Greetings all.

Tonight we are in Acayucan in the province of Veracruz. After leaving the sketchy-est looking town to date (Emilio), we decided to try and make time on the Cuota (toll) roads which are much faster and safer. The cuotas are great for making time, however you might as well be on the I-84 through Nebraska because there is nothing to see. This is why the libre (free) roads are slower and sketchy-er:

Silver meets her second cousin, twice removed.

What a burro looks like @ 90 km/hr.

Burro (left) and Ultra Nuevo Burro Moderno (right)

Anyway, on a 63 km stretch of cuota, there was only one exit, ours. After we missed it (WTF), we ended up going through someones back yard, past a vulcanizadore (tire fixer) over a tractor bridge and down a goat path to turn around and make our exit. That cost us about 15km and about 45 minutes....dang. After that, we stuck to the libre roads...

After all that, we decided we were getting pissy and hungry so we rolled in to a random roadside town for this:

Delicious Empanadas and a cold one, just what a dusty traveler needs.

Tony caught these guys trying to set a new world record for number of humans in a Chevy Siverado:

Late once again, we finally rolled in to Acayucan around 5pm. Tony and I did our usual you try here and I'll try there routine for the cheapest hotel. Here is me running up the street yelling "I win!" I love winning.

Here is the view from the balcony before our new friend Andreas took us around for some errands.

We had a great dinner at the building on the other side of the square shown above. I had (more empanadas) and Robatilla (a white meat river fish served whole -a veracruz province dish. From my limited biology background, it is a bottom feeder and a fast swimmer. Not fast enough, apparently.) Tony had the spaghetti.

Here is the view from a few minutes ago. What a great place.

We had another very small run-in with the cops. As we were walking back to our hotel, a guy with gold teeth (seriously popular in these parts) approached us saying, "oh you speak inglish..."

I immediately thoughthe worst, again, but it turned out to be cool, again. He was a local who had just moved back here from the USA and was taking english courses a local college. He had a shopping bad withthe same book tony and I had just bought an hour earlier. Gabriel was a cool guy with good english, and we had a good 10 minute chat with him, about where we were from, where his parents live and all the cool stuff you get to hear from good people. As we were chatting, another pick up truck of Federales, or Municipales pulled up to make sure we were OK. I guess we should be thankful that we are so "protected", but it is kinda weird when the cops are ready to bash a local up at the drop of a hat. We made sure we shook Gabriel's hand an he patted us on the back as we shared a good laugh wishing each other luck with our own endeavors, so the cops wouldn't break his kneecaps for talking to tourists. That's mexico, I guess.

Tomorrow we will head for Campeche and hopefully Chetumal after that. We are set to cross into Belize for Thursday if we stop F-ing up onthe Cuotas....

Cheers,

Pedro