San Luis Potosi to Lake Chapala - end of Day 2 - Austin to Guadalajara

We left San Luis Potosi and we ran out of toll road, it ended. We were making such good time - we didn't expect this. We merged onto a two lane road. The traffic was moderate but there were plenty of trucks - which we were stuck behind. The good news - the countryside was beautiful. It was green and lush. At times it looked like Upstate New York with it's planted fields and farmsteads with rows of deciduous trees.





















Photo by Said Arabian - on Flikr, taken in taken in Huichapan, in Hidalgo - but reminiscent of what I drove through.





The trucks were no obstacle for the speedy locals drivers. They passed two trucks at a time. They passed going up hill. Holy shite! We stayed in our lane. It's not like we were crawling, we were still going 55mph. I watched the Mexican drivers, holding my breath, waiting for a head on crash but they always made it... just in the nick of time.

At one point the toll road reappeared - but only one side of it. In effect we were still on a two lane road. The other lanes were incomplete. It was starting to get dark. The unopened side of the highway was being used by locals. Some cars had headlights, some only had one headlight. There was a pick-up with a payload full of passengers driving down the center of the road. I watched this quiet ghostly road as the cars closed on each other blindly climbing the crest of a hill. Oh my God. How many accidents do they have I wondered - simultaneously recalling memories from my childhood of cars with one headlight and pick-ups full of people. We crested the hill and and took a sharp downward turn to our left never knowing what metal crunching meeting those cars might have had.

As we traveled further south I thought the land would get more populated - and it does according to the map but our view from the road was still of incredibly huge valleys and beautiful farm land. I can't emphasize how ginormous (like giant and enormous combined) the valleys were. These were humongously flat valleys with beautiful silhouetted California type mountains rising all around us.

At one point we drove through the outskirts of an Indian village. The traffic slowed and the pedestrian traffic increased. Roadside vendors and shops displayed wares in front of basic buildings that to North American eyes looked poor and squalid. Down the side streets were the same dirt roads we'd been seeing all day. The houses were basic shells. What they had for doors, windows, plumbing & electricity was hard to tell but I'm sure it was very basic if non-existing. The indigenous Indians of Mexico have the same poverty issues as North America's Indians.
















Photo by Walter Reed Flikr



We certainly met people who lived a first world lifestyle. The two guys who helped us at the Subway sandwich shop in San Luis Potosi were obviously of Spanish or European descent and lived a more privileged life than the country people we've seen on the road today.

Outside the town, back in the countryside, Dorothy spies a whole group of women washing and beating clothes against the rocks of a stream. The road is heavy with vehicles and pedestrians. Cars and trucks wiz by inches from walkers, bike riders, horsemen and donkeys. It scares the crap out of me. We saw two horses laying dead in the road a few hours back. I'm sure they got grazed & killed and in these close quarters I could see it happening in my mind's eye.

The sun begins it's downward slope ahead of us. Dusk is upon us. It's getting hard to see and the road we are on has no edge lines or center line. As darkness descends it's hard to orient ourselves on the road. Cars with one headlight come at us. Are we far enough over? Are we over too far? Dorothy's driving. To my right off the edge of the road is a ditch. There's no shoulder, no room for error.

Bleary eyed and exhausted after being on the road for 15 hours, we see a huge billowing storm ahead, producing lightening, flashing night to day. In the flashes of light we see dark veils of rain falling. We dread the rain. This would paralyze us. We can barely see now, rain would wash the last remnants of clarity away. This would be dangerous.

Incredibly we never see the rain. I don't know where the storm went. It had covered the entire sky in front of us and climbed miles high but we stayed dry. Thank God because soon enough we were looking down at the sprawling lights of Guadalajara. The Guadalajara metropolitan area is the second largest in Mexico with 4 million people. The traffic became intense! We anxiously watched for signage to Lake Chapala, our destination.

We were motoring along at 50 mph in bumper to bumper traffic, ...literally bumper to bumper and I saw the sign.
I yell to Dorothy "Stay to the left" but we we're boxed in by a wall of traffic.
"Get over...get over!" I say, anxious not to miss the ramp.
She jerks the wheel to signal her intention and we squeezed our way over. We take a big looping ramp - and then we're stuck again at a merge.
Five lanes of traffic were coming at us like water heading to Niagara Falls.
I could see the next sign to Chapala about 300 feet up the road.
We had to get across the five lanes of traffic in about the length of a football field or risk being swept into a city of 4 million people... who don't speak English.
It's dark and did I mention we've been in the car 16 hours? We're exhausted, harassed, ragged and ornery. We don't want to get washed away!


























Photo by Alexei-naughtydevil




We sit at the exit of the on-ramp trying get into traffic. The car in front of us is frozen - not moving. The cars behind us start to nose into the oncoming traffic. Dorothy is driving. I'm looking out the window trying to gage entry into the onslaught of oncoming headlights. Dorothy sees the cars behind us in the rearview mirror trying to inch out. She turns the wheel hard right, as far as the tires will go, and jerks out from behind the car in front of us. When we turn the whole line behind us mimics our move and angles into the traffic. The oncoming cars shudder enough for us to make a jerky leap into the torrent.
I lean away from the door expecting to get hit.
Dorothy guns it and we're in traffic but the exit we need to get too is four lanes to the right and 200 feet away.
I anxiously tell Dorothy "Slide over, slide over"!
"I'm trying" she yells back.
Incredibly she crosses the four lanes but keeps going over another two lanes where the highway divides into a local street.
"Get back I say!"
"Get back where?" she screams at me!
"Over" I say
"Over where" she says. "Which way? Point, point to where I should be!"
She's yelling at me now.
The pressure is intense. There is so much traffic she can't put her head up, she can't look around. There's no time to think - just do.
"Over there!" I point to the left.
She jerks the wheel to the left, we clamor over a curb height road divide - I can't believe we don't get hit - again. We get into the correct lane just in time - 4 seconds later we take a righthand ramp following the Lake Chapala sign. Whew. Unbelievable.

Dorothy is now completely frazzled. Traumatized. We're headed the right way but we're still in the city. The eight lane highway is lined with another two lanes of local roads on each side. It's dark. There are hordes of people walking about and waiting at bus stops. Everything is dark and silhouetted and as usual the buildings are worn and badly lit. We could be in a bad area - maybe not? In North America this would look like a bad area. Dorothy wants out of the traffic in a big way. She gets over to the far right to stay out of the fray - and the next thing we know we are exiting the highway.
We were over too far right.
We end up on an exit ramp.
Oh man!
We're locked onto the ramp.
We start descending.
The highway rises on our left like water filling a sinking ship.
Oh shit - where are we headed? We enter a tunnel. It's flooded by water. It's dank and peeling. We panic quietly. I don't think we said a thing to each other. All I could think of was a similar situation that left me in the South Bronx - but that's another story.
Thankfully we pop right up on the other side of the highway. We had entered a Reverso, a u-turn. After a couple of tense miles we reverso again and leave the city lights behind us heading into the black of night.

Away from the city it got so dark I couldn't see a thing outside our headlight illumination. Eventually the road began to narrow, curve and climb. We headed over the mountain that separates Lake Chapala from metropolitan Guadalajara. The road was a typical two lane country road with not a lot of room and a deep ditch on my side. Oh God please let us get to Dorothy's place! It's late, we're tired.

.... somethings going to happen, I just know it.

We keep a steely focus - eyes glued to the road. We find the Chapala bypass and take the back road to the town of Ajijic.
Almost there!
Past Ajijic we drive another 10-15 minutes looking for Dorothy's development. After a while we're out in the boonies again and just when we thought we had missed it - voila! - there it is.
We made it. Laredo to Lake Chapala in 1 day! Whoa.

It was an amazing drive full of stunning scenery and revelations - a true adventure. I'm glad we did it.

Next post, Dorothy's house in San Luis Cosala on the beautiful shores of Lake Chapala.


To read about my whole road trip from the beginning - Austin to Lake Chapala Mexico click here.