On Monday, December 30, Eric was feeling antsy to get out of the marina. The other cruisers had told us the public transit for the area were mini-vans called Collectivos that followed a route. The route had no set stops or scheduled times; people just waited for it somewhere along the route and waved it down when they saw it. And apparently you indicated when you wanted it to stop to let you off. We were told that the Collectivos can get quite crowded. 

Eric wasn’t thrilled about trying the collectivo on a holiday week, so he called a taxi to take him to the airport (about a 15-minute drive) and rented a car. He went back to the marina to pick up Christi and Eric and they set out to do some exploring. 

From the marina, we followed the main highway north for a few miles. The building belching smoke was indeed the closest one to the marina. We later found out it was an instant-coffee factory.  We passed several industrial looking compounds, including an area that had big fuel storage tanks and an area under construction. We later found out they were building a train line.  

We turned west onto the cross-road that led into Puerto Madero and followed it to the ocean. From what we could see, Puerto Madero was a typical small Mexican town.

There were a lot of people out. The majority of vehicles on the road were called tricicletas: motorcycles (and a few bicycles) that had a cart attached to the front. The carts each looked to be custom made. Most of the bicicletas had a bench for passengers to sit on. 

We also saw a fair amount of regular motorcycles, tuk tuks, all-terrain vehicles and pick up trucks that had people standing in the bed.   

The main road ended at a T-intersection with a road parallelling the ocean. The juncture  appeared to be the town center of sorts, with a park on the ocean side and a theater and sports field across the street.  

We followed the ocean road south towards the canal. The entire road was lined with restaurants, with touts standing outside many of them calling out to us to eat at their restaurant. The road ended at the canal, and we followed a dirt road that parallelled the canal north. This stretch was also lined with restaurants, and here there were more touts and they were more aggressive. With so many touts around, we felt like fish in a shark tank and did not want to stop. 

The dirt road turned inland, and we drove around the backroads for a bit before we found the paved road that paralleled the ocean again. We followed the road back north, past the highway that would take us out of town. Even this side of the village was an endless row of restaurants. Given that this was only a small fishing village, we couldn’t figure out how these restaurants could possibly support themselves. 

In good news, on this side of the highway, there weren’t any touts beckoning us in. We chose a place that looked nice and had a parking lot, called Ocasio. 

The dining area was a deck built above the sand. The kitchen was another deck build on the land. In the space between the two decks was a swimming pool. Why would a restaurant have a swimming pool smack in the middle of it?

We were greeted by a man wearing a shirt proclaiming that he was a fabulous mom. We are sad to report that it was the worst meal we’ve had so far in Mexico. Our meals were all fried and the oil they used did not taste good. Here is Eric drinking a chilada, which is a beer with quite a lot of lime juice in it. 

We decided to head into the closest city, called Tapachula, which was about a half hour away… to be continued…