Today was quite possibly the scariest day of my life.
I started off around 10AM because the noise from the nearby street was deafening. I actually woke up around 5:30 AM because of all the noise. I headed off to Playa Marimar nearby. It was eerily empty, but showed good potential. It had rows and rows of seats and umbrellas, and you could park about 100 meters away from the beach, right next to your seats. Very accessible.
Then came the hard part. Again, Tampico, like Monterrey, had no signs of anything going south, only North and East. Besides, they don’t tell you whether it’s a southern route or whatever, like 605N or 91E. It just has the name of the city of the next biggest town and if you don’t know what it is, then you’re SOL. I sure could have used a navigator today. GPS somewhat helped, but the highway roads are accurate only within 2-3 miles down here. So it took a lot of driving around to find the one bridge that led south. There were no signs within the city. I just happened to come across it. Downtown Tampico was beautiful. It had a beautiful garden, and a large town center in the middle. But it was surrounded by many little houses. The garden itself was so peaceful, but it was surrounded by the same chaos you would expect.
For whatever reason, the highways do not just bypass the towns and there are speed bumps before and after every little city. So even though I only traveled about 400 miles today after getting lost in Tampico, it took me 12 hours to get to where I am today. On the way here, I stopped by a local restaurant, right next to the highway, and paid 55 pesos for some decent mole with chicken leg and tortillas and rice along with a Cerveza Victoria (beer) I didn’t understand why I only got 2 tortilla wraps at first, but it turns out they come by and fill it up for you so that they’re warm when you eat them. The restaurant, perched right on the cliff, looked like it had a good view, and it did. Some of the best scenaries I’ve ever seen are in Mexico. They have numerous palm trees, and plants of all variety grow freely here. It’s a long, curvy and expensive drive (toll roads add up a lot!), but the scenary definitely help.
Well, so I decided to bypass Vera Cruz and head straight to Oaxaca, to see Monte Alban. I thought I’d be able to get close to Oaxaca, find a small town to find cheap rent in, and get to Oaxaca early morning tomorrow, then take off east again. I wasn’t too close when I noticed that I was driving into a fog and mountains were lighting up. It was about 8 PM. I figured there would be a turn into Oaxaca soon and I’ll pull into the next town and sleep there. But the next town never came. Soon, I was climbing my Mercedes Benz 1980 300 SD Turbo Diesel up the steep mountain slopes. Most trucks were going 30 miles an hour. I managed to hit 45 at times with my pedal to the metal. It’s imperative that you don’t slow down. You may never gain that speed again and in fact may start falling back. Trucks that have momentum can come up behind you real quickly while you’re trying to pass another truck. I hit 8626 feet elevation on the mountanous highway. Then it started to rain, and rain hard. My windshield wiper did whatever it could, but it sometimes made it worse. It stopped raining. Then it rained again, hard. It stopped after a few seconds. I stopped by a Pemex (gas station) to ask for directions. Luckily, this time, the attendant knew what he was talking about and said I’m only 8 km from the turn that will take me to Oaxaca.
That ride was one of the scariest things in my life. During my entire trip here in Mexico, I’ve kept checking my pulse to see if I’m chocking under immense pressure of the unknown. It never went fast. In fact, I think it’s been the same here as it was back home. But tonight, in those mountains, sometimes unable to climb faster than 20mph, battling fatigue from lack of good sleep and 10 hour drive when I started the climb, and fighting the darkness of the night and the frightening lightnings, I realized that I had strived too much for one day. It looked easy on paper: 530 miles to Oaxaca, I would find a town maybe 30 miles out and get set before sunset. Even with all the crazy driving and passing by trucks, the cities that the highways passed through, the toll booths, and the mountain made it pretty much impossible. At least the mountain highway was real nice. I have nothing but good things to say about them. They got center dividers for one so you don’t get too blinded, are fairly well maintained, and have reflectors everywhere. I was very impressed. I could have made it, sure, but I was fearing for my life by the time I arrived here to sleep in a pretty nice Inn for 195 Pesos at Tehuacan.