Travel with Kevin and Ruth: El Tajin Ruins

Monday, November 24, 2008

El Tajin Ruins

Monday November 24…9:30pm

On the road again by 8:00am. We put in a little more gas, as a thank you to the Pemex station who let us park overnight for free in their lot.

Driving through this area, the scenery is really nice. The vegetation is lush and green and the hills are filled with orange orchards, banana trees, and palm trees. There are a lot of fruit stands by the side of the road.

Glen and Steve pull Harry over to the side of the road to buy some oranges for $2 a bag

One of the little bananas that Glen and Steve bought at the roadside fruit stand

Again on not very good roads, we made it to the city of Poza Rica. The directions to the ruins are quite clear, but we made a wrong turn and by accident ended up at a large fruit and vegetable market where Glen and Ruth went and did some shopping for fresh produce, at very cheap prices. Also, as we made our way back to the route we wanted, we stopped at a major Mexican grocery store, Sorianas, because it will probably be the last one we see until we get to the Cancun area next month.

We are still having trouble getting on the internet. Most of the wifi connections we try are secured, and even in the small cities we haven’t seen an internet café where it would be convenient to pull over with the motorhomes. We should be at an actual campground by Tuesday afternoon, and should have accessible internet for a few days in a row after that.

We made it to the El Tajin ruins by 1pm. There is a caretaker in the parking lot, and he shows us where we can park. He charges us 20 pesos $1.85 CAN ($1.67 US) to be able to stay overnight.

El Tajin was the “City of the Thunder God”. It was an important economic and cultural city as it was on what was a commerce route from the Gulf of Mexico to the interior. It existed between the years 300 and 1200. The ruins were interesting, but quite a bit different than the ruins Ruth and I had visited at Coba in 2003. We’re looking forward to seeing more of these archeological sites as we head further south.