Hurricane Dean came and went, but Tropical Depression 17 (or whatever its number is) came and stayed, and so did the rain. Today it is raining yet again, whether from Tropical Depression 17 or from general unsettledness or another burgeoning storm, I'm not sure. Down at lower altitudes, difficulties are piling up especially from flooding. Jim left late last night for Mexico City and then the Bay Area to visit his kids, and it is a good thing he didn't go via Veracruz because of washed-out roads slowing the trip markedly. Flooding made it impossible a little further north to go from Tuxpan to Poza Rica on main roads.
And here in our corner of Veracruz, a big hunk of the primary bridge which connects us to Coátepec, Xalapa and much of Mexico fell into the river below. THis bridge is critical for something like 75000 people. We learned of the collapse shortly after it happened. We were on our way home Wednesday night from a birthday party in Coátepec, when we were stopped at the turn onto the main Coátepec-Xico highway. To our left, a pile of cars and buses, to our right, well, nothing but darkness. The policeman told us we could go ahead if we wanted, but we'd just have to come back: the bridge was gone. Which was quite shocking, given the bridge's importance. I mean, it is hard to imagine that this bridge wouldn't be taken particularly good care of since it is a lifeline. It hardly looks like anything important: it's a one lane bridge and lines of traffic have to wait for the other side to clear. People have done this patiently for years and years.
Jim and I decided to head in the direction of home instead of staying overnight in Coátepec. There are two alternate routes, one is comprised of a network of totally unkempt barely visible one-lane dirt roads which, in good weather takes an hour to make a journey of ten minutes on the main road, the other, also mainly a one-lane road is much closer. It involves crossing the narrowest imaginable one lane bridge, but it is quite fine for our Toyota Rav 4 and other regular-size cars and small trucks if there's no traffic. Not buses, though, or trucks of any heft.
Very quickly we found that this second, better alternative was blocked. In fact, traffic was piled up long before we got to it. Being intrepid (or foolish), we decided to try for the first one. We turned back and went the short distance to the entrance. And then we drove for ever along roads that had turned into swamps until we finally could go no further -- and at a place where the trees cleared and we could see the lights of San Marcos, we had to turn around. We tried a couple of other branches, but they were even more impassable. Not even mud, they had become free-flowing streams in places.
So we joined the line of unmoving traffic, both of us stubborn and determined to spend the night at home. Buses were discharging their passengers behind us, and hundreds and hundreds of people trooped past us to walk home over the footbridge which, since it is separate from the car bridge, is still open. We considered this but couldn't figure out where to leave the car. Jim did reconnaissance and came back maybe twenty minutes later and said the alternate route was still closed.
But then we realized buses were backing in the left hand lane and that the cars in front of us were actually moving. The alternate route had opened! The buses apparently had blocked the tiny bridge by driving the mile to it and then discovering they couldn't make it across. All those buses had to back up slowly, slowly, to the main road before anyone could pass. Slowly, slowly we made it home. And now we're kind of stuck ... not really stuck, but we have to think about whether we really need to go to Coátepec. There is a wait at the tiny bridge on the alternate route of up to an hour in either direction while one stream of cars lets another pass since the road to the main highway is not only just one lane, but it is a dirt road, and muddy and slick, washerboard in places, large rocks sticking up in others, and holes everywhere.. Last night we waited almost an hour on the way to the Xalapa bus station.
Yesterday morning we walked to San Marcos to see the bridge. Here are some pictures.
This is sort of a close-up of the broken place.
This is looking across the bridge from the San Marcos (our) side.
This is from the Las PUentas side looking towards San Marcos. The bridge, incidentally, is the border between Las Puentas which is in el Municipio de Coátepec and San Marcos which is in el Municipio de Xico. Colonia Ursulo Galvan where we live is west and north a little less than a mile from this bridge.
This is looking downstream from the bridge.
This is looking upstream. As you can see, the river is still high.
The bridge was built in 1832 and is considered historic by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia. Obviously, it was not originally intended for cars. Structural weaknesses have been obvious for awhile, but it was the very heavy and enduring rains that did it in the night before last.
Yesterday the governor of Veracruz visited and vowed to replace it with a proper two-lane bridge and to improve the road in general. Meanwhile we have been told it will take one to two months to make anything crossable there. Obviously this is going to cause all kinds of problems for the people on our side: not just getting to work and back, but transporting goods to the thousands of people who live where we do and further.