9/3/16, “A
Familiar Arrival”
Tlacotalpan,
Veracruz, Mexico
I’ve done
this before. It’s all so familiar. The roads, the heritage sites, the towns,
they all look so familiar. No, I’ve
never been to Tlacotalpan before, but it looks much the same as Campeche. The roads look the same here in Veracruz as
they did in Michoacan or the Yucatan or even Panama. Every bit of today was familiar, right down
to my arrival at Benito Juarez, the gateway airport to the rest of Mexico. This was the last time I will leave the
airport at Benito Juarez to embark on a journey to central Mexico, but it is
the third time I have done it, and, today was much the same as those two other
Day 1s, definitely a familiar arrival.
Next month, when Roberto and I go to the Borderlands, and in February,
when we go to Baja California Sur, we will meet at a gate in Benito Juarez and
take the connecting flight together, to Juarez (yes, that Juarez) next month
and to Cabo in February. Those places
will not have the familiar feel that I have gotten so used to in central Mexico
and, for that matter, all of Central America.
It saddens me knowing that I will soon be losing this familiar feel, but
I can also take great pride in the fact that, in less than six months, we will
be saying, “Mexico Complete,” and smoking a very large cigar on the beach of
Cabo. Okay, so how did this familiar
arrival play out? Well, as always, I
experienced the unfamiliar within the familiar.
After I closed last night, I hobbled to the gate and published my entry
through the connection on my phone. They
were soon boarding first class, and I went to my seat. I fell asleep almost as soon as we took off,
glad to be in the front row so that I could elevated my wounded leg against the
bulkhead. Next thing I knew, I was being
woken up to complete my immigration and customs forms. I filled it out hastily as we landed. I then took the familiar walk from the gate
to border control, the same walk I was now taking for the fourth time at this
airport. It was a long walk in my
injured condition, but my suitcase served as an adequate crutch.
The line was relatively short and, when I got
to the agent, he berated me for not filling out a section. I am very glad that for my future trips I
will have an expedited pass to allow me to bypass these formalities. I asked if I could borrow his pen. He said that it was his pen. He told me there were tables with pens all
the way in the back a walk that might as well have been a mile in my condition,
not to mention the line had gotten much longer.
Fuck that shit. I checked my bag
for a pen. All I found was a
Sharpie. It would be blurry af, but it
would do the trick. I filled it out, but
he told me I needed to go to the end of the line. As I so eloquently wrote early, fuck that
shit. I went to the beginning of the
line and waited for another agent to be available. That was a quick process.
I found the duty-free shop, where I had so
many times previously bought cigars to start off my trip and got a bunch,
including some to take home. Roberto and
his sister would be meeting me at Hertz at 6 AM, though it was now a little
earlier than that. They said that my car
was not ready, since my reservation was for 7 AM, but that, for triple the
price, I could upgrade to a sports car.
Not happening. I asked, firmly,
if my car was on the lot. He said it was
not. I asked if it would be on the lot
at 7 AM. Maybe. I then asked what happened if the car was not
there at 7 AM. He said that they would
then have to upgrade me to the sports car for free. Something was fishy.
Roberto and his sister soon arrived, and I
explained the situation. We decided we
would get breakfast in the airport to kill time. That was a good idea. I got bacon and eggs, along with coffee. He got pancakes, bacon, and eggs. She got some kind of yogurt concoction. It was not exactly a Mexican breakfast. At 7 AM, we headed back to Hertz, and,
surprise, the car was now ready. We
filled out the paperwork, and I got some ibuprofen for my knee, which was now
seriously swollen. I usually take
acetaminophen for pain, but I knew that I needed an NSAID. They brought us to the car in some kind of
golf cart, and we were off.
I lit up
Davidoff’s newest dark cigar, the Yamasa, in Toro size, as my first cigar of
the trip. Traditionally, I had chosen
the Davidoff Nic Toro for the first long drive cigar of a trip, but that
changed to the Escurio Toro when that blend was released, and now it is the
Yamasa. As always, I blasted Taylor
Swift’s album Red. It was a comforting
mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar.
We were soon at our first site, the Aqueduct of Padre Tembleque.
It was not yet 9 AM, and we were the first
ones there. It would be a treacherous
climb up and down some steep paths to get to the spot where the ceremonial
picture was taken, but a little cycling accident wasn’t going to stop me, so I
lit up a Cohiba, and we made the trek.
Going down was the painful part, and going up was actually rather
therapeutic for my leg. We got the
ceremonial picture and blasted it all over social media. Then, back down and up again to the car.
Roberto wanted to stop at Puebla, since he
had never gotten the Plaque there, and that was fine, since it was en
route. All that we needed to do for the
rest of the day was get to Tlacotalpan to take our ceremonial pictures before
dark and get souvenirs before the shops closed.
I had been to Puebla over three years ago during the first one of these
trips, but I had never taken the inscription picture. I had no idea where the site was,
either. Roberto was driving, and I
smoked a Casa Magna. I thought I would
be able to rest my eyes while I smoked.
I thought wrong. I fell asleep,
and the cigar fell out of my hand onto my suit.
I was now awake.
We were soon in
Puebla. Quite by accident we found the
inscription photo location. It was the
old hospital, now a museum. We parked
the car and went for lunch. The prices
were so cheap that I figured that they had to be small portions. Again, I figured wrong. They were huge. Roberto got a sandwich, and I ordered three
dishes, each about the price of a street hot dog in the city. I couldn’t finish my food. Roberto was much hungrier than I was so he
helped me out. I then lit up a Romeo,
the same cigar I smoked last time I was in Puebla, and Roberto was still
smoking the cigar he had lit up at the aqueduct, the same cigar I had smoked at
the cigar store yesterday afternoon. It
was lasting him three hours.
We took the
ceremonial pictures at the hospital/museum and then headed to the plaza. We took our picture of the Plaque there, and
I downloaded the picture I had taken at the cathedral three years ago. I asked Roberto to help me recreate the
picture, and I posted the two pictures together in one image with the desired
effect. With some difficulty, we found
our way back to the car. It was looking
like a 6 PM arrival time at Tlacotalpan, and sunset was not until 7:30 PM,
which is right now. Roberto assured me
that the shops would be opened past 6 PM, so that would allow us to get an
early start tomorrow which was necessary for our plan. As soon as we got on the highway, I fell
asleep. I woke up around 4 PM, refreshed
and starving.
We found a cluster of
restaurant on the side of the road, so we stopped there to load up and snacks
and have some quesadillas, which were excellent. We got back on the road, and I lit up an
Aroma de Cuba. We hit some construction
traffic, but, even with the stops and delays, we got to the hotel in
Tlacotalpan before 6 PM. I changed into
casual clothes and grabbed some cigars for the evening. This was going to be very similar to
Campeche. The town even looked the
same. We would need to find the Plaque
and a specific building from the inscription photo, a white and green building
(yellow in Campeche), in a town full of buildings painted white and green. We would then get dinner. However, here we would be spending the night,
rather than a six-hour drive to our hotel like we did after Campeche. Also, here everyone knew the building, but we
had trouble finding it.
I lit up a
Montecristo, and we were on our way to explore the town. We quickly found the Plaque and took our
ceremonial pictures there. I found a
souvenir shop right next to the Plaque and got my keychain. I also asked about the building. She told me where it was. Roberto and I walked exactly to where she
said it was, but I couldn’t find it.
Roberto pointed to a tan and brown building. They had repainted the white and green
building to tan and brown. That’s why we
didn’t see it earlier. Well, this was
it, so we took our ceremonial pictures, and Roberto excused himself to walk
down to the river. I sat across from the
building, where I proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that
I can find Roberto, and then we can get dinner.
I really don’t
have much new to report, other than a pretty amazing dinner. After I closed, I headed back to the plaza
and met Roberto on the way. We were both
pretty starving at this point, and it was starting to get dark, so our
sightseeing for the day had come to a close, though Roberto wanted to check out
the church before dinner. Meanwhile, in
the interest of picking out where to eat, I did what I always do, I looked up
the top rated restaurants on Tripadvisor.
My usual routine is start with that list, look at the top place, and, if
that doesn’t work for whatever reason, work my way down until I find one that
does. I can usually find a place in the
top twenty that works. Tlacotalpan only
had three listed, and only one of which, the top one, looked acceptable. It was located inside a hotel about a block
from the plaza, so we headed there, only to learn that the restaurant was
closed. They had recommended another
place, but I didn’t like the look of the brochure.
Instead, we find a nice hole in the wall
place at the plaza. Roberto had told me
that Tlacotalpan specializes in empanadas, so that’s what we ordered. More big portions at cheap prices. I got three shrimp empanadas and traded one
of them with Roberto for his pork empanada.
It was all good. Very good. After the empanadas, I lit up a Don Carlos,
which was even better, while I waited for my fried plantains with cheese sauce,
which was practically a dessert. After
we were so full we could barely walk (my knee having almost fully recovered at
this point, actually), we kept smoking at the table (outside) for a bit
more.
We then headed back to the hotel,
and I picked up two small bottles of alcohol (rum and brandy) for the
room. We got to the room and relaxed for
a bit, enjoying our brandy and cigars, like proper gentlemen. The Wi-Fi in the room was spotty, and I
needed to upload my photos to the cloud before I could publish my entry, so I
headed outside to the terrace, which is in view of the water, though there is
not much to see in the dark. I grabbed a
chair and sat down out on the terrace, where I proceeded to write this entry,
which I will now close so that I can publish before I crash.
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