11 & 12 November; Villahermosa

We had a relaxing morning, taking a stroll around the grounds. Trekker, and to a lesser degree Tia, happy with the company of a delightful puppy called Capitán. Trekker had found someone that he could boss around yet who was still willing to play! He is a delightful, friendly puppy, we were all quite taken with him. If he hadn't had a good home and a loving little boy to play soccer with we could easily found ourselves with three dogs!

There were also a couple of strange objects more or less abandoned under the trees! We can only guess that they had been used for kids to play in.

Yesterday afternoon and again this morning we had heard a strange noise, sort of a grinding sound that lasted just a second then repeated several times. This morning we discovered what it was; they were in the process of making concrete blocks, the noise was a vibrating machine that shook the forms that had been filled with the wet mix.

We had decided to spend an extra night here in order to take in the Parque Museo La Venta. We took a taxi as we had no idea what parking would be like or if we would be able to find a shady spot to park in. The RV park called a taxi for us which arrived in half an hour (20 minutes after promised) the dogs not happy to be left behind.

La Venta is the town to the north were the Olmec ruins and their stone carving were found. The museum contains many genuine artifacts from there as well as copies of many items. The Olmec are the oldest known people of the Americas, long before the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas. They are well knows for their large stone carvings and in particular huge stone heads. One fascinating aspect of these carvings is that much of the stone is not native and was transported from many hundreds of miles away without the use of draft animals or the wheel.

Gillian was quite curious about what this old fellow found so fascinating up there!

The park is also a zoo of native and non native species of fauna and flora. The cinnamon tree was much larger than we had supposed.

Some of the animals appeared quite content, others, such as the black panther, not so much. The ocelot paced his cage for a while then curled up for a nap right by the fence in front of us.

There was also a coatamundi who had free range of the place. He was quite shy except when at the snack bar!

We were able to enter and walk around inside a large netted area containing free flying birds.

One bird spent all time we were there perched on the wall watching the workman on the other side of the fence!

Art was ready for a rest so while Gillian went on to see the rest of the zoo, he searched out the snack bar where he relaxed over a barely adequate cup of coffee. After a short while he was approached by four young people who asked him if he would look over their English homework. He agreed and began to read a page of English dialogue, much of which made no sense at all!

After explaining that some of it had him quite puzzled, one of the students turned the paper over—there was the Spanish version! Now it became quite obvious what happened. They had used a computer program to do the translation! As an example of the pitfalls this can lead to, the Spanish word “si” means “yes” in English. It can also mean “if”!

Art spent some time with them explaining each phrase and usage and they all had an enjoyable time sharing the difficulties entailed in learning another language.

When we had toured enough we went out to the street to flag a taxi and stop for groceries on the way home. This is the worst time we have had in Mexico trying to get a taxi! Most of them just carried on by, those that stopped already had passengers and wouldn't turn around to go the way we need to go. A short walk took us to a pedestrian overpass (with seemingly a few hundred stairs!) which we used to cross the divided street.

On the other side we had no luck at all. After inquiring of some passers-by we decided to walk to the grocery store, which was just past the second traffic light. What we didn't realise was, that didn't mean two blocks. Before we got to this light we had crossed a couple of over passes, in all the walk being about a kilometer and a half! And Art was already tired from walking around the museo!

Shopping done, we went out to find a taxi. Usually in Mexico you are barely out of the door when you are accosted “Taxi? Taxi?”. Not here. There was an employee who controlled the line up, assigning a cab only after the driver had agreed to accept the destination, and even then, the arriving taxi frequently had a passenger or two already on board. Sharing cabs seems to be the norm here. While waiting a young man on his own showed up and greeted Art with a shy smile—one of the teens from the language lesson! Being on his own he quickly found a taxi and was gone. It took us about another 20 minutes before we found a driver willing to take us so far out of town!