Topes, topes, topes

Harvey has already written a bunch about driving in Mexico in his blog, but I thought I'd add a few comments of my own.

We arrived yesterday in Oaxaca, after driving most of the length of Mexico in roughly two hour shifts each.  For most of that distance we drove the cuotas, or toll highways.  For the most part these are divided highways and very good roads.  The tolls themselves are puzzling though as I was never quite clear whether I was paying a toll for the road I was just on or the one I was entering,  and the amount of the toll didn't seem to bear much relation to either the length or quality of the road segment.  Overall they weren't cheap either:  our highest toll day saw us paying about $30 for a day of driving.  

 But I appreciated them much more after our "Mexico City Bypass Operation".  On the advice of one of our guidebooks we bypassed Mexico City's traffic and byzantine rules about who's allowed to drive on which day of the week by taking to secondary highways.   We happily left the toll road just after Queretaro at about noon with about 260 km to cover before our destination for the day.  Lots of time to get there before dark, we thought.  But we hadn't counted on the topes!

Let me explain about topes.  Even more so than in Canada, no one in Mexico seems to notice or care much about posted speed limits.   But this poses a problem for communities in that most secondary roads run right through the centre of town.  Most communities aren't that interested in having cars roar through at 130 km/hr!   The universal solution is topes.

Simply stated, a tope is a speed bump.  But it's not a gentle, friendly, rounded speed bump like you might find in a parking lot or school zone in Canada.  A Mexican tope means business.  From a distance it might look little, but they are tall for their size and not all that rounded.  Taking one at much more than 20 km/hr could easily flatten a tire.  Everyone respects topes, and everyone slows right down to cross over them.

On secondary highways, each tope is marked by a sign, and every community you pass through has a minimum of 3 to 5, or many more if the community is larger and stretches out a few km along the highway.  Our 3 hour drive to Cuidad Sahagun took us almost 6 hours.  It could have been worse though:  I missed the last turn in Pachuga and Harv navigated us back on track via a short section of tertiary road.  On the tertiary roads the topes are usually unmarked.  Even more fun!  The game becomes "spot the tope".  Not a game where you want to have even one miss, given that these topes are even taller than the ones on the secondary highways.  :-)

Which brings us to the first rule of Mexican driving.  Don't drive after dark.  A rule that we respected absolutely on our entire trip.  One unseen topes could take out your car's suspension.

ay Chihuahua!

Tonight we had supper in a restaurant frequented by Pancho Villa, back in the day...entirely by ourselves. The restaurant officially opens at 5pm, but most people don't eat until 9pm. Oh well, we were hungry, and the waiter was very kind to us, and let us know what the kitchen could actually make at that ungodly hour. Except he was too polite to put it that way. My meal was steak tacos with mushrooms. Given the number of cows we saw on the way here, beef seemed like a good choice.


Chihuahua would also be an excellent place to get cowboy boots. Many of the stores here sell them...and I think they would mostly be working boots too. We actually saw several cowboys, on horses, complete with boots, hats, and lariats from the highway. Not just a stereotype then.

Gone a long way...

The last couple of days have been days of contrast, and early mornings. We left Mojave, Ca about 7am Monday morning on our way to Death Valley. There was frost on the car, frost on the desert floor, and water on the highway a bit later when the sun rose higher and melted it off. By mid-day, on our mini-hike up Mosaic Canyon, we stuck to the shade and wished we were wearing shorts. It was "officially" 18 degrees or so, but much warmer in the sunshine. I even went for a swim in an outdoor pool before bed that night.



We spent a lot of time driving through desert.....at first desert with Joshua trees and mesquite, and then desert that looked almost moon-like in its apparent absence of life. But our first view of Death Valley from an overlook outside Panamint Springs included a jet pilot on a "training" run dropping his plane into Rainbow Canyon. (Sure looked like he was just having fun to me, but what do I know? Edwards Air Force base and the China Lake Naval Weapons Testing Range are both close by.) Quite a contrast, but not quite as much as driving down "the Strip" in Las Vegas today.


And today started about 6:40am and 190 feet below sea level, and ended in Flagstaff, AZ, after a brief stop at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon (elevation 6000 ft), and a trip over a snowy mountain pass at 8046 feet.


Dawn at Death Valley, sunset at the Grand Canyon. And now bed time.....good night!

Down the I5

After a day and a half driving down the I5, I am flabberghasted by the number of McDonald's, Jack in the Boxes, Motel 6s, and Arco stations in this country. Not to mention Walmarts, Holiday Inn Expresses, and Chevron stations. And Outlet Malls. Does anyone actually believe that those Malls sell "surplus" goods from name brand retailers? It doesn't seem plausible that there can be more, "polo Ralph Lauren" stores in this world than there are Outlet Mall stores for that brand. And all of these things seem to happen every few kilometers along long stretches of highway. In The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work Alain de Botton comments that nothing was as convincing to him as to the sheer numbers of Britons there are than a view of endless packaged sandwiches in a food factory that he visited. I am similarly convinced of the numbers of travelers on the Interstates.

Hitting the road...

When we planned our last day of work and our departure date two weeks later, it seemed a like we'd have a lot of time to leisurely prepare for our trip. Hah! To some extent it was a matter of the amount of work expanding to fit the time allotted. But while it might not have been strictly necessary to organize and sort the linen cupboard, bathroom cabinet, kitchen cabinet, basement, closet, and dresser, it does mean that Kyle has places to put his stuff. And it feels good to have gotten it done. And until I return, I'm going to live with the happy illusion that the house remains the same as it was when we left: fridge gleaming, floors swept, lawn raked. Really, by the time we were all done I was loathe to leave! Almost, anyway.

Since then, it's been mostly drive drive and drive. I think Harv may prefer that I do less of the driving....it seems like we hit traffic jams every time I'm behind the wheel. I'm now officially the car expert at navigating Seattle at rush hour, and the Portland - Eugene game time rush.

First post

All of the good blog titles are taken?  That's my excuse for the title of this blog, which on the face of it has nothing to do with a sabbatical from work or a trip to Mexico.   Except that I'm considering making an effort to get over my caffeine addiction this trip.  Yes, I may try to train myself to do without several cups of tea a day.  Try, anyway.  Good tea is hard to find when you're travelling, particularly in Mexico. And switching to bad tea or (shudder) coffee just isn't worth it. 

I'm also looking forward to the chocolate in Oaxaca.  The best drinking chocolate I've had in my life was an iced chocolate I had in Morelia.  And Morelia isn't even particularly known for its chocolate!  Unlike Oaxaca, which has shops that will grind your own "mix" of chocolate, almonds, and cinnamon into tablets for later use.  Just think of how much fun it might be to develop the perfect concoction....