Zoo and archeological site

Villahermosa isn’t a touristy place but more of an oil city. It is quite nice to be in a place where locals are being themselves … actually none of our previous cities are dominated by tourism, but this is even less touristy. Because it is less touristy, we had trouble changing money at the bank. They took our Euros but not our US Dollars. As this is the last leg of my journey, I’m trying hard to use up my emergency cash which I’ve carried forf the last three months for situations when ATMs fail me.

Having sourced some money, we went to La Venta Museum & Park. This is a zoo and archeological park, all in one. The zoo had some big cats including jaguars … they were mostly nocturnal which meant that they were either asleep or hiding. The archeological artefacts (statues) shown were from La Venta, a site dating from about 400BC, which is now home to the petroleum industry.

Sitting on the pleasant riverside in the evening, I think about how badly Mexico rates in the media. People think we’re crazy travelling through Mexico by bus.  The reality is very different:

• The drug war is limited to the north and life goes on normally elsewhere.
• While there are some shantytowns around Mexico City and elsewhere, the rest is not much different from many developing nations.
• In fact, even in the smaller towns, it feels less third-world than many Asian countries. Mexico may not have the flashest mega-malls but they seem to get many basics right even in smaller towns, eg. drivers that stop for pedestrians at crossings, clean pay-toilets, level sidewalks with stroller ramps … and some niceties eg. decent supermarkets, Walmart and Costco!