Veracruz Mexico

off the face of the earth.

Now there are two very-touristy-looking harbor tour boats. One has music too loud, but that's Mexico. In forty-five minutes, one sees a lot.

You start out passing the muelle de T, the T-dock. It's the home to the tug boats. And just pass them are the crew boats that handle ship's huge ropes. When cruise ships come to town, the tugs dock elsewhere and the cruise ships (cruceros in Spanish) take over the dock.

A little farther on, just past the research ship that never seems to leave port, is the navy's dock. Usually there are four or five patrol boats, attack boats, in port, and they are always coming and going.

The tour continues, you pass the ocean studies technological high school and its fishing trawler and continue on to pass by the harbor pilot boats. They're small and bob around like floating plastic bottles. I don't know how the pilots survive the ride.

The water route passes along the inner seawall, and across to the outer seawall and then out to sea (but just a little).

Then you pass along the shipyard, the other naval dock, and get to the old fort, San Juan de Alua. It's hundreds of years old, and built out of coral. It's sits on a coral reef.

Continuing, you pass the container dock, the wheat dock, the LPG dock, and finally seven or eight standard docks (all big enough for 4 or 5 ships).

And then in a few moments you're right back where you started 45 minutes ago. There's a lot to see during a very short ride.