The Vanilla Adventure (UPDATE: With Photos)

First of all: Carolina and Juan were great hosts. We had so much fun going out and around with their friends. Drinking coffee at all times of the day, especially at three in the morning, played a big part… They know so much about the area and if we hadn’t decided to travel just that bit faster, we would have stayed even longer. Apparently there is an immense amount of pyramids in the jungle in the area but the Mexican archeological society (I don’t remember the official name anymore) only funds El Tajin. Waterfalls, beaches with or without turtles, mountains, caves (that some people believe connect the pyramids with the sea); whatever bursts your bubble.

The oil workers are having a really bad time right now. Juan went every day to ask for work – all they say each day is “tomorrow”. And sometimes he had to show up at a meeting of a politician (unpaid of course), to make it look more popular and maybe influence his vote – elections are coming up soon. Just to point out again how dependant Poza Rica is on the oil industry: there even is a fiesta/holiday for the petroleum, which is one of the biggest of the year for the city.

Let’s go a bit more into the specifics of the vanilla adventure: When we crossed the border, we actually bought 6 liters of vanilla-extract to send to Simeon’s sister in the US. That was the easy part, finding the post office not so much (post doesn’t translate at all) just to be told that sending fluids across the border is nowadays a no-no. So we started to carry the vanilla around with us, because we wanted to give it to the right people: we finally found them in Real de Catorce and just as we were running around to pass on the bottles, we met an American who was very happy to buy the leftovers. We travel in strange ways sometimes: we didn’t choose Papantla at all because of the pyramids but because of the vanilla (we hoped to find some way to ship the vanilla across the border this time) and El Tajin was on the way. One might understand our disappointment a bit better now – but in the end we had the best time in Poza Rica. And always you end up with more interesting places to visit, but you can only do so much.