My Latest Port of Call (Veracruz)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	Veracruz
Date:	18/03/09 (262 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A city and a beach in one

Disadvantages: Not loads to see or do

Sometimes, especially when you're travelling domestically, it's hard to see immediately the difference between where you are, and where you've come from. Veracruz is a 40 minute flight (or 5 hour drive) from Mexico City, but the second I got off the plane, and my hair frizzed out of control, I knew I was somewhere new.

Veracruz is the name of a city, a state, and a port, on the gulf coast of Mexico. I was visiting the city and port for a couple of days over a long weekend. Veracruz is clearly a coastal city (ports tend to need, well, access to the seas after all) and it's also very hot and humid most of the year, hence the immediate and profound reaction on the part of my hair.

The shack that they call an airport is close to the city centre, but badly resourced in terms of public transportation links (there are none) so I was forced into an Official Airport Taxi for the 15 minute drive downtown. This cost me 165 pesos which is a small fortune in terms of Mexican taxis, but there was no alternative, since no busses run anywhere near the terminal, and Mexico doesn't 'do' trains. The route is simple, just one main road, and along the way I found my mind drifting back to my time in Playa del Carmen, almost a year ago now, for the two places have very similar outskirts. Think palm trees, white-washed buildings and a certain level of decay that reminds you you're not in the first world any more.

I was dropped off in the main square, which, being a Saturday lunchtime, was buzzing. It wasn't too crowded, just nicely busy, with a friendly atmosphere. I immediately spotted the cathedral, which is nice from the outside (and includes a dome adorned with fancy Puebla tiles) but is remarkably plain and uninteresting on the inside. I located my first hotel (located at the back end of the square) and dropped off my rucksack since it was too early to check in. I found the tourist office, also on the main square, and collected perhaps one of the worst free maps I have ever seen. I had tried to locate an online map before I arrived, and kept finding the same PDF version that was cramped, scribbled and illegible. Unfortunately, that was exactly the same as the one I was given here, and I struggled to read most of the street names on it.

Then, starving, I perused the dining options in the vicinity. Veracruz is a typical Mexican town in that it has a VIPS and a Sanborns and lots of other national chain restaurants, but as a vegetarian I find I can only eat well at those places at breakfast time. The other options on the square all revolved around Mariscos - seafood - which is another no-no for me. Instead, I wandered down to the waterfront, and immediately saw exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. La Parroquia is a Veracruzan institution, a long-established cafe on the promenade. It is known for its coffee (which they sell as well as serve) and also for the way you signal the waiter when you're in need of a refill, by clinking your spoon on your glass. The place is huge, and though the most popular seats on the terrace were always occupied, I easily found a window seat inside. The menu is standard cafeteria fare, with sandwiches and pastas and salads and burgers, but I opted for something small from the bakery section. Unusually for a place that's a household name, La Parroquia is definitely on the cheap side, and I only managed to spend 35 pesos (~£1.50) on a snack and a drink.

Veracruz does not have loads in the way of stuff for tourists to see, but it has a few things. My first stop was the old fort of San Juan de Ulúa which rather strangely was located at a rather unassuming crossroads a few blocks from the beach. Near here is the Naval Museum. My only interest in sailing is the whole men in uniform part of it, but I went anyway since it was free and I had just wandered across it. A man in uniform met me at the entrance. Things were looking up. The museum is deceptively large, with various rooms on two floors, set around an open courtyard. The information in each room was all in Spanish, so after a while I gave up reading and played the "Let's pretend I'm a proper British tourist who doesn't speak Spanish" game, to see how much I could grasp without reading the blurbs. The answer was quite a lot. There were exhibits looking at various things to do with the naval world, from the discovery of the Americas, to cartography, to the invasion by the Spaniards. This was rather delightfully illustrated with the help of some models made from a crinkly plastic sea and wooden boats, looking like something straight off the cover of an Enid Blyton book. There was also a replica of a classroom from the naval academy, which looked identical to the non-naval school room I once visited at Wigan Pier. The whole place was turning out to be a lot more interesting than I had suspected, and culminated with a gun room that included a massive torpedo and over 200 rifles, all neatly mounted on the walls. I'm not quite sure what they had to do with anything, apart from being there to keep the men amused: all the male visitors seemed to be in here while their wives and girlfriends looked round the other rooms. The museum was quite attractive, with anchors on all the window bars, and a pretty red and white pattern, also of anchors on the floor. There was even a rather interesting statue of what appeared to be an old rather constipated woman trying with great determination to do a poo. It probably wasn't this of course, but that's all I got from not reading the signs, in my role as "proper British tourist".

By this time it was 4pm, but still roasting hot, so I set off along the Malecon, or promenade, towards the famed Aquarium. Along the way I found a few small beaches, and various sellers touting everything from hats to carved fruit 'lollipops'. The best beaches are not near the port, but further south towards the tourist resorts, but these central ones still seemed popular with local people, many of whom appeared to be splashing in the waves fully clothed, as if the urge to bathe had just struck them suddenly as they were on their way to the park or supermarket. Last week, a friend here told me many people think the Veracruz beaches are dirty, but they just have dark sand. It concerned me at the time that anyone could ever confuse the two things, least of all a gal from the Lancashire coast such as yours truly.

The Aquarium is about 30 minutes walk south of the centre, in a small centre that includes the wax museum, a children's play park, shops, stalls and various food stands, though the only sit down restaurant is another VIPS. You can buy combo tickets for the attractions and save between 10 and 50 pesos by doing so, though the attractions are not all that expensive anyway. Try La Michocana in the right hand corner for ice cream - the 3 Marias waffle basket sundae comes highly recommended, and was my choice instead of, ahem, lunch, the following day.

Back in town it was time to eat again, but what I really wanted was a massive brick of chocolate cake I'd spied earlier thanks to a like-minded customer at Cafe de los Portales. Deciding it would be greedy to have that in addition to a full meal, I skipped the planned pasta and grabbed a roll from one of the few bakeries in the centre, scoffing this on a bench in the square as my "proper" food prior to pudding. There is a small supermarket near the promenade, and various Oxxo convenience stores throughout the centre, but I only saw two full on bakeries during my wanders. Like all the best Mexican bakeries though these are open all hours (7am until 10pm), have a vast array of goodies, and are worth bearing in mind if you want to intersperse restaurant meals with the odd picnic during your stay. As for the chocolate cake, it was divine, and probably three people could have shared it easily. There are only two cafes which face onto the square, this being one of them. There are also various fast food joints, and hotel 'restaurants' though neither their menus nor their plastic tables and chairs appealed to me. The following morning for breakfast I looked around but couldn't find anything local and appealing so ended up at Sanborns where the waitress looked concerned when I ordered and felt she had to explain to me what French Toast was ("it's not French bread toasted") in case I had become confused. Clearly I was looking more Mexican than American after a full afternoon in the sun.

While I had been down on the Malecon on Saturday, I noticed it was the starting and finishing point for various competing city tour companies, and having nothing better to do, I decided to spend Sunday morning being driven round the sites with a nice commentary telling me all the important things. The main options seemed to be a historical tram which appealed initially (only 30 pesos - and free drinks and cookies) or the one I eventually opted for, the red, double-decker Turisbus, for 60 pesos (but with a longer route, and an enclosed downstairs area in case the weather kicked off). 60 pesos is quite nice and cheap for this sort of tour, and made up for the weirdly inflated prices of some things in town: chocolate which costs 1.50 pesos in Mexico City costs 3 pesos here, despite being identical and sold by the same shop chain. The tour took over an hour and was full of interesting and not-so interesting facts. The seats are made with headphone sockets for multilingual commentaries, but unlike the same company's services in Mexico City and Puebla, in Veracruz they only offer it in Spanish, boomed loudly from the speakers dotted around the deck.

The bus tours all the way to Boca del Rio (the main tourist resort in the area) and back again, and stops at 15 points along the way, in theory offering hop-on, hop-off benefits. In practice, I hopped off at the museum, and then waited for over half an hour to hop back on again before starting to walk back. During the 20 minute walk along the route, no bus passed me, making me wonder whether they'd already given up for the day, at this late hour of 1pm.

The museum I hopped off for was the Augustin Lara Casa Museo, Mexican speak from a museum now established in the house where someone worth celebrating once lived. I knew nothing about him before entering, and only fractionally more on leaving, since the exhibits were once again in Spanish only, and some were not even labelled. I did gather though that he was a musician of some kind, thanks to the weird mini auditorium they had recreated on the first floor, complete with grand piano. The museum is open daily except Mondays, and is free on Sundays.

I wasn't too peeved to have been stranded all this way south since my second hotel was located close by. I checked in, took off my city-break hat, pulled on my bikini and hit the (not dirty, just dark) beach nearby. I specifically chose to come to Veracruz so I could combine my two favourite types of holiday - a nice, cultured city break with some less cultured but just as nice lounging on the beach. Though some would say I should have stayed even further out of town, at the proper resorts, my budget did not stretch to this, and since I was only staying a few days, I wasn't too bothered about facilities. As it was, I spent that afternoon and the following morning on the less-popular, and therefore quieter, beach, enjoying the peace and quiet.

Veracruz is not a must-see destination in Mexico for most people, but if you're spending any length of time in the country, you might fancy a trip since it's a bit different from anywhere else I've encountered in the country. The promenade especially, is a nice place to while away an hour or so and rejuvenate in the sea air, if they smell of fish doesn't put you off first. The beaches are not dirty (remember...that's just the colour of the sand), the people friendly, and the weather fantastic. There's not enough here to warrant more than a couple of nights at most, but the city is worth a look, and the surrounding state also has various places of interest if you have the time or resources to venture further afield.

www.veracruz.com.mx

£1 is about 21 pesos at the time of writing.

Summary: Give it a weekend, not a week