Tuesday, August 28, 2007


Before we came to Vancouver in 1975 Rosemary and I decided to travel a bit in regions of Mexico we had not gone before. My friend Licenciado Felipe Ferrer Junco recommended we leave from Veracruz in clockwise direction to the Tehuantepec Isthmus and circle back through the middle of Mexico and explore Tuxpan in the northern part of the State of Veracruz, called La Huasteca.Tuxpan was called the Venice of Mexico because of its rivers and canals. It was further famous for a species of river porpoise called a tonina. Somewhere in the isthmus (the Panama Canal almost went through there but the US found it easier to destabilize Colombia and have one of its provinces, Panama, secede) we stopped to buy a hammock. These hammocks were manufactured by the inmates of the local jail. You did business through the outside prison bars.



I remember so well that when Rosemary finally arrived at a price (20 pesos) she told the man behind the bars that she only had a 50 peso bill. The man said, "I'll change it for you." "How can I trust you?" Rosemary retorted. At the point the outside guard began to laugh. The transaction was made and Rosemary got her change.

The only tragedy is that we have never had a couple of strategically placed trees to hang our hammock. In our first trip to our eldest daughter's (Ale) house in Lillooet she asked me to find a place to hang her hammock.



That brought memories of our own hammock. It must be in one of our storage boxes. If things go well, by the Thanksgiving weekend whe we plan to visit Ale again I will be reading a book in my very own hammock.