Ciudad Victoria is a 4.5 hour bus ride from Brownsville, Texas. It is a pleasant, clean city of about 230,000 and the capital of Tamaulipas state. We stayed at the Hotel Los Monteros downtown on the Plaza Hidalgo.

Filling out baggage tags in the Brownsville bus depot

Starting the next leg of our adventure.

Inside the Hotel Los Monteros.

Rebecca in the hotel courtyard (Imagine! someone actually got the camera out of my hands.)

Rigmor on the tiled stairs of the hotel.

One of the chef's specialties at Pulpo Mariscos, a seafood restaurant. Fish fillets, shrimp, oyster, crab - one of the tastiest dishes I have ever eaten.

Tortilla factory

Teatro Juarez - the view from our hotel window looking on to the Plaza Hidalgo

Hand-forged lamp

Galen and Rigmor in the market - let's see, how do you say 'carrot' in Spanish?

Angelica Villanveva Hedz, Artesanias "Villanveva"

Angelica gives us souvenirs.

Rigmor wants to buy one of everything she sees but Galen refuses to carry it for her.

Hermen Eguiaromero, Loc #5, Altos

Woman with her child in her shop

Rigmor gets her shoes shined by Orlando Consaleo Cuitoriat, which brings laughter from the men across the street. But they all had to come over and look at the preview of the picture on the camera.

Some of the beautiful architecture so common here.

A family selling balloons in the plaza in the evening.

Galen is busy sketching the many different designs for blacksmithing.

A typical carved door.

Rebecca gets her hair cut by Laura Oliva Pesina

The view from our hotel window - a woman and her children sell trinkets

A hardware store

Our hotel desk employees, Guillermo Alfaro and Carlos Rocha

The hotel maids, Maria Guadalupe Vega Walle and Imelda Zuniga Walle

Galen buying a sketchbook

Roberto and the taxi drivers

Eating pozole at the Jalisco Restaurant with Roberto

While in Ciudad Victoria, we wanted to look up a friend that we had met the last time we were here - Jose Manuel Fung Del Castillo. We looked his up address and telephone number and tried to phone him, but the call wouldn't go through. Then we showed the address to the taxi drivers outside the hotel, but they couldn't figure out where the place was, since we didn't know which part of the city he was in. While we we talking to the taxi drivers, Roberto stopped by to help. Roberto teaches English at the University and stopped to helped translate. We finally figured out where Jose Manuel's place probably was and hired a taxi to take us there; however, we still couldn't find it. $20 later we were back at the hotel. The hotel clerk, Carlos, thought he knew where the place was. The next morning Jose appeared at our hotel at 8:30 - Carlos had gone to his place and brought him back. The next day Jose took us to his ranch - he raises fighting cocks. Along the way we stopped at a brick making place and also saw a sisal machine. The next page has the pictures. . .