Capt. Jim and I finished up an 18 hour bus ride down from Matamoros to Veracruz, Mexico on the chicken bus. OK it wasn’t a chicken bus and the seats were had about the same legroom as a first class in an airline but it was definitely a bumpy night. There doesn’t seem to be a modern highway until you are right outside of Veracruz. Every little town you go through has axle-killing-filling-loosening speed bumps called the sleeping policeman or Topes.
Veracruz was where Cortez shipped back his (possession being 10/10ths of the law then) gold to Spain. There’s an old Spanish fort in the harbor surrounded by a seedy industrial waterfront. The town has a kind of dilapidated colonial charm.
Tomorrow we leave in the afternoon for Chetumal, Mexico on the border with Belize. We will stay the night an then travel through Belize to Flores, Guatemala.