We had planned to pull out of Tampico around 7:30, but as Tom did the last walk-around check of the truck and trailer, he found that one of the trailer tires was flat. Fortunately, he had bought a tire repair kit while we were in Georgia, so he took the tire off, fixed it, rolled it across the street to the local vulcanizadore, marked by a big yellow tractor tire, had it filled, and put it back on the trailer. The exercise took about an hour, and in that time, Pete, a retired guy from Louisville, Kentucky, who had parked next to us the night before and who is traveling alone, started talking with us, and we decided to travel to the next stop together. Tom and I didn’t really know where we wanted to go, and Pete had found a campground located on the Emerald Coast in his guidebook, so we pulled out behind Pete.
Roads were a little rougher than they had been the day before, which slowed us down a little, but we didn’t think much of it until we pulled over after a toll road entrance for lunch. We opened the trailer door, and found that our boxes of clothes, which had been stored on the shelf above the bed, had fallen down and were spread all over the floor. We stuffed them back in the boxes, left the boxes on the floor, and continued on our way. We stopped to fill up the fuel tank somewhere along the way, and were delighted to find that diesel is only about $2 a gallon, far less than we had expected.
We arrived at El Corsario campground without further mishaps around 3:30 after traveling about 250 miles. The campground is right on the ocean, and the campsites are in the palm trees right behind the dunes; we could see the beach and the waves from the truck. They also have two pools with slides, and hot showers. We parked, took the dogs for a walk on the beach, and let them all have a good run, chasing sandpipers and coconuts in the surf. We decided to unhook the truck and head into town for groceries, which isn’t as simple as going to Wegman’s. Since we were right on the Gulf, we decided to get fish, so we found a Pescateria, or fish market, which are spread up and down the main shopping strip. We didn’t know how to say any type of fish in Spanish, so the guys showed Tom what was in all the coolers. He didn’t know what any of the fish we normally buy already filleted look like as fish, so he took a stab, picked out a couple of fish, and had the guy fillet them. We think it was snapper. While he was waiting, they give him a cup of their ceviche and crackers, which he was nice enough to come out to the truck to share with me. They spoke no English, but with Tom’s limited Spanish and a lot of sign language, they managed to offer Tom cats, which he refused because he said the dogs would eat them, then they offered him new dogs that don’t eat cats, which he refused, so then they offered him a gun, which he also refused since he’d rather not spend the rest of his life in a Mexican jail. We’re not sure if they offered him the gun to kill the dogs that kill cats, or just to see what he would do, but in any case he got back in the car with just the fish. We then went to the produce stand, where we walked off with two bags full of avocados, tomatoes, onions, peppers, and bananas for about $2US. We went back to the campground, made dinner, and decided to spend another day at El Corsario to regroup, repack, and relax.
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