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5th of October 2008 - Tampico

In the morning the rest of the family go to church, and Jesus and I sit outside, talking. I lounge in the doorway, he sits against a telegraph pole, exchanging greetings and a few words with almost everyone who passes - a family with two tiny wide-eyed girls in pigtails, one carrying a pink parasol, teenage boys pushing bikes, two workmen painting the house next door (one of whom we both notice, with a remarkably unconvincing wig, prominent chin and moustache, is the spitting image of Sammy Davis Junior).

We talk mostly in English, about life, travel, philosophy and spirituality, and yoga, which Jesus is very interested in but hasn't tried for himself. He tells me about the town and the area, the industry and commerce here, more about Mexico in general. We speak mostly in Engish, my Spanish not being up to a fullblown conversation, but I break in whenever possible to compare and learn new Spanish words when they come to mind.

When the family return it's everyone I met last night, packed into two cars. Food is in preparation almost immediately and I'm soon summoned to the table. Dinner is eaten in shifts at the small table, and I eat with the two teenage boys and Jesus and his brother in law. It's a feast of bisteck, green salsa, crumbly quesa, delicious tomatoey tamales steamed and served in neatly folded palm leaves, and piles of tortillas, with more food arriving hot and fresh from the kitchen all the time.

It's an energetic, fast-paced meal, everything on the table being passed back and forth at lightning speed, with occasional collisions and apologies as someone gets hot sauce on their sleeve or drops a tamale, accompanied by rapid-fire conversation which I try to follow and pull out bits of information where I can. There's a lot of sports discussion, and the others obviously defer to Jesus's experience on anything American.

When we're done, Jesus tells me to get my gear together and he'll drive me out to the highway to catch a ride. Martha is still wringing her hands and worrying that I'll be robbed or killed, but she gives me her email address and I promise to write to her as soon as possible. A round of goodbyes in the crowded living room and we're off. At the door Martha presses a bag into my hand, with a banana, two little pears and a big packet of chocolate biscuits. "Lunch" she says in English, smiles and waves us off.

Jesus drives me out on Highway 70, and drops me by an extraordinary building - a crumbling castle with turqoise onion domes and minarets, which turns out to be a restaurant. The soft clink of cutlery and sounds of conversation drift out to me as I walk to the side of the road. I'm waiting less than twenty minutes before my first ride, which is also my first experience of the only form of transport I'd say was as much fun as flying: Mexican truckbed express.

We barrel up and down hills and through small towns, back through those imposing jungled mountains and between fields. I'm standing at the back of the truck bed, which is fenced in with waist-high metal railings. In front of me are two taciturn guys hanging onto the front railing and looking resolutely forwards. The front of my hat brim is pinned back against my forehead by the rushing wind, the hot thick air hammering into my face - it's like being endlessly hit with a warm pillow at jackhammer speed. We're probably doing no more than thirty, but it feels like seventy from up here. By the time we arrive in the little town of Tamuin my arms are aching from hanging on, I'm covered in a light film of dust and I've lost all feeling in my face. But when I check in the window of the truck, I'm still wearing a huge manic grin.

The two other men disembark with me and our ride turns off up a sideroad towards Tamtoc. We sit down, breathe the still, hot air, I pass my Pall Malls around and guzzle water to wash the dust out of my mouth. It's a typical Mexican village high street, with a cafe, butcher's, several tyre shops and a shack selling coco frio - coconuts straight from the fridge. We're sitting on the knee-high concrete ledge which runs round the outside of a concrete blockhouse, a one-man police station which checks the papers of passing cargo lorries.

Across the road a whirling vortex forms, lifting leaves and debris from the shoulder of the road then throwing up a thin, perfect and opaque twisting cone of dust thirty feet high - the first dust devil I've seen. It moves onto the road, disappearing as it crosses the tarmac then reappearing in the dust on the other side before dissipating between the shacks.

This is my longest and possibly most frustrating attempt at hitchhiking, over three hours in the sweltering afternoon heat as driver after driver either passes straight by or waves an apologetic hand and turns off up the side road to Tamtoc. Beside me an elderly man sits in a warped plastic chair, a wooden cane on the ground beside him, occasionally offering comments and advice which between my poor Spanish and his lack of teeth I have great trouble making out. Nonetheless he tries to help me out, talking to the few truck drivers who stop and trying to convince them to take me with them, but they're all going to Tamtoc anyway.

The memory of my invigorating ride soon fades, along with the joy of the road and of newness, replaced by a thumping heat headache, a layer of sweat and an ache in my elbow as I try and keep my arm up for just one more car. Finally I move down to the bus stop a hundred yards down, and keep my thumb out with forlorn hope for another hour until the next Tampico bus arrives. The price is eighty dollars, not backbreaking but another bite out of my budget. Nonetheless the wash of icy-cold air which pours over me as I talk to the driver makes my mind up for me.

We pass through dozens more of those tiny towns, and the road to Tampico turns out to be long and winding - it takes us maybe three hours to get there, at least half as long again as I had estimated. Finally we enter the lake country near the coast, great bodies of still water amid green fields on both sides of the road, and then into the outskirts of the huge sprawling city of Tampico.

There's something about these cities that just grips me - I think it's the texture and variety of their layout. There are no homogenous, even pavements here - along the front of a row of shops a flat stretch of footpath might go up concrete steps onto a raised platform, which is then completely colonised by stalls and the outdoor cooking stations of restaurants (which keep the heat of cooking away from the cool interior), then turn a corner into a grove of trees coming right out to the edge of the road, then spread into a broad tiled courtyard, then turn into rough dirt or stop dead at an ancient brick wall.

After over half an hour of winding through the back streets of the city where the houses push right within inches of our windows, up and down hills and through tunnels, we emerge onto a broad two-lane road lined with hotels and turn into the bus station. Inside it's pretty much like the others, a little more expensive and high-tech maybe.

I get a cup of coffee in the station cafe and find a sputtering internet connection, but my search shows no youth hostels in Tampico, although pushing a little further I do find that there are dozens in the coastal towns of Yucatan on the peninsula, a good sign for my next step. I have about enough money for another month if I can stay within budget (which I'm not managing most of the time). My hope is that I can find work exchange in a hostel again, and get some work in the town for a few weeks, get me a little further south, rinse and repeat.

I check my backpack at a very reasonable rate of 5 pesos an hour, and go searching the area for hotels. To my relief the prices are very reasonable, and I soon find a huge old structure directly opposite the station with rooms from one hundred and thirty pesos a night sin clima, a ridiculous 13 dollars or six pounds fifty.

The Hotel Central turns out to be a rambling building, the hallways of rooms opening off both sides on three levels of a long narrow central courtyard, roofed over with corrugated plastic, with a raised platform partway down supporting potted plants and a pair of antique couches. Almost everything is tiled, and where there aren't tiles everything is painted bright blue. My room has a tiny bathroom with real hot running water, a barred window looking out onto a truckyard, and I can actually get an internet connection from some obliging business next door.

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