Veracruz & Boca del Rio: Baking Sun & Flash Floods 

The very word Veracruz conjures up certain visions – romantic, exotic, dynamic – although maybe I’m swayed a bit by the fact that there’s a Santana song bearing the city’s name as its title which is all about falling in love whilst within the city’s conducive ocean setting. Consequently we venture there with a great sense of anticipation, eager to see it for ourselves. As it happens, we are about to be underwhelmed, and the reality is that Veracruz doesn’t quite meet those expectations.

A near 6-hour bus journey from Mexico City sounds like it could be a bit of a trial but the ADO bus is extremely comfortable and safe and the time passes quickly. Our route to Veracruz on the Caribbean coast takes us past acres of joshua trees, up over the Sierra Madre mountains, through lush green agricultural lands and eventually down into the sunshine by the sea.

Our new base, a private airbnb house close to the seafront, is actually closer to the town of Boca del Rio, just down the coast from Veracruz itself. The sunshine which greets our arrival glints in the large puddles in the roadways, evidence of the typically hot and wet summer weather we can expect here. Morning brings further proof in very real terms: tropical rain lashes down, the sea and the sky turn an angry shade of grey, vivid lightning flashes every few seconds and the crashing thunder rattles the window frames of the house.

Actually the storm is well timed, for two reasons. One, this is Day 45 of this trip, and a single day at my daughter’s house near LA has been our only rest from activities in all those weeks. We need a little chill time. Two, Boca del Rio is as far as our forward planning has taken us so far, so it’s time to get the maps out and start plotting, and booking, where we go next on this adventure.

We’ve mentioned several times before that we tend to get lucky on our travels, and to find that we have arrived here right in the middle of Boca del Rio’s Santa Ana celebrations, one of the town’s two major annual fiestas, is yet another stroke of fortune. On a lesser scale, so is the fact that the collectivo buses stop right outside the house, making sorties to both Boca and Veracruz as easy as pie and about 40p each per ride.

Friday night at the fiesta in Boca del Rio is more than a little crazy; the whole town seems to be squeezed into the modest square to see tonight’s main attraction, a band known as Banda El Recodo. If, like us, this name means nothing to you, then Google them – they are very big and much loved over here. The atmosphere is fanatical and sweaty, the build up palpable, the stage huge, the light show impressive, but the music is (sorry Mexico) so messy to our ears that it’s barely listenable. But the packed crowd sing along with every number, bay for more, love every moment. It’s something approaching hero worship down here in this heaving sweaty mass of people. Fabulous atmosphere though and a large slice of serendipity for us to be here for this experience.

Boca del Rio – literally, “mouth of the river” – is the point where the hefty Jalapa River empties through the mangroves into the Gulf Of Mexico, giving the little town both a riverside and a seafront, although you couldn’t really ever describe Boca as spectacular despite this.

So back to Veracruz, not so much the romantic setting of that Santana song but more an ordinary, slightly gritty port town. Wait a minute though – the seafront boulevard with its excellent selection of seafood restaurants is great, as is the seafood itself which is very worthy of its reputation for high quality. Veracruz’s scaled down zocalo is certainly extremely pretty, but the leafy square with its dainty fountain is an oasis in an otherwise rather ordinary concrete jungle. The seafront is great, but basically there aren’t too many reasons to venture into the city.

The reason is a mixture of history and industry. The port here was the original entry point for the Spanish, it was from here that Cortes rampaged across the country establishing the nueva España, and thus Veracruz became the first of Mexico’s European influenced cities. Subsequently sacked and raided by pirates, looters, Europeans, Americans and even Francis Drake (not in that order!), Veracruz was plundered to the point where most of its architectural treasures were destroyed, with the exception of just a handful of gems clustered mostly around the zocalo and the port.

Since Mexican independence, Veracruz has grown as an industrial port, and now the harbour end of town is dominated by silos, derricks and oil rigs, whilst a long line of waiting freight ships is forever silhouetted towards the horizon. Like most port cities, there is something of an earthy element here which underlies the ubiquitous lively and colourful Mexican character.

This whole stretch of coast from the docks, through the city and along to Boca del Rio, and indeed beyond the river mouth, is beach territory. These aren’t the glorious golden beaches of elsewhere in Mexico, but are certainly nice enough and are clearly a joy for the locals who flock to the shoreline and cram the beaches at every opportunity, bringing their inflatables, their packed lunches and their plastic jugs of michelada with them.

Summer, as we mentioned, means rain – so much so that “summer” means “off season” here. There seems to be an ongoing battle between hot sun, heavy cloud and torrential rain, with the one constant of cloying, sapping humidity. In fact, we get wet from that far more often than we do from the rain. There’s something else in the air too: some kind of invisible insect which, despite evading our sight, has managed to feast on Michaela’s lower legs as if they are a new delicacy. Clearly my flesh doesn’t have the same appeal: it’s about 20-0 in bite marks by the time we get help from the pharmacy.

It’s clear that we are in culturally different territory here from the other parts of Mexico, with Afro-Caribbean and Cuban influences playing a role in everything from personal appearance (even the hats are different) to cuisine. The sellers on the beach and in the zocalo are just as likely to offer you a boxful of fat cigars as they are sunglasses or an ice cream.

The music and dancing is different here in Veracruz state too. Gone are the salsa and mariachi of the previous two cities, replaced by the time honoured Veracruz tradition of “jarocho” music and “danzon” dancing, featuring beautiful costumes and a high tempo foot stomping style of dance which is absolutely enthralling to watch. Like with flamenco dancing, the eye contact between male and female participants is unmissably sensual.

Talking of music, the bell tower in the zocalo chimes every hour, as you would expect. What you wouldn’t expect though is that it chimes the slowest version of “La Bamba” you will ever hear – La Bamba, seriously?!

Our stretch of coast here is so moody. In the baking hot and humid sun, and when the skies are blue, the warm Caribbean washes rapidly on to the greyish sand and it’s easy to picture that paradise beaches are only an hour or so down the coast. When the storm clouds gather and the horizon disappears into a solid greyness where the sea and the sky are indistinguishable, the nondescript concrete nature of Veracruz takes over and dispels all notions of paradise. We’ve certainly seen both extremes.

After a full day of baking sun and cloying humidity, Monday night brings a colossal storm during the small hours, crashing thunder and blinding lightning preventing sleep as much as the roar of the torrential rain. We rise Tuesday morning to find that the downpour has made serious inroads into the house. The whole of the downstairs is under about an inch of rainwater, the toilet (down a couple of steps) submerged under a 12-inch deep pool. Our lovely but horrified host Kelly quickly joins us for a major mopping up exercise!

Veracruz and Boca del Rio have been, and were intended to be, a bit of a pause button on this trip, sandwiched between the 6-week non-stop whirlwind behind us and the level of exploration which will resume as soon as we move on from here.

And it’s worked. We’ve rebooted and refreshed and we’re ready to go again. Even if we did have to mop up a flood.