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Coda written by Robert (and edited by m, as I went to bed at 7:30 pm but back up by 11:15 pm!) Up early to a rainy morning in Veracruz .   The temperature in our room got up to 72 degrees.   A little checking on line revealed some interesting cultural facts about the Veracruz area.   First, the hotels here do not provide heating because the average temperature is warm enough, even in January, their coldest month.   Second, apparently many restaurants do not serve wine because the local residents prefer other forms of alcoholic beverages: beer, tequila, etc. and wine carries a high tax!   Wine is just not popular here, as it is not grown locally. Even though our flight to Tijuana is scheduled for 1:25, we left the hotel at about 8:30, getting to the airport just about 9 am.   Among other things, we needed to return the rental car, which involved settling the issue of the damaged tire and (as it turned out) the damaged wheel as well.   By the time ...

   Up this morning in Villahermosa with the intention of trying to get to San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan and the 16 th head.   However, fate – in the form of a 2-hour traffic jam, had other ideas.   So, while we can say we tried, we didn’t really get very far!     About an hour out of Villahermosa , the traffic stopped … and when I say stopped, it was incredible.   It just … stopped .   We literally inched along for almost two solid hours before we came to the problem.   This part of the highway was divided.   We, going north, were on the lower road, while those heading south were on the upper.   And apparently, a semi on the upper road somehow went off it – I’ve never seen such a huge section of guard rail just taken out – and the semi came down the hill and ended up on the north bound side, with the semi part of the truck spread out all across the roadway and median strip in between.   R took some photos – ...

Wow!   Okay … yesterday was a very rainy, wet kind of day.   I mean, it started as a literal gale force wind in Veracruz , which then turned into rain by the time we got to the state of Tabasco .   Very gray; very wet, on and off.   Definitely not suited for shorts and t-shirts any longer; happy to be back in jeans, for sure! At any rate, we got up this morning, and while the forecast was for more rain most of the day, it turns out, so far at least, that the rain has held off – thankfully, as we wanted to do some outdoor exploring!   We had two objectives here in Villahermosa – the Parque Museo La Venta , and the Museo Regional Anthropologica Carlos Pellicer Carmona . Decided to Uber to the Parque Museo first, as it opens at 8 am.   Not that we were there then; we actually got there closer to 9 am.   But as it was such a gray day, we didn’t think there would be a huge crowd waiting to get in. But first, R tells me I need to write about La Vent...