Mexico 2012 RV Trip - un viaje mas grande - Day 16, Jan.12, Costa Esmeralda - Catamaco

Do you remember the movie, RV, with Robin Williams? Well, today we had some really “crappy” events happen to us, as well. While our campsite at Casitas del Tajin was very pretty, that is where anything good about it ends. First of all, remember we had no electricity because the voltage was too high. Because the water pressure was so poor our clean water tanks had only filled about half way after 12 hours! We also needed to dump our “used” water tanks, so Tobey attached the dump hose and opened the “black” water tank. That’s when the sh** hit the fan, so to speak! He IMMEDIATELY shut off the tank as soon as it started flowing because the RV park’s dump holding tank was full. NOT A PRETTY PICTURE. After hosing the area down for about 20 minutes and cleaning up the mess, we decided we had no choice but to wait to dump our tanks. Okay, since we can’t dump, we thought we could at least use their showers since we asked and were told they had hot water. Not true. We tried both the men’s and women’s and after 10 minutes, there was STILL no hot water. Back to the RV and use the precious little water we had in our tanks and our generator to run my hair dryer. Geez, we might as well have stayed at a PEMEX station for all we got for our money! At least the sunrise was good!

We picked up our laundry – 27.5 pounds washed, dried, folded, and wrapped in plastic bags for $150 pesos (about $10.50USD) and were on the road at 10. Nice.

We drove through areas of large banana plantations, sugar cane fields, and cattle ranches. We also saw many more of the roadside stands selling “mariscos” (shrimp). We are looking forward to that fresh seafood!

There were miles and miles of sugar cane fields, and in many areas the air was filled with smoke as they were burning off the cane.

We also passed several trucks carrying cane that had been harvested. They load everything VERTICALLY because the roads are so narrow!

Today we also had the “privilege” of being selected at the federales’ roadblocks to be searched. None of the soldiers speak much English, but at the first stop, he wanted our AARP magazine that was in the trash. Go for it, it’s yours! We weren’t sure what they wanted at the second stop, but I asked if he had children (in Spanish, thank you very much) and Tobey gave him our Santa piñata.The soldier seemed quite happy; thumbs up, we were once again on our way.

We arrived at Catemaco about 4:30 and had no problem finding the Hotel Tepetapan & RV Park – yeah! The roads were a little better today. We drove exactly 200 miles in 5-1/2 hours. However, once again we cannot use the RV park’s electricity (134 Volts – too high) and the water pressure is horrible. We are hopeful the tank will fill by morning. We are paying $200 pesos/night here (about $14.50USD). We have plans to tour in the area tomorrow, but it started raining here about 7:00, so we will see.

GPS 18.41949°N, 95.12164°W