Buses, guns, and the beach

So last Friday, on my way to meet Kurt in Papantla, I was on a nice, 1^st class bus when at about 9:00 at night, 30 min before the next stop, 2 of the passengers pulled out guns, raised them in the air and declared that this was assault and everyone needed to close the curtains and their eyes. They went through the bus for about 20 min looking for the usual, cash, cell phones, jewelry and watches and then told the driver to stop and they hopped off on the side of the highway and we continued on to Papantla. I lost some cash and a ring, but we were lucky that other than one man who got punched, no one was hurt.

But the good news is that I got to spend the rest of the weekend on the Gulf Coast in Tecolutla hanging out on the beach and eating good seafood.

Sea Turtles

This weekend I returned to the little beach town on Tecolutla, Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico. The beaches there are home to 3 different kinds of sea turtles and now is the season when the turtles come on shore and lay their eggs. There is an NGO that was created on the beach to collect the turtle’s eggs after they have been laid and protect them during the incubation period. Then, they release the baby sea turtles back to the sea and hope that at least some of them survive and return to the same beach to lay their eggs. This summer they are estimating that 14,000 babies will come from the beaches in Tecolutla. As part of a fundraiser for the NGO, during the breeding season, you can help release the baby sea turtles. So on Sunday morning I got to hold and them put in the Gulf, 3 little baby Kemp's ridley sea turtles. Here are the pictures of my 3 turtles…..

The video of one of my turtles......




For dinner one night we decided to try what was said to be the resturant's specialty, a stuffed pineapple. Little did we know that the stuffed pineapple (filled with seafood and who know's what else), also came complete with face.

Sunday, after releasing turtles, we decided to take a short boat trip into the mangroves just off the Tecolutla River. Saw a bunch of birds, crabs, turtles, and even a pet iguana lounging on the front of an ice cream boat (think ice cream truck, but in a boad instead).

Castro´s Beginning (kinda) and the Beach

This weekend I went to Tuxpan and Tecolutla in the state of Veracruz. Tuxpan is centered on the banks of the Río Tuxpan, and about 10 min to the Gulf of Mexico. To get across the river, there’s a bridge, or you can use the shuttle system of small boats (lanchitas) that run back and forth. On the other side of the river (opposite the center of town) is the Mexican-Cuban museum of friendship. This tiny museum marks the departure spot for Fidel Castro, his brother Raul, Guevara, and the other leaders of the Cuban Revolution as they left Mexico for Cuba in a private yacht (Granma) to begin the Revolution in Cuba. So it was an interesting coincidence to be visiting this site in the same week that Castro officially stepped down as Cuba’s leader. Tuxpan is a pretty quite town (about 200,000) and most of the economy is centered around its port and the petroleum industry.

From there we headed to the tiny town of Tecolutla on the Gulf of Mexico and the Río Tecolutla. This also happens to be the terminus of one of the watersheds that I’m working with. This beach town comes complete with hammocks on the beach and a plethora of seafood vendors with push carts right on the sand. Not too sure about the logistics of a seafood cart in hot sun, but I guess it works. Also not sure how much of the seafood you really want to eat seeing as most of the beaches along the Gulf of Mexico are fairly polluted from the petroleum industry. But all in all another good weekend in Veracruz and out of the office. Posting has been a little slow as the Mexican govt does a great job of blocking any and every website that you would actually want to go to.