Up and at 'em as mum used to say, bright and early for us. We had fed ourselves and the dogs, walked the dogs and parked the rig on the street just outside the Trailer Park--as we had suspected, there were no parked cars this Sunday morning and no traffic. The Jeep was quickly connected and we were rolling by 8:30! The Guia Roji says 6 hours by car. We wouldn't be taking the hills and corners at quite that speed and were planning on 8 to 10 hours to Huatulco.
I've posted a few photos here which may or may not correspond exactly to the nearby text. Just enjoy the photos.
We were soon out of town on our way towards Mitla, though there was a confusing road sign that had us a bit concerned. There is an new piece of road that we thought we should have taken but it seemed to join back into the road we were on near Mitla so it didn't matter much. The terrain was fairly flat at first, a few small fields here and there.
Half an hour after leaving the Trailer Park, near Mitla we came across an easy access Pemex so we took 5 minutes to fuel and half an hour after that, 39 kilometers from the park, we were southbound on the highway to Tehuantapec. The further we got from Oaxaca the narrower the shoulders became until there was barely room for the white line at the edge!
Now we were into the mountains and guessed we had about 4 hours of this ahead of us. The weather was cooperating, a bit of cloud here and there, just a comfortable temperature for driving and enjoying the scenery. We knew that there would likely be no good place to stop for lunch but had apples and oranges to sustain us until then.
In the photo to the left at the 66 KM marker, you can see a narrow open trench. This carried on for many many kilometers. We eventually saw plastic pipe or conduit laid in the trench. Not sure if they were for water, electric lines or both.
Here is the obligatory Military Check Point, where we were waved on. If the soldier in the distance, in the center of the picture, looks a bit odd it's because he is just a painted cutout silhouette! The real ones were around the corner.
Somewhere along the winding roads we came upon a car facing the other direction, as far off the road as possible (which wasn't very far at all) and the engine hood up. There was no traffic behind us so we stopped to see if he needed anything. We thought perhaps he had overheated and might need water of which we had quite a lot. He said the car just stopped, and he needed a mechanic. Art said we would find one and tell him where he was.
Some 20 kilometers later we came to a small village with a small Pemex. Art squeezed in between a truck and a painted rock wall (exchanging bits of paint for specimens of rock!) and Gillian went in to see if there was a mechanic available. They weren't much help and didn't seem too concerned so we carried on, looking for a "Mechanico" sign. Just before we left the village we saw a sign "Mechanico con Grua" (tow truck) with a phone number and an arrow pointing up a very narrow lane. Art stopped in the road and called the number, spoke with the mechanic who said "OK, yo cheko!" and so we continued our trip.
We had to laugh at the "cheko". Check has become a Mexican verb, "chekar" in much the same way that the English to chat has become "chatear". Many English words, phrases and expressions are finding their way into every day spoken Spanish. The other day in a small town Art overheard two middle aged Mexican ladies chattering away in rapid colloquial Spanish and as they parted one was heard to say to her friend ". . . OK, see you later, bye bye"!
These two photos were taken one minute apart. To give you an idea of the terrain, The GPS is on the 200 meter scale as can be seen in the lower corner. The turn indicated is 12 km is into the town of Tehuantepec. We will turn a few kilometers before that on to the toll road around it, heading for the west coast. We'll be happy to get out of the mountains!We turned onto the 185 D, the toll highway to the coast. It would end at the 200 in about 20 kilometers. Very soon we came upon a wide flat space at the side of the road and stopped an hour for lunch and a rest.
A couple of minutes after getting back on the road we arrived at the casseta and paid our tolls, 55 pesos for the motorhome and 30 for the Jeep. About $7.00 Canadian (or USD for that matter!)
At 2:40 we joined the Mx 200 which was in surprisingly good shape, again, except for a few rough spots. We were happy to finally see the Pacific Ocean again and by 5:00 PM we had arrived at the campground at Huatulco.
This "RV Park" is essentially one section of a parking lot for access to the Tangolunda beach. There are really no services, though if you can park near the bathrooms I believe there is one 15 amp outlet. There is also a water hose and a place to dump the waste tanks. Cost is 50 pesos per person.
The park is maintained by, and fees collected by, Fonatur, the Federal authority that built the resorts areas such as Ixtapa, Cancun, Cabo San Lucas, Huatulco etc. etc. The crew were just beginning to cut the grass, the season not starting officially until December 1st but they had cut the long straight and level part along one side allowing us to park without needing to disconnect the Jeep. However Art wasn't paying too much attention to orientation or the overhead trees, just concentrating on finding a nice flat spot.
Once the jacks were down and the slides out he realised that he had parked under the heaviest foliage and the StarChoice satellite was directly behind us, masked by the trees. Oh well, no big deal! We were glad the day was over, getting closer to our winter home. Three more day's travel will see us there, only one being a long one.
Somewhere today we hit one of the "invisible" topes fairly hard. Harder than we thought by the condition of the bedroom closet. Fortunately Art had added a center support to the closet rod which kept the whole thing from falling when the right hand bracket pulled the screws out. Mind you they are only into 1/8th inch press board with no backing block!
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