VIBRANT VERACRUZ : The Party Never Stops in This Bright, Giddy Seaport on the Gulf of Mexico

THE TEAL-GREEN SKIRTS OF THE FOLK DANCERS WHIRL AS madly as the multicolored pinwheels held high by the passing vendors. An Indian woman with long braided hair gapes in astonishment as a line of nearly bare showgirls wiggles on a raised stage. Another woman dances past with a Pepsi bottle balanced on her nose, while her daughter follows, selling gardenias. Seven different bands are playing seven different tunes in various corners of the square. Starlings whistle from the trees above, their trills looping up into the air. A strangely sweet cacophony rings in my senses, as stunningly loud as a nearby waterfall. A man chuckles and offers me an electric shock to calm my nerves, but I like the way I feel. . . .

It’s just another night in Veracruz.

Veracruz, whose full name (which nobody seems to use) is Veracruz Llave, is a major Mexican seaport on the Gulf of Mexico, about 260 miles east of Mexico City. I first came here about a year and a half ago, on a brief vacation with two girlfriends, and though I had traveled reasonably widely elsewhere in Mexico, I had never before experienced anything quite like this. What I keep thinking of while I’m here (I returned last November) is the old travel brochure cliche, which describes exactly what I found: Every night is a fiesta.

Veracruz is much less Spanish in appearance than the cities of the Mexican highlands. True, there’s the perfectly proportioned zocalo , or central plaza, and the requisite exquisite Spanish Baroque cathedral. Beyond these and a few blocks of buildings downtown, though, it’s all rounded corners, triangular abutments, balconies festooned with voluptuous balustrades--and vivid colors everywhere. Though tropical, Veracruz is not a pastel city. Its facades are cobalt blue, Matisse green, shocking pink. One block-long school is purple with white trim.

My friends and I stayed at the perfect Veracruz hotel, the Emporio, which curves around a portion of the harbor. Our fifth-floor balcony wrapped around a corner and had a superb view, not just of the harbor but also of the harborside promenade, where all of Veracruz strolls at sunset--young couples, families, crowds of unattached young men and (separately) women, fortune-tellers, evangelists, balloon sellers, marimba bands. Joining the promenade, we became part of the show; foreign tourists are comparatively rare here, and the fact that we were three blond women traveling alone seemed to cause something of a sensation. (We were never harassed, though.)

Under a colonial colonnade, we saw an exhibition devoted to the history of Veracruz--a history largely of fevers and invasions. The city descends from the first real Spanish settlement in the Americas, founded by Hernando Cortes in 1519 under the name Villa Rica de Vera Cruz--the Rich Town of the True Cross. As Vera Cruz grew in wealth and power, becoming a major port for the shipment of goods (including tobacco, gold and silver) to and from Spain, it also became a favored target of Caribbean pirates. It burned down four times in the 17th Century alone. Later, it was seized by the French and invaded twice by U.S. forces.

The city also suffered epidemics of disease for centuries, spread partially by the immense population of mosquitoes living in its murky coastal waters and in the nearby jungle. Disease abated after World War II, when the port was modernized and stagnant backwaters were drained; Veracruz is no longer called “the city of the dead.” But perhaps its double legacy of death and invasion helps account for its nonstop fiesta atmosphere. If tomorrow may not come, why not put on your party clothes? Why not dance the night away?

After our promenade, we settled down in one of the cafes that line one side of the zocalo , ordered margaritas and fresh shrimp drenched with lime and sat back to watch the show. A stream of vendors flowed past the cafe, selling candies, cigars, agates, shoeshines, hand-carved Spanish galleons, even our names carved in a grain of rice. A toddler hawked matches. A 10-year-old salesman yawned over his nuts and cigarettes. One man snapped the bottle-cap feet of his toy turtles down onto the plaza in a flamenco rhythm.

The colors swirled past, the combinations too glorious to imagine--a lone accordion player in violent blue; a woman in a dress as tight and bright as the skin of an orange; yellow crinolines peeping out from under lavender skirts; purple rhinestones glittering above tangerine bouffant. Vultures flapped down low over the square, the tips of their wings looking like black velvet gloves silhouetted against a magenta sky. Green neon light from a nearby bar shone down on a middle-aged couple, kissing as if nothing else mattered. Our own bar was golden with amber fixtures; the reflections from metallic balloons shone like rainbows in the dampness of our waiter’s gold teeth.

Then the music started. A huge brass marine band started warming up. Two men set up a marimba next to our table and punched out a flute-like song on its carved wooden keys, while a saxophone lilted along in dark harmony. A loud traveling mariachi band drew near. The bawling singer was shaped like a bell; his jacket stuck out a full foot away from his trousers. Next came a soulful cowboy band from the North with a wailing tenor. Two tables down, a man with a ten-gallon hat and a posse of friends held his cellular phone up toward the lamenting tenor. The unseen listener on the phone was serenaded for countless songs. I hoped it was a senorita.

Meanwhile, out in the square, dancing to their own musicians, a folkloric ballet company began to put on a show, stamping and twirling. Resplendent in skin-tight pants, the young men pranced between the spinning skirts of their partners. The women’s final costume was wedding white with a slash of blood red at the waist. After the ballet was over, several hundred people drifted off into side streets and children danced on the abandoned platform, gyrating like the mechanical toys sold by the man next to the ice cream vendor. We decided to go have dinner.

We took a taxi to one of the city’s better restaurants, Albatros, where, surrounded by deep red mahogany and beveled glass, we ate mushrooms with garlic and chiles, stuffed oysters with the ubiquitous tart lime, shrimp with chipotle sauce, black beans with dry, tangy cheese and fish so superbly fried that it was redolent only of salt and the sea, with not a hint of grease.

We strolled back to our hotel and fell asleep to the sound of the whistles of the ships tooting mournfully in the harbor. In the morning, we noticed that several ships had sailed during the night and a new one, from Russia, was anchored just across from us. On the horizon, the distant ice-capped cone of a volcano towered above the shell-pink clouds of dawn. Next door to the hotel, cadets in snappy white uniforms marched out to the brassy sob of a band playing reveille. Out in the harbor, tugs yanked freighters this way and that, terriers at the heels of cows.

The beachfront promenade just to the south of downtown glowed in the slanting morning light. White, lacy cast-iron benches and rows of coconut palms faced the sparkling ocean. Families splashed in the shallows, kicking up the tiny waves that ankled around them. The zocalo was shining wet, the debris from the night before already washed and swept away before our first cup of coffee.

All of our early mornings were spent at the Gran Cafe de Parroquia, just across from the zocalo . It’s a fluorescent-lighted cafe covered in white octagonal tiles, with more than 100 tables, mostly full by the time we arrived. Huge polished espresso machines line one wall, right next to a constant flow of white-coated waiters. The occupations here are conversation, food, newspapers, deals and, above all else, coffee. Much of Mexico has bad coffee, watery and thin. But in Veracruz province, its serving and drinking is nearly reverential. At the Parroquia, the first shot of thick black coffee comes in a clear glass. Then the customer hits the side of the glass with a spoon with a sharp thwack. A boy holding a huge pot of scalding milk rushes over. As intense as an altar boy waving incense, he puts the curving spout next to the glass, then lifts his wrist and arm with a flourish. The milk cascades out in an arching stream, too high and alarming to be believed. And then with a flick of his wrist, the stream stops, the coffee swirls to a rest, mere millimeters away from the top. There’s never a drop of coffee or milk spilled and then he’s off to answer the next insistent ring.

In the late mornings, we walked through the markets. Bananas and mangoes were stacked yards high. Glistening mountains of fish and shrimp smelled all salty and clean. The morning light shone through bright pink cutout papers hung along the windows. The duenna of one eating establishment wore a dress of salmon and green that exactly matched the flowers on her oilcloths. Her counter was decorated with foot-high blue and gold Virgins; in fact, Guadalupe was everywhere, even featured on plastic shopping bags.

To get a feel for a different part of Veracruz, after a few days at the Emporio, we moved a few miles south of town to the Art Deco Hotel Mocambo--a ‘40s ocean liner of a hotel with carved wooden palm trees arching over the indoor pool and filigree iron vaulting many stories above the outside pool. The bar is lined with Honduran mahogany and sea glass portholes. A giant ship’s wheel placed incongruously on the foyer ceiling sent us into spasms of giggles. On the beautiful beach, where we spent our noon hours, we sank into ice-blue Adirondack chairs while white-coated waiters rushed to bring us seafood and beer.

This part of the Gulf of Mexico has none of the azure brilliance of the Caribbean nor the deep blue of the Pacific, but instead glows with a more sensual beauty. The sand was a soft brown, like finely ground coffee mixed with sugar, raked into Zen perfection every morning. The water was slick in the distance. A line of pelicans, the same nutty brown as the trunks of the coconuts, dipped down low over the glossy sea. Tiny waves slid up the beach, then retreated, leaving deep purple stains behind. Puffy clouds foamed high above us. Under the deep shade of our umbrella-shaped straw palapa , life took on a molasses pace.

Later, we swam in the lukewarm water, bobbing up and down like corks. Popping up from a brief sojourn underwater, I was most surprised to find a fully dressed man quite close, standing armpit high in the water. He held up an ancient Polaroid camera as cheerfully as the walrus held up his fork before devouring the oysters. I admired the enterprising spirit that had brought him 70 feet out into the water, but I laughed and demurred at buying a picture. I still regret, quite keenly, that I said no.

The water had been so soothing that we had not noticed the approach of a black wedge of clouds nor the tiny whirlwinds that spat sand around our palapa . But once out of the blood-warm water, the wind made itself felt and we retreated to the beachside restaurant to wait out the storm. Rather than alarming, the storm was a thing of beauty. A white curtain materialized out of the black horizon and soon surrounded us with a haze of rain. Our hotel became even more a stationary ocean liner, the top floor an ideal place from which to view a line of rollers unfolding like a giant fan across the broad reaches of the bay. The storm left as suddenly as it had come. The air filled with the aroma of flowers; puddles shone in the roads.

After our nights on the zocalo and our days at the beach, we yearned to see yet another aspect of the region. The countryside beyond the city limits of Veracruz is stunning, all green fields and rivers with mountains in the distance. A woman in white splashed a mule across a shallow river. A cowboy galloped across a highway overpass. A pig reigned in every yard. For this is a land where the rhythms of life are dominated by sprouting seeds, watery marshes and the abundance of flowers and seafood.

Above the temperate foothills toward which we headed, the brash peaks of volcanoes thrust up into indigo skies. Their steep flanks roar with waterfalls, yet nurture mountain meadows with Jersey cows, green grass and thus wonderful fresh cheese. Citatepetl Volcano is almost 18,000 feet high, 4,000 feet higher than our own Mt. Whitney. In geologic terms, late Tertiary, it’s a baby, and when clouds from the damp lowlands boil around its flanks, it’s easy to see it as still being born.

The roads in the state of Veracruz are excellent. The cuota (toll) roads are empty superhighways, designed for the rich. The libre (free) roads are well-paved but sometimes crowded with trucks belching black or white smoke, depending on whether they are barreling downhill or crawling up. Framed by swirling fog, a child of 13 or so, wrapped in black and cobalt blue and holding a baby, stood by her teen-age husband, who had a machete tucked into a soft leather holster.

We left the main highway at the first sign for the town of Coatepec. The road turned out to be a back road but crews were out filling potholes after recent rains. The road threaded its way through a true rain forest. The jungle trees had a far distant canopy of smoky green, a mid-layer of air plants and orchids so abundant that it was hard to imagine that they are rare. And far below, in rows, the brilliance of coffee plants, with their clusters of berries, some lime green, others flushing coral red. Families of Indians moved silently through the groves, picking the ripe berries. The road kept climbing. Rivulets gushed down steep hillsides. Higher up, streams meandered across verdant meadows, where the grass carpet was as thick and bright as moss.

As we entered Coatepec, perched on top of a steep hill, the smell of roasting coffee filled the air. The rich aroma never left us during our entire stay. (We bought pounds of coffee in burlap bags and, later, at home, our suitcases spilled out the scent.) Coatepec turned out to be a rustic, well-preserved Spanish Colonial town. The houses had large, carved wooden overhangs that swooped upward as the streets climbed sharply toward the plaza at the zenith. I had seen the same wooden overhangs during a visit to Extremadura in Spain, the home province of many of the conquistadors. With its wrought-iron balconies, lace-covered windows, parlors with dark mahogany and glimpses of courtyards with flowers, this town might almost be in Spain--but for the colors. While the colors of the city of Veracruz are as vivid as crayon hues, these hill townhouses are the glowing colors of spices--the burnt yellow of saffron, orange studded with cinnamon, clear raspberry; the wooden overhangs seem the black of India tea.

We stumbled across another perfect hotel, a block from the main plaza. It was an elegant old stone mansion that had receptionists in silk suits, fountains and courtyards galore, even a baronial dining hall with heraldic flags. Our charming room looked out over red tiled roofs to green hills. The towels were huge and fluffy, the phone direct-dial, and there was even HBO on the TV. The heated swimming pool was checkerboard blue-and-white tile. A lion’s head fountain spilled water down one wall past peach-colored lantana and into the pool.

At dusk, the town was magical, the light golden, saturating the cumulus that floated above, and filling the slanting streets with shafts of sun that hammered a layer of molten metal onto those rich spice facades. I was drunk with color and light. And then we went into the churches. The town has an artisan who is presently redoing, one by one, all the churches in town. He dips tiny brushes into pots of gold and trails gilt vines up blue and white arches, around pillars and into paisley patterns until the whole is a vortex to heaven.

In contrast to Veracruz, this little hill town was as quiet as a town can get. Birds called out in the night but as if to punctuate the silence rather than to interrupt it. The moon rose over tiled roofs. We had been transported into another world--not to some fantasyland resort designed for tired workaholics, but to a paradise where stone workers crouched by sidewalks, hand-chiseling cobblestones, where artisans fired gold into church walls, where the very air was perfumed with roasting coffee beans. I didn’t even miss the fiesta of Veracruz.

GUIDEBOOK

Veracruz Verily

*

Phone numbers and prices: The country code for Mexico is 52; city codes are given below. All prices are given in U.S. dollars and are approximate, based on an exchange rate of 3 new pesos to the U.S. dollar. Hotel prices are for a double room for one night. Restaurant prices are for dinner for two, food only.

*

Getting there: Mexicana and Aeromexico have several daily connecting flights to Veracruz via Mexico City; Continental flies once daily through Houston.

*

Where to stay: Hotel Emporio, Paseo del Malecon 244, Veracruz, telephone (29) 32-00-2, fax (29) 31-22-61. Excellent service, great location, lots of charm and character. Rates: $65-$100. Hotel Mocambo, Calzada Ruiz Cortines, Mocambo, tel. (29) 22-02-05, fax (29) 22-02-12. A wonderful period feel and a beautiful beach. Rates: $60-$110. (We preferred the older, cheaper rooms, which had ocean views and good views from private terraces.) Hotel Posado Coatepec, Hildago 9, Coatepec, tel. (281) 6-05-44, fax (281) 6-00-40. An elegant five-star hotel housed in an old mansion. Rates: $130-$300.

*

Where to eat: Albatros, 16 de Septiembre 1480, esquina Jose Azueta, Veracruz, local tel. 31-41-46. Sophisticated food and atmosphere, $50. Gran Cafe de Parroquia, Independencia 105, no telephone. Open from 6 a.m. to 1 a.m., serving delicious cafe food as well as coffee and drinks. (There is another, larger branch near the harbor.)

*

For more information: Mexican Government Tourism Office, 10100 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 224, Los Angeles 90067; (310) 203-8191.