[in Villahermosa on 11/3/2005]
We weren’t expecting much, but after 3 pleasant days in Veracruz, Villahermosa came as a bit of a shock. It’s a sprawling, wealthy, congested, suburban-like oil town. That may not sound so bad to those of you live in and enjoy Schaumburg-esque towns. But basically, driving through the horrible traffic and trying to find a hotel that wasn’t too snotty to accept our cats really sucked.
We can usually find a moderate non-chain hotel in the downtown areas that are friendly and will accept our cats. But Villahermosa’s downtown area is rumored to be seedy, so we decided to avoid it. You don’t get a lot of bang for your buck in Villahermosa, and all we could find was a $28 room. We decided that the bed in that room was officially the worst we had ever slept in — worse than the bed in the $10 room at our London hostel back in our backpacking days. Not that it mattered; the horrible karaoke at the bar next door kept us up most of the night. 
Villahermosa gets its’ wealth from the oil business, and gets a decent dose of American businessmen (yes, it’s sexist, but really there aren’t many women in the oil business). We walked into a restaurant and were surprised to be handed menus in English. We were even more surprised to find chicken wings, burgers and ribs on the menu. The restaurant turned out to be a chain owned by an enterprising Mexican from Monterrey. The chicken wings really hit the spot!
