San Rafael

It's Monday morning and I'm on the move again, to Veracruz. Here the first- and second-class bus stations are side by side so it's easy to transfer to the service to Tlacotalpan. What's not always easy however is to find out in advance about local routes but my fears are allayed by a plentiful service to Tlacotalpan. It's often the way with accommodation as well, and some people---even young technocrats---rather than prebooking, prefer to seek lodgings when they arrive, claiming that lots of it isn't on line. However my prebooked hotel is one of most charming of my stay in Mexico.

Tlacotalpan---shall I call it Tlackers?---is a sleepy, lazy town of about 10,000 people. Lying on the equally hard to pronounce River Papaloapan which is 200 m. wide here, it was once a significant port until superseded by a railway and then the roads. A few boats chug contentedly across the river but it was largely forgotten until becoming a UNESCO World Heritage site. The colourful, colonnaded houses are reminiscent of Cuba which perhaps isn't surprising given that the land of Castro is just across the Gulf. The swampy locality suggests mosquitoes---worryingly, there is a town nearby called Mosquitero---but these are combated by a man with a roaring insecticide pump who patrols the town centre in the evenings.

I have arrived just before 6 p.m. to enjoy the "golden hour" of mellow late afternoon light washing the buildings with a much softer glow than the harsh overhead conditions of midday. Tlackers boasts no less than 4 attractive plazas and one of them has 2 churches. And one of these carries the message "You don't need a mobile (cellphone) to talk to God". Absolutely!

Tlackers is small enough to enjoy without excessive walking. In the morning a group of men are raising small flags, Iwo Jima style, denoting other UNESCO towns in Mexico. Most of these---Guanajuato, Zacatecas and others---were not ports but mining centres in Colonial times. And later I come across some people who have found a snake, possibly a python, in the grass. Maybe the dogs in the town are nervous but I hope the people will give Monty a safe home somewhere.Read more