The town is near the Bay of Antigua, the location of the landing of Hernando Cortes’ invasion force where he had his eleven ships burned so the planned conquest could not be reversed.
The town’s primary tourist attraction is the Cortes home, or I should say the ruins of his home with a small sign identifying the ruins as such. The town also has real cobble stone streets and is nestled into a tropical forest amongst really large trees. I imagine one could fly over the air and be hard pressed notice there is a town amongst the trees.
The Cortez house is lacking a roof, the walls are either crumbing or consist of a piles of rocks, and there are very large trees growing through holes in the wall that were once windows. None-the-less, the tourist buses were lined up on the adjoining street.
It was raining for about the entire trip there and back, and torrentially when we arrived, so we didn’t tour the ruins of the Cortex home. Rather we sought refuge at a table on the covered patio of a really nice restaurant, for a lunch of fried shrimp, shrimp cocktail, rice, tortillas, and chips, and to watch the pouring rain and the resultant stream flowing down the street.
Earlier Francisco had been asking to go to the beach so I pointed to the muddy stream in the street and told him “there’s the beach.” I was of course kidding; but, none-the-less, after they had finished their lunches Eduardo and Francisco went out to play in the stream, mud, and pouring rain. They spent the hour drive home shivering in their wet clothes in the back of the truck.
They are both bright, polite, nice young fellows. At one point during the drive to Antigua when I pulled over behind a parked semi truck for a bathroom break, both the boys walked over to the truck and pissed on a front tire. Thereafter I took to calling them dogs which they thought was pretty funny.
Next Sunday we’ll visit La Hoya a small community not far from Xalapa on the road to Perote.
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