Minatitlan to Villahermosa

The night before last in Minatitlan was bad! After we tipped the parking lot guy a lot of money to park behind the mall, we were awakened by knocking on the wall at 11:00. It was the security patrol who told us we were not permitted to park and we had to leave. I told him the parking lot guy had given us permission but he just shrugged and pointed to the exit.

We moved to the Sorianna down the road which has a smaller parking lot but the store was just closing. I asked the security guy if we could park for the night there and he just kept pointing out a hotel down the road. We gave up with that and parked on a wide street beside the store. The staff soon went home and we had a great sleep until about 6:30 when the street filled up with busses and trucks smelling of diesel and beeping their horns. This kept up until we finally surrendered and got up at about 7:30 to get on our way.

It is a fairly good road from Minatitlan to Villahermosa and we covered the two hundred and some kilometres by 11:00. We checked into the “Recreativo El Gordo y San Pancho” RV Park and pool complex. The rate is $240 Pesos a night and includes the use of the pool. I hooked up the basic necessities and then dove into the pool. It is very warm and humid here and the water was cool and refreshing!

The motorhome transmission has been performing flawlessly for the last two days under some pretty hard conditions so I am now officially writing the problem off to a temporarily misbehaving sensor, as was suggested by Brian on the Escapees.com forum. The repair job on the fridge door has also survived some rough roads and topes so we have declared that late night repair successful as well. As Jeff, a fellow camper in Puebla said after inspecting the repair, “It is probably stronger now than it ever was.” I agree.

This afternoon, after quite a bit of satellite searching, we hooked up the StarChoice and then took a drive into town. We found a lavenderia to take the laundry to tomorrow and we also found the famous outdoor “Parque-Museo La Venta” of Pre-hispanic artifacts and the giant heads that were discovered in nearby La Venta. These artifacts were moved to Villahermosa in 1958 when petroleum exploration threatened their important nearby Olmec site. It was too late to see the museum today so that is on tomorrow’s list as well. On the way home we stopped at WalMart and Sam’s Club for groceries and got home well after dark. Tonight will be an early night for me! There is no WIFI here but the park manager showed me where there is a spare LAN cable in the office for me to try tomorrow. Last time I tried one of these, it did not work. Hopefully this time will be different and I can post this.

We are going to investigate leaving the motorhome here and driving the car 250 KM to San Cristobal de las Casas in the neighbouring State of Chiapas for a couple of nights in a hotel. If we decide to do that it will be on Monday after Norma sees the Golden Globes Awards on Sunday.