the teal minivan ahead of me on the highway had a mexican flag bumper sticker and a tinted back windshield with a big palm tree sticker and arched text over the tree, which read solo veracruz es bello, only veracruz is beautiful. minivans like this are all over the place in mexico, but i saw this one right here in pennsylvania.

i remember veracruz vividly. it was the summer of 95 and my family was traveling through mexico on our way back down to guatemala after a few months traversing the united states in our navy blue toyota hilux pick-up truck with vinyl bench seats and no a/c. my older brother and younger sister and i all sat in the backseat, diligently logging our time spent sandwiched between each other in the dreaded middle seat. i was mad at my brother because he was getting ahead in the count, and i knew i would have to spend extra time at the tail end of the trip to make up for it. it just wasn’t fair, i argued. we were wearing shorts since it was hot and humid, and our legs were sticking both to the seat and to each other.

we had a mexico travel guide with hotel listings and such, so i perused the veracruz listings as we drove in search of nice hotels where we could stay that evening. i paid special attention to the ones with pools and a/c. i found a howard johnson listed and suggested this to my parents who simply said, we’ll have to see. i kept my hopes up.

when we arrived in veracruz, the sun was beginning to go down on the bay and i remember it being pretty beautiful, though i didn’t really appreciate that kind of stuff at the time. we passed the howard johnson which was on the left side of the road, looking grand and inviting, and settled for hotel tropical, more of a local establishment, and kind of obscure, and easy to miss on the right.

that evening we went swimming in the warm, murky green waters of the hotel pool. strangely enough, seemingly everyone at the place was using the pool. i don’t think i showered after my swim that evening. we were short a bed, and i didn’t want to share with anyone, so i slept on the orange vinyl couch in the living room. it was hot and humid and i was sweating all night. when i woke up, my face was sticking to the orange vinyl couch.

we left the next morning.

looking back, i can only echo the statement on the back of that teal minivan with tinted windows: solo veracruz es bello. truer words have ne’er been spoken.