro to check on some beach front property my partner owns.

The road is great - (notwithstanding the potholes from previous experiences on the El Tropico to La Nueva Victoria connection or the asinine contributions of "topes" by the inhabitans of Dos de Abril and Revolucion).

I like Costa de Oro and its sister ejido of Arroyo de Lisa. But my days of "hippy" style vagabonding are gone. If these communities want to get a share of both Mexican and international tourist dollars, they have to clean up their attitude, landscape, and directions, and don´t even mention the word ecoturismo to me!
Meanwhile, if you are a bum, like I used to be, you´ll be perfectly happy there.

The Montepio/Dos de Abril bridge has been bridged! I didn´t believe my eyes, but the functional idea was to run a span of concrete above the old haphazard crossing, apparently using the same old foundations. Cross over this one quick.

The Montepio / Catemaco road is taking shape. The part that technically is of the Tuxtlas Biosphere nucleus, near the biological station, is being paved in rocks, worse than the usual suspension busters of usual Catemaco roads, but still better than what existed before. From The La Barra entrance to Catemaco it´s a free ride, except for those 7 damn topes in Sontecomapan.