Veracruz - Costa Esmeralda and El Tajin

 (text in ENG)

  We had an extra holiday on the first weekend of February, so decided to take Zorro to the sea again - this time to Veracruz. We reserved a hotel in Costa Esmeralda, a highly recommended beach by the locals. Costa Esmeralda is located on the coast of the Mexican Gulf, about 200kms from Veracruz city. Although to Veracruz city there is highway all the way, to Costa Esmeralda the main road was curvy, one laned serpentine path, so although the distance was about 300kms, finally it took 6 hours to get to Costa Esmeralda. As it took sooo long, we decided to take a break on the way, looking around at the ruins of El Tajin.

  Although El Tajin is an important part in the Mexican history, it seemed not so crowded and fortunately (although usually you can`t take dogs into the runis), we were exceptionally permitted. (Turned out, there are hundreds of stray dogs inside.) So, we took Zorro and looked around El Tajin. This city was populated by the totonas around the 10th and 12th century. What I liked in this place is that it is relatively compact (about 1 square km) and you just don`t know where to look, there are so many buildings and pyramids here. This ruin had two levels, an upper and lower level, and climbing up to the upper one, there was a nice view to the buildings of the lower lever. In the upper level, there was an intact part of a building under a roof, where you can still see who the buildings looked like in their time: the walls were molted and painted to white, and had paintings on the walls with vivid colors. However, even today, the contrast of the (today) brownish pyramids to the green grass looks very nice.

  That remembers me, that my impression going to Veracruz was "green". As soon as we left Mexico and descended the mountain, everything was green, green and green. The grass, the trees were all green although, in Mexico City the trees (except fro the pine trees) are still without leaves. Also, on the way, the we saw a lot of trucks carrying oranges - to be precise, every second truck was carrying oranges! Yes, Veracuz is the orange country. But not only orange, we saw many small shops on the roadside that sold every type of bananas - small, big, brown, yellow, red, green... compared to Mexico City, this part of the country was again a whole other world.

  After El Tajin, we arrived to Costa Esmeralda in a short time. Unfortunately, the weather was cloudy, so the sea that should be turquoise blue, was greyish...and sad. Even though, after checking in, we went to the beach for a walk. Our dog loves open space, he really enjoyed himself on this infinite beach - running around, jumping into the water, digging holes in the sand. Although there were a few people brave enough to be in the sea despite the gloomy weather, I didn`t feel it hot enough to play in the water, so we just took a walk and headed back to our room.

  The hotel where we stayed was very nice, the rooms were simple but nice, and the staff was very kind. It was quite big as well, with a big garden and there was a nice restaurant on the beachside as well, so you could see the pelicans flying over the waves during dinner! And the restaurant was very delicious! Mainly Mexican and seafood, but the cook was amazing! Compared to the price (both the hotel and the food), it was excellent! (And for us it was a great plus that they accepted dogs, too.) The only bad thing was the weather... the day we arrived it was only cloudy, but the next day we woke up to see rain... it got quite cold as well, so we had to put on our clothes we brought from Mexico City (jeans and sweaters) although only packed summer clothes and swimsuits... our receptionist told us, it is very rare that it rains in this time, usually it is hot and sunny. So, I guess we had to come the only day when it rained. (We had the same experience in Los Cabos, where it usually rains once in a year - and this one time was just the time we went to Los Cabos.) Unfortunately (I guess because usually you don`t need it) the air conditioner had only cooling function but not heater, so we finally decided to go home early on that day (although we were planning to stay for 3 days). So, we headed to this 6 hour drive back again. As we left it started to rain heavily, so we stopped by a local steakhouse (it was very interesting, on the side there were every kinds of animals - turkeys, horses, geese etc. so it seemed to be a farm/restaurant). We had a huge steak there and by the time we finished, fortunately the rain also stopped, so we could continue our drive more easily. As we got to the border of Veracuz, the rain completely stopped and as we got back to Mexico City, the weather became warm and sunny - just as it should have been in Veracruz! Anyway, we got known how nice Veracruz is, and will definitely go back (but with a pre-check of the weather!).

To see more pictures, click on the link! → El Tajin and Veracruz