About a year ago I told dad I wanted to take him to Mexico on a trip. Several scenes from one of his favorite movies, Romancing the Stone were filmed in or around Veracruz, so I said let's go see those. And do some other stuff. He agreed, and we've finished our first two days here. His first two days in a country not the US or Canada.
Our flights were somewhat uneventful. We flew Seattle to Guadalajara to Mexico City to Veracruz, and arrived mid afternoon to our final destination.
We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel, and dad got his first taste of bat-out-of-hell taxi drivers and Latin American traffic, but did pretty well at hiding any terror. I was just happy to be back with familiar sights and sounds.
We checked into the hotel, then walked up to the centro for some sightseeing. The bulwark, a remnant of the wall that circled the city in the 1800s, was unfortunately closed for renovations, but the outside still looked cool.
We got ice cream to drown our disappointment. (Okay, that one was all my idea) then found the naval museum the next block over. It was open late for an event that night.
The museum was extensive to say the least.
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| The exhibits were all around this huge center room with a big map on the floor. |
There were exhibits in room after room of naval history, prehispanic artifacts, recreations of weapons, uniforms, ships, it just kept going. There were people in uniform ready to talk about the exhibits and answer questions. A musical performance was being set up for in the courtyard.
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| Scale model of an 18th century boat. |
It's a good thing they were open late because we took way longer than I thought to go through it all.
It was dark when we finally left. We took a stroll out to the waterfront, saw the fort across the water that we'll be visiting in the next day or two, then went to find dinner.
Dads first Mexican meal was from a very authentic street taco shop, with horchata to drink.
We went to bed pleased with day 1.
Day 2 I had arranged to go diving. That one was actually Dad's idea. He wanted to go snorkeling and just have a day out on the water, so I didn't argue.
After the normal madness in the shop with paperwork and sizing gear, we were on our way down the beach to the boat.
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| Leaving Veracruz harbor, definitely a working port. |
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| The second dive was just off this lighthouse, which warned unsuspecting boats about the reef. |
The dive sites were maybe 20 mins offshore, and we passed a bunch of shallow reef areas along the way. I'd hate to be a captain out there, lots of things to run aground on.
I'll do a separate diving post once I download my photos and see if there's anything worthwhile in them. Suffice for now to say the diving was fun, and there were lots of fish, corals, eels, sea urchins, and I very much enjoyed them. Dad had a good time snorkeling and experiencing how a dive boat operation worked.
After returning gear and rinsing off, we walked out to El Faro Verde, the green lighthouse that was protecting the harbor in front of the shop.
It was pleasantly breezy, and dad liked seeing all the guys fishing off the side. We also saw a school of fish leaping out of the water running from some predator fish, and he thought that was REALLY cool.
Back on land I bought a cup of shaved ice from a street vendor, and dad looked at how the boats were moored in the marina. Hey, we all have our interests.
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| Interesting mooring techniques apparently. Also interesting pelicans. |
After dinner we walked a ways down the waterfront in the other direction from town just to see what was there, then called it a night.
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| Looking back up the waterfront towards the Veracruz old town. The photo turned out almost black and white. |
Another successful day in the books.
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