Saturday morning, May 3rd. We were up and moving by 4:30 am; the car was as full as we could make it, and still leave room for Jack. One final look at the boat, and we were on the road by 8:30.
I closed that hatch.
We got on the road by 8:30. Karin had printed out directions from google maps (about 5 pages), with that and a road atlas of Mexico, (in English!) we were confident that we would find our way home.
The first challenge was getting out of Tapachula....for some reason every major highway in and out of town is Mexico 200. We drove past one intersection, but felt like there was another one a little farther ahead. To make a long story short, we drove all the way around Tapachula, only to end up on the 200 we saw at first.
9:30, we're on the highway, paying tolls, and making good time.
Travelling at 120 kph,.. in a few hours we had driven past the Gulf of Tehuantepec. Wow! That was easy. It was very windy, the perfect location for a wind farm.
Eventually, we were getting close to the Gulf of Mexico, near Veracruz, when we turned north toward Puebla and Mexico City. It was getting late and we needed to find a place for the night. At a large Pemex truck stop, there was a hotel, and 24 hour restaurant. Perfect, but would they take dogs (Mascota)?
At first the answer was no, then .... o.k. While we gathered our things, another man showed up and wanted to see a room, we found out later, he was upset because he had seen a dog on the premises.
As we settled into the room, the phone rang. Who could that be? The guy at the front desk needs to see me now. He explained about the other customer, and said we couldn't have the dog, o.k. now what are we supposed to do? We agreed to hide him, he couldn't come out,.. no one can see, or hear him.
O.k., thank you!
Sunday morning we were up at 5 and on the road. Jack has resigned himself to being trapped in the car, he sleeps. By mid afternoon we were approaching Puebla, the "Arco de Norte" or beltway around Mexico City. I had not thought about the scenery much, being focused on directions, and other traffic. Winding our way up to about 7500', it looked like European alpine pastures, it was beautiful.
When we got on the Arco de Norte, it was great! Nice road, no traffic, just cruising through the countryside... oops, all of a sudden it turned into a two lane road!? What happened? Are we lost? We did a u turn and ended up on an off ramp going to Mexico City. We told the attendant, and Federales that we were going the wrong way,... they told us to turn around and go back up the ramp!! O.k., we drove past another Federale who had witnessed our u turn, he honked, we waved and kept going! Unreal. A few miles later an accident happened up ahead, and everything stopped. While we waited, we watched half a dozen people on horseback, with their dogs, herding sheep and cattle on a Sunday afternoon.
A small truck had hit the guardrail, and gone off the road. Hopefully he wasn't seriously hurt. A few minutes later, traffic was moving, and we were on our way.
We made it to the west side of Guadalajara just before dark, and found the ZAR Hotel. It was nice, with A/C, and dogs are no problem. We had some Pollo Feliz for dinner and made it an early night.
Monday; Cinco de Mayo. Surprisingly, the traffic was fairly heavy until we had driven for an hour or so. Things were going well, the tolls were getting frequent an expensive. Just when we thought we were done we got off of Arco de Norte; 388 Pesos! We had to count every bill and coin we could find and still came up a few pesos short. Karin gave her 2 quarters, and she let us go. A few miles later, another toll booth appeared on the horizon. Guess what? No mas dinero. We tried to find an ATM with no luck. We had kept a $100.00 bill for a backup, but they wouldn't take it, again we had to turn around at a toll booth. We drove to the next town and found a bank, now with plenty of Pesos, we're headed for San Carlos.
The rest of the drive, and our adjustment to being back in the U.S. will be in the next post
A note from Karin: Mexico was absolutely BEAUTIFUL. I had a long time to think about it and came to the conclusion that the lack of billboards, and fast food chains were what made it a little different from the U.S.
