Beautiful isolated downtown Catemaco can get on your nerves after a while and a trip to the "big smoke" becomes a necessity.
Usually it is a daytrip to Veracruz City that stills the hungers of a capitalist heart for blueberry jam, roast beef, bagels and other culinary delights. But actually spending time in another city offering different flavored restaurants, cultural institutions and beehive activity is required to maintain a former city dweller's equilibrium.
So we took off a few days and headed for the major Veracruz cities, Xalapa & Veracruz to visit friends and family. The roads were mostly passable, the traffic, except for isolated spots was tolerable, the weather was beautiful and the return trip to Catemaco evoked many memories.
Most notable was the burgeoning in both cities of major road and other construction, the invasion of major international franchises from Subway to Costco, and the proliferation of political propaganda.
Xalapa was refreshingly cool this time of year. Its restaurants have multiplied and its hotels apparently are competing for most pricey in the state. The usually comfortable Howard Johnson Hotel tried to rip me off for 1300 pesos, that last year cost 850 and 4 years ago, 650, without any improvements in the facility. (They buckled and only raped me for 960 with the usual gorgeous view off the fifth floor).
The Xalapa Museum was still worth it after my fifth trip, the sushi in an unnamed restaurant was mediocre and the mole and trout in Xico were still superb, and we only wasted the usual few hours sightseeing the city while getting lost, as usual. (Take a taxi to get around, they are cheap.)
On the return from Xalapa, we stopped for the first time in La Antigua, an exit almost unmarked before the last toll booth on the Tampico / Veracruz toll road. This is actually the home of the first permanent European residence in the continental US, and an insult to any historian of America's history. Nevertheless it is a pleasant place to lunch in one of the dozens of riverside restaurants and even to take a boat ride.Entering Veracruz from the north was the usual mind reader puzzle along a totally screwed up corridor but placed us safely into downtown where, if you are not familiar, the thousands of superfluous traffic signs along Mexico roads are ABSENT.
Fortunately we found our new hotel, and I am still debating whether to recommend it, both for price and comfort, on my list of 12 hotels that I have stayed at in Veracruz City. Try your own luck.
A giant movie theater still provided us with a treat not available in Los Tuxtlas, and of course, I laughed in the wrong parts, because my companions did not get the joke in the subtitles. (I don´t understand how Mexico can counterfeit movies within 24 hours but not provide translations in 48 hours. Yeah, English is difficult!)
Shopping in the "best" Plaza de las Americas was still FAAAAR from any US shopping mall, but still good enough for me to hesitate to return my Popoluca and our credit card to my favorite Veracruz city. (Catemaco thinks it is a city, actually it qualifies as a town).
If you are familiar with Veracruz, bypass it via the Coatzacoalco exit shortly after the last toll booth and drive about 15 miles along a substandard 2 lane highway to Paso del Toro to Los Tuxtlas. If you are not familiar - VISIT VERACRUZ CITY - it is worth it.
