Driving from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific

Trip Start Mar 22, 2006
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Trip End Ongoing


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Flag of Mexico  ,
Tuesday, April 4, 2006

Drove from Xalapa to Arriaga, Mexico. Just checked into a hotel a couple hours outside of the Guatemalan border. First hotel room I bought since I started this trip. The area is kind of eerie - lots of military patrols and check points but no police. That's quite different from the rest of Mexico. Plus there are way too many fences and compounds here. Normally about 50% of an area is secure but it's more like 90% here. Not too mention the wind that rocks everything. This is the Isthmus area and the wind just howls through the valley here. I have slept in the truck in Mexico. It can be done and I lived. No use pushing my luck.

The day was marked with yielding to donkey carts, passing 10 Mexicans using a shovel and bucket to fill a tandem gravel truck, homes with gravity water systems (if any), no running hot water in most places including this hotel room, poverty everywhere, chickens everywhere (live and butchered), the list is endless 01 Magno billboard common in Mexico
01 Magno billboard common in Mexico
 . It really does feel like a time machine that takes you back 50 years.

Today was my second time to get dinged by the police. I knew it was coming when I pulled over to check the map at an intersection. I looked over to the other side of the double lane highway and saw a policeman staring at me and talking on a portable radio. Bad vibes and no sooner I got onto the right road there was a policeman flagging me down. This time they wanted 100 pesos for a toll charge on a road that didn't have a toll booth. They got 86 pesos. The usual toll is 15 - 30 pesos and they have a booth. I ran out of pesos today. No bank machines worked in 100 miles. Nobody takes credit cards or US money (unless they are the police). I just made it on an empty tank of fuel to a city that had a bank - Scotia Bank of all things.

The roads are great here. It's everything else that is the problem from animals, people, and lack of signs. I started the day on the Atlantic coast by Veracruz and ended up on the Pacific coast in Juchitan when I missed my turn off. Only 30 mile backtrack. I am used to it. I don't even call it lost anymore. Part of the adventure. The best part of this detour was that I accidentally ran a red light in Juchitan. A lot of horn honking and screeching of tires as I went through a busy rush hour intersection. Too busy trying to figure out the right road and dodging oxcarts. Since I already paid the Mexican police for a "red light infraction" I felt that I got my money's worth today.
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