The Best of Both Worlds

I sit here in a internet cafe in the town of Xalapa, while it rains outside, and is as cold as an Indiana November.  This was not the reason I came to Veracruz.  Yesterday when I pulled into town, the gray clouds and dampness in the air were a nice change from the heat and humidity of the coast: it gave this university town, full of life in its streets, a kind of european feel that was endearing.  But today the rain continued, and I,  who didn’t think to pack any long sleeve shirts, have been shivering all day.  Tomorrow I go back to the coast, this time a little bit north to the ruins of Tajin, so I am looking forward to another, expected, change in the weather. 

The main reason I came to Xalapa was its Anthropological museum.  It was supposed to be the best in the country outside of the D.F., and me being a sucker for a good museum had made Xalapa one of the necessary stops on my trip.  The place did not disappoint.  The stone Olmec sculpture was amazing, a much greater collection than that at the museum in Mexico City.  The museum has big collection of 7 giant heads, with their squashed, angry looking faces, and it was fun to compare the expressions on them all.  Each one truly represents a different unique individual, which makes it fascinating to try to imagine the character of the person represented in the portrait.  There are also a series of half-man-half-jaguar sculptures which are in pristine condition, and from which an appreciation of the artistic range of the Olmec culture can be really appreciated.  The section Tajin was also interesting, and I will come back to this after my visit tomorrow to the actual site. 

But overall I am just not getting into Veracruz like I had hoped.  Its been a bit of a disappointment.  I decided to go to Lake Catemaco on Wednesday based on the advice of some fellow travelers, but it turned out to not be too much.  On the way down I bumped into two girls from Denmark, and after only a couple of hours in town they decided to leave early and get the first bus to Playa del Carmen.  It was a bad sign, and it didn’t take me long either to come to agreement with them on southern Veracruz: a dull place, lacking in interest.  The thing to do at the lake is to take a boar ride around for an hour, but at 35 bucks a head I wasn’t about to jump on that.  Instead I found a fishermen to take me around one of the islands in his rowboat for 10 dollars instead.  He was an interesting guy to talk with, and I learned that the fishermen here go out every morning to catch perch, and go diving for snails.  Its got to be a simple life, that’s for sure, but he seemed satisfied with it.  At night I walked around town aimlessly, bored out of my skull.  I decided to eat at one of the lakefront restaurants, where I was the only customer.  I ordered the famous magorra, a type of perch, and it was nice, if a bit expensive at 10 dollars.  After that I went to bed early.  Its been a pattern all too common so far on this vacation.