Casa Blanca: Without Humphrey or Greta
by Jim Ferrell
Editor’s Note: admittedly this story is a little long in the tooth, but it’s something we can all relate to. Its author is a long time resident of Akumal.
On Tuesday, November 11, 2008, my wife Kathy and I found ourselves in the small city of Cosamaloapan, about 100 miles southeast of Veracruz, Mexico. This is not a tourist city. We found ourselves trapped here for five days while our truck transmission was being repaired. This city is very close to the Mexico City-Villahermosa toll road (307) that we were traveling. The transmission garage was no more than the curb in front of the owner’s open-air well-cluttered shop. The shop was guarded by an underfed, rather unfriendly Doberman pincher. Work was performed right in the street at the curb; including the full transmission removal. The whole unit was hauled away for repair in Oaxaca, in the bed of a 30-year old beat-up Ford Ranger.
Cosamaloapan is small, but it is a real city. Wandering around it revealed that all the streets and sidewalks were paved, but maintenance had not occurred in many years. The buildings were in the common disrepair that we have seen throughout Mexico. Among dilapidated buildings were several very nice houses that were extremely well maintained, frequently with extensive protective fencing. The city square had many stores and banks including Bancomer, Banamex, HSBC, a Chedraui supermarket going up as well as a large well-maintained cathedral. As is usual, there was a religious artifacts sales stand next to the cathedral. Among the expected statuary and images of Guadalupe, Jesus, Mary, Joseph and other saints, was a statue of Buddha. Perhaps the church is more liberal here than in other places. There were also several good restaurants around the city center. None were fast food "chains" - American or otherwise.
The local restaurant food was good, with ample portions, and the prices were very reasonable ˆ only half of the going dinner tabs in Playa Del Carmen or Akumal. The streets were very noisy. Many people had vehicles with extremely loud audio systems ˆ complete with massive subwoofers; and advertising vehicles loudly hawked products via large loudspeakers mounted of their roofs. This was very annoying, especially late at night. There were also a fair number of horse and mule drawn carts in the street. It is quite incongruous to see a mule drawn vegetable cart being followed by a new 34-wheel, 120,000 pound Sol beer truck "doble" tractor-trailer rig.
There are several hotels in Cosamaloapan, and some looked very nice. However, we had two dogs in tow, and needed lodging that accepted pets. This was a big problem. With the help of our friend Sherwood, we had located pet-friendly Mexican hotels for our planned Mexican stops on the way from Austin to Akumal. However, Cosamaloapan was not in the plan.
After some unsuccessful hunting, we found a really old poorly maintained hotel that accepts pets, called the Hotel Casa Blanca. The hotel was extremely dilapidated, but there was no evidence of vermin, and the bed sheets were clean. The room rates varied from 87 pesos (US$6.65) for a basic single room, to 170 pesos (US$13.00) for the “deluxe” double room. (Actually, the hotel also had a two-hour rate, for two people, during the day for 70 pesos - US$5.35. I had seen this pricing before at low-cost hotels in Japan euphemistically called the “rest” rate.)
Being big spenders, Kathy and I went for the 170-peso deluxe room. This included extras, such as an old 19-inch color TV with the prerequisite fuzzy picture, and a "forced-into-the-wall" window air conditioner that was not too noisy. We were advised that toilet paper was replenished only on Mondays. However, Kathy managed to score an extra roll of this low-quality stuff by schmoozing the front desk woman. The room had a single unfrosted bare light bulb for illumination and also had a sheet steel door and the windows had sheet steel shutters. Outside of the shutters were steel bars. There were no screens or glass. All of the steel was painted with red Rustoleum. The cement in the room was falling apart in places, and the most recent paint was slapped on right over previous multiple layers of failed paint. No preparation work was done. The bathroom had a modern toilet. (There was also a spare toilet upside down on the balcony outside.) The sink had only one faucet - cold. The shower had two faucets ˆ cold and not-quite-as-cold. The water pressure was very low. I think the pressure tanaka (tank) shared the third floor with us, explaining the pressure. Strangely, immediately next to the hotel was a large city water tank, easily 70 feet high. In front of the hotel was a large leaking ground water pumping station, vigorously pumping water to the tank via a ten-inch pipe. However, this proximity did not help the room’s water pressure.
Overall, I would rate this hotel barely ”One Star” point. On the plus side, the room was very inexpensive, bug free, and accepted pets. On the minus side, it was a dark depressing room.