The Pinata of Nada

Jack-in-the-box pinata head wants to give Lynn a lap dance...

Gran Café de la Parroquia

We come into Veracruz after another extended bus ride, Lynn jammed into the window and Eric origami-ed into a tortured Quasimodo. We reach the Hotel Meson del Mar, a few blocks from the center of town just at dusk. We are greeted by a young, charming and slightly ditzy clerk. She appears anxious to please, but, at the same time, not quite sure how to do so. She is as puzzled by our Spanish as we are by hers.  Eventually, we work out enough details to secure the room and park our bags. Hungry, we follow her suggestion to the Gran Café de la Parroquia, a few short blocks away. It is long and brightly lit. Outside the entrance, musicians are lined up waiting their turn to go inside and entertain. There are guitarists, fiddle players, even a band sporting a xylophone totted about by two strong roadies. Just now, as we step inside, a heavyset tenor is wrapping up an operatic number accompanied by an iphone and speaker. His voice is glass-shattering and magnificent. He concludes to waves of applause and then quietly circulates through the café accepting propinas with quiet grace. As he leaves, the next group moves into place, and so it goes.

The masters of the pour

During our stay in Veracruz, the Parroquia will prove to be our salvation. It becomes the one place we are drawn to again and again for the simple but excellent food and, of course, the famous coffee lechero. Quickly we learn the ritual for this wonderful house specialty. The waiter brings each of us a large drinking glass with a small amount of strong coffee in the bottom. Then, when we are ready, we bang the side of the glass with a spoon. Quickly a waiter materializes with two large silver kettles; one with more coffee and the second with hot milk. He pours the milk like a waterfall, filling the entire glass right to the very, very top. The precision is amazing, and they do it perfectly every time. Not a wasted drop.

We sip our elixirs with deep pleasure. With usual foresight and efficiency, Lynn pulls out a schedule that has the time and place for the various upcoming Carnaval celebrations. We already see that the celebrations are not set to begin for a couple of days and won’t really kick into gear until the weekend. The full implication of this escapes us for the moment. What the heck, we’re a little early. There will be plenty of things to do before the party starts, right?

We walk back to the hotel satisfied with a loosey goosey plan to hop on a city tour bus, the usual first step for figuring out our excursions, and see what strikes our fancy. As we walk, Eric notices a strange monument in the courtyard of a building. It is a bronze statute of a perfectly rendered machine gun pointing out at the harbor. Lying beside it, also in bronze, is a dead naval midshipman. We make a note to check it out at some point. The other thing Eric notices is just the slightest twinge in his lower back. No biggie, but still…

Where the hell are we going (Spanish translation: Donde??)

The next morning, after desayuno at Parroquia, we cross the street and board the Chi-Chi bus that, by all appearances, looks to be the usual city tour bus. We pay up and climb aboard. Two young Mexican women on holiday, greet us with smiles and pleasantries. One is named Maria, the other ‘s name is unpronounceable. We call her Amiga. After an odd warmup with a Jack-in-the-box character in an oversized head mask who switches back and forth between playfully molesting the passengers and performing an odd pole humping dance at the front of the bus, we’re off to the city. Yay! But no. Instead the bus leaves the city, hangs a sharp right at the stunningly ripe sewage treatment plant and makes toward a brooding complex of fortresses out in the harbor: San Juan de Ulua.

Our guide speaks no English, but does speak rapidfire Spanish. She says something about the fort, something about paying, something about being in the sun for an hour and a half. With the help of signage we get that this fort was built some time in the 16^th century from stones that were part of a sacred Totonaca pyramid torn down by the Spanish (per usual).  The unusual walls were made from pyramid pieces and coral plucked from the harbor and cemented into huge, 8-foot thick blocks. It truly looks impregnable. It had its own internal water canals for receiving ships and even its own waste management system – large sharks that once plied the canals between the sections of the fort.

Of all of the uses to which the fort was put: defense, navigation lighthouse, storage, customhouse, the most harrowing was its use as a prison during the late 18^th and early 19^th century. The guide leads us through room after room, each one darker, dirtier, and more hellish than the last. At one point she singles out Eric to demonstrate how prisoners were shackled to the wall with their necks cuffed and forced into an upward posture It is excruciating to hold a few minutes, let alone hours or days, even without the guide’s hand firmly shoving him into the coral encrusted wall. It is impossible to imagine how anyone could have survived here at all. In its heyday, it was crowded, rat infested, constantly wet, and dark as night. At one point, during a bit of playacting, the guide lets out a scream that nearly clears one of the dark rooms of all of us tourists. We, along with our two women companions, burst into the blinding, hot sunlight with genuine gratitude. Then it’s over. We hop the bus. Yay, now we'll se the city. But no. We turn left at the sewage plant and we’re back to the starting point on the Malecon without the slightest clue about the nature of Veracruz City itself.

Lynn gives herself a bad case of Tourista

In the days to follow, we flounder about the local neighborhoods. We visit the Naval Museum and learn that the sculpture of the dead midshipman was a monument to the young cadets who tried to defend the city against American forces who invaded Veracruz in 1914, the so called Tampico Affair. Otherwise, we find no celebrations whatsoever. Even the main zocalo is all but deserted, with stacks of unassembled bleachers and cordons of cops circling gigantic amps and stages. At one point, we break out of the Parroquia routine and order coffee and lunch near the zocalo just to try to do something different. We try to re-strategize. But our conversations are broken up by wave upon wave of street vendors.  Says Lynn “Why don’t we try…um, oh no gracias, to go to…um no gracias…the…um no gracias, no gracias, no gracias, no gracias. Each vendor ignores our dismissals, each one pulls out item after item and finally relents with an eyeroll only after we have declined almost everything she or he is carrying.

The Old Man and the Fee

One older gentleman comes to our table, taps Eric on the shoulder and produces a book of yellowed 3x5 cards that appear to have names written on them. He says something undecipherable and begins moving his finger down the list. Eric is completely baffled. Every attempt to understand with basic Spanish questions is thwarted. Somehow, Eric gets the notion that these must be music venues or groups and that he is trying to sell us tickets. We consult the program we have with us, but nothing matches. We express our puzzlement. He looks Eric in the eye and then again moves his finger down the page. More questions, more confusion. Finally, there is nothing to say. He looks at Eric, Eric looks back at him. He shrugs and walks slowly away, seemingly baffled. We continue to try to have an uninterrupted conversation, but to no avail. We dearly wish we had not ordered lunch here. Lynn, reduced to silence, studies a woman sitting next to us who is not plagued by the same mobbing as we are. She watches and sees that as the vendors approach her, she merely raises a finger, wags it, shakes her head, and the vendor caroms off without a word. Could it be so SIMPLE?

A vendor moves in. Lynn lifts her finger and shakes her head. The effect is instantaneous. The woman stops as though she has been Tasered. She veers away from the table. A lucky shot? Another one approaches from the opposite direction. Lynn takes aim. POW a direct hit, she totters away. The only one who seems immune is the old gentleman who returns again to Eric. Again, he points his finger, moves down the list, but this time, there is nothing to say. The second staring contest ends with a shake of his head. Having nothing else to do, Eric watches to see what clues he can gather as to this strange man’s intent. Finally, he sees him strike up a conversation with a small band of guitar and sax players standing in the shade nearby. Answer: he is asking if we have a musical request. Just as our lunch is served, he is back once again. Almost with relief, Eric pulls out a few pesos and points to a song. He returns to the band, the song plays. Then, the old fellow begins to hit up the other tables for the song Eric has requested. No one complains, but we had to wonder how much they appreciated the social obligation Eric had just saddled them with.

By the time we leave, Eric is slipping into sickness. He will spend days in bed waiting to mend for Carnaval . But it will never come because we forgot to secure the room for even the first night of festivities. The hotel, and every other is booked solid. By the time Eric is on the mend, we have to board a morning bus back to Puebla. What we thought would be the main event in our trip, was nothing but quiet streets, museum tours and a bit of rain. Veracruz? We don’t know what to tell you. We don’t think we’ve been. Almost at the very moment we pull out of the bus station, the Desfiles De Los Ninos, the kickoff to the celebrations, gets underway out on the Malecon. We think we hear fireworks.