May 16 - Veracruz to Tampico - 330 Miles

Today we had another unique Mexico experience - a "manifesto" (sit-down protest strike) for some cause, that shut down the major highway on which we were traveling.

But before that, we finally got our ride along the Gulf of Mexico.  Besides the sea and the beaches, it was beautifully green everywhere.  There were many big sugar cane fields to make it extra green, but we also saw Banana trees in orchards for the first time in Mexico.  There were also Orange groves, so the rolling hills were green with Banana trees and Orange trees, while the flatter fields were green with sugar cane.  (Of course, this comes with a price.  It was very humid and very hot - 90 degrees F and maybe 90 percent humidity.)

However, here the grazing animals, horses, burros, and cattle were nice and fat.  Elsewhere in the dry areas of Mexico, these poor types of critters are skin and bones.

A tree that we saw growing wild (and cultivated) everywhere from Cuernavaca to the Gulf Coast has brilliant red flowers.  These trees were particularly abundant here, both wild and in people's yards.  We call them "Flame Trees", and someone told us the actual name, but we have forgotten it.

Now for the "manifesto".  As we were riding along, we came upon a great long line of trucks stopped on the highway.  At first we were reluctant to do anything else but stop in the back of the line, but then we thought we'd act like Mexican drivers and find our way through the backup.  So we rode the motorcycles along the paved shoulder of the road to a point where a trucker told us about the "manifesto".  

Apparently some group of some cause set up a sit-down protest roadblock up ahead, where some little village was.  It wasn't clear whether it was the villagers protesting or some other group, but apparently the Mexican authorities permit this kind of thing, as long as it doesn't get violent.  Alex was told by the trucker that one of these protests shut down a major bridge for three days.

At this point, we spied a little resort on the beach that had a restaurant sign, and since it was lunch time for us, we just wended our way through the trucks until we could enter the resort.  There we had "Camarones Coctel"  (Shrimp Cocktail) dishes, and were quite happy to sit and eat at the beach.

When we were through, we took the motorcycles and again wended our way through the trucks to the front of the line.  We had seen a trickle of cars that made it through the stopped trucks, and the driver of one car told us how to get around the protest.  We had to ride through the village, from one end to the other, through very soft sand that could easily spill us.  Having survived the perilous ride to the other side of the village, we then squeezed through the line of trucks on the other side, and continued on our way.

Just another adventure in Mexico!

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