lighthouse at the end of a causeway near Ciudad del Carmen at the Gulf of Mexico
After Edzna we were left with the long drive back to Mexico City, part of which we had already done on the way up, of course. We stopped in uneventful Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf Coast, and in charming Cosamaloapan, a small town in the middle of sugarcane country. Instead of taking the toll road all the way, my co-pilot had found a shortcut, which turned out to be a largely unsurfaced road used by the tractors pulling an impressive load of seven or eight huge lorries, filled to the top with just harvested sugarcane. A little further on was the processing plant, not yet aware of the intricacies of energy transition, it seemed.
a causeway separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Laguna de Terminos
the shortcut my co-pilot discovered
all the way through sugercane country
complete with sugercane factories
the colourful church of Cosamaloapan
and an equally colourful town centre
Cosamaloapan at night
the museum of Xalapa has a lot more to offer than just Olmec heads
The only fixed stop on our way back was Xalapa, about four hours’ drive from Mexico City. The anthropological museum here has no less than seven colossal heads of the Olmecs – seven of the total of seventeen found so far. To wrap up our earlier Olmec tour, with which we began this trip, we thought to spend half an hour checking out these heads. Not realizing, of course, that an anthropological museum in Mexico has much more than just a few heads: we took the rest of the afternoon, the better of two hours, admiring so much more than just Olmec artefact, in a wonderful museum, with thousands of artefacts from throughout the precolombian history of Mexico, all very well presented. I have just selected some pieces to show, based on aesthetic considerations, not necessarily representative, or special, or with any other concerns. And a few more, in an additional museum-only entry.
three Olmec ‘collosal heads’ in the muesum of Xalapa
