It rained heavily over night adding to the rain that this area has already experienced. We traveled coastal highway 180 this morning to the Vera Cruz bypass. For some of its length this road runs along a narrow sliver of land between the gulf on one side and lakes and wetlands on the other. Signs of recent flooding were everywhere with debris on the road surface, in places water from the lakes still lapping over the road and many houses still partly under water. Initially we were not sure that the road was open so we kept track of a number of Vera Crus bound buses and when they did not take the turnoff that bypassed the suspect section of road we knew we were ok.

The Vera Cruz bypass was generally a good road that was easy to follow however like many aspects of Mexican roads there were sections that are no better than goat tracks. North of Vera Cruz we joined back with the main highway 180 to travel along the Emerald coast. A popular vacation spot where the road runs close to the beach and there are dozens of hotels, picnic spots, restaurants and trailer/RV parks. We had originally planned to camp here but arrived so early that we decided to push on. It was clear while we took lunch at a Pemex gas station that we were now both in the mood of lets get to the border and get it over with. Thus we drove on into the afternoon eventually stopping about 5:00 at a Pemex gas station about 70 km before Tampico.