Point South Mexico - Real Estate and Lifestyle Magazine

You took highway 54!  At night!  In the rain!  Are you crazy?  You guys just did the equivalent of 2 tours in Nam!  As the comments came in about our choice of routes, that one’s my personal favorite. Then there was the story about the gringo guy, that everybody knew, who had recently driven down to Central America and on the way back up his VW broke down leaving him and his dog and his belongings vulnerable to highway thieves.  His body was found, but his belongings were not. Apparently we had chosen a major drug and gun running route through the Mexican outback for our route to paradise.

We were at a cuota road turn off, studying the Mexican map that had been published by the auto insurance company. We agreed on a highway that looked like the most direct route to Guadalajara and after 4 days of sitting in a space of approximately 2.5 by 6 feet, wedged against the neck of a guitar, the food bag, and four bunged backpacks, the concept of direct was huge!

After a while though, we reluctantly admitted that the road seemed to get worse instead of better. It even went away completely off and on for several kilometers. Then it poured. Every kilometer held the life-threatening choice between a head-on with a barreling, one-eyed Mexican truck or a pothole the size of a Fridgidaire. Ok, we can do this; we’ll just keep going. We won’t be spending that much more time on the road in the dark. Piece of cake.

Darkness fell about 8 pm and since we figured we had only a couple more hours to go, we broke all cardinal rules about driving in Mexico after dark. Six glassy and bloodshot eyeballs, if you count the two nervous hairy ones in the back seat, were riveted to the windshield scanning for wandering horses, cows, burros, dogs, and humans.  We pressed on. At ten, we pulled into a Pemex station and interrupted a conversation between two Propane deliverymen to get the worst news of our five-day trip.  “Oh no, you are only here, you have all this way to go yet,” they said as they pointed and studied our map. Then they said “We never drive this road at night.”  “It’s very dangerous.”  “Muy peligroso”.  We decided to turn around and go back to Aguascalientes when they said “You are two kilometers past the point of no return, don’t go back.”  Grácias, we muttered, depressed and scared knowing now that we had many more hours of driving to go.  How could this happen?  We weren’t rookies, we’d both logged thousands of miles on Mexican highways.  Some trips were even more risky than this.

Midnight was excruciating. If the car broke down we were dead. A disabled California SUV, out in the middle of nowhere, in the rainy darkness, stuffed with computer equipment, guitar, money, Visa cards, ATM cards, and lots of other goodies would be more temptation than some could walk away from. At about 2 am we crested a hill and saw the giant blanket of lights of Guadalajara. Wow, we did it, we’re here now! At 4 am we were confounded by glorietas that spun us off into the downtown area and dropped us on main streets throughout the city. There was no traffic, only an occasional late partier and an occasional cop, each trying to ignore the other.

We saw them at the same time, gasping in unison. The first thing I noticed, as we rounded the bend, was the bright whiteness reflected in the headlights. Then the black. The pattern was definitely cow!  We were closing in on them, and they weren’t moving. We slid to a stop alongside the monster that straddled the white line. We cursed it and quizzically it stared into the driver’s compartment back at us. Then as its hooves slipped and slid, it struggled to its feet, lumbered and skidded about the pavement until finally joining the others now huddled in the mud on the side of the road. They stared in disdain, we sighed and rolled on. Apparently sleeping on the warm pavement in the rain is cozy for cows.

Even the cows had survived our two tours of Nam.