Languishing in Villahermosa

I am lounging about in a lovely hotel room in Villahermosa...it is sunny, comfortable, sultry and relaxing. We spent last night at a hotel...what was the name of the movie?...Identity? anyway...you don't even want to know what the mattress looked like.. "(how do you know what the mattress looked like, Jill?" you may ask. I worked around bedbugs for years so I check.) We didn't sleep well for a number of reasons (one being I know the condition of what I was lying on )..let's see- I was cold (we didn't get a blanket) it started raining so hard it woke us up, I thought a rat had gotten in the garbage and was eating the remnants of lunch ( I realized later it was rain dripping off of something into something else )roosters started crowing at 4:30 am...we got up around 6:00 .Did I shower?-no, I did not, because along with a blanket and soap another thing we did not get was hot water . We debated briefly about whether we should stay where we were because in light of the horrible conditions we passed through the day before, we had no reason to think the roads would be any better and we didn't want to get stuck on the road. Such as it was, we were dry and safe here....well, who says we have good sense? We opted to go. John borrowed the proprietors umbrella to go get the truck. While he was gone, I was chatting it up with some guys that were headed to Texas. "Well" I told them " thats where we came from" then proceeded to dash their hopes of a pleasant journey by telling them how bad the roads had been on our previous days travels. Their faces drooped and their eyes widened as I described the roads that were sliding down banks, covered in mud, the bridges half destroyed so I decided to lay off the downer news " its really a pretty drive though." They asked where we were going and I told them Merida. Another man standing in the lobby said he had just come from there yesterday and the roads were good. Just then a cab came and the three large men bound for Texas folded themselves in. I thought about how uncomfortable they were going to be in about 4 hrs if they even made it through with all this rain. " have a good trip " I waved as they pulled away and John pulled into where the cab had been. As we loaded up our stuff, the man from Merida left as well saying his goodbyes and exchanging buon viajes. We were all headed on seperate paths that had intersected briefly in this tattered oasis.

By 8:00 we were again driving in the rain. We stopped by 8:30 at a Pemex with a little store that had espresso! After having some coffee, tea and yogurt we were off and before long the sun was shining and we were on good road. John was exhausted so I drove while he napped and before long we were in Villahermosa. We easily found this hotel and pulled in and have been relaxing and getting room service ever since...aaahhhhhhhh. Somedays you're the bug and somedays you're the windshield.