Lake Catemaco (day 2)

Wednesday December 3…10:30pm

We woke up to a beautiful blue sky for our boat trip this morning. We only had to cross the street to get to our boat dock, and our driver Hector was ready to go at 8:45am.

He took us along the coast nearest the town, and showed a few spots of interest. The German couple who were with us translated Hectors narration as necessary. After 45 minutes or so, we ended up at a nature preserve rain forest area where we were charged 50 pesos ($4.75 CAN, $3.80 US) for a tour. It was nice, but they had turned this section into a “spa” using the natural mineral waters in the forest, and the whole thing turned into a bit of an advertisement for the spa.

View of the town of Catemaco from our boat trip

From the boat

A beautiful bird

Lake Catemaco at the dock for the National Park (Nanciyaga, a rain forest)

Drinking the mineral water from a cup made from a leaf

Walking through the rain forest

Turtle

After that, Hector took us to the monkey island. This is just a small island in the lake that had been populated with monkeys as part of a research experiment with a local university. It was fun to watch them for a few minutes, but we didn’t get off the boat.

At Monkey Island

In all, we were gone for just over 3 hours, at a total cost of 100 pesos ($9.50 CAN, $7.60 US) each. Thanks Mom!

In the afternoon, Ruth and I took Whiskey for a walk around town. There is another RV Park here that we went to check out, and it’s a little nicer than where we are, but he also wants more money. We think we’ll stay put for a couple more days. We saw quite a few small shops that we want to check out, but we’ll come back to them tomorrow when we don’t have Whiskey with us.

The church in Catemaco

Inside of the church

Steve and I rode the bikes over to yet another parking possibility. It was beside the Playa Azul hotel and they said they no longer offer RV parking. When pressed, they said it would be okay, but then asked for 200 pesos each and that was too much. So they really didn’t want RV’s there.

Total nights sleeping in a motorhome…406

December Fuel $ 48.00 CAN

December Grocery $ 64.92 CAN

December Overnight costs $ 30.80 CAN