On the road - a long and tiring day

5:30 am… we hear the “chant du coq”, (the crowing of the cock ); loud enough to cover the roar of the trucks passing by. We are on the road by 6, pitching dark, against all advice – do not drive in Mexico at night. We cover good mileage in the middle of nowhere as we travel south towards San Louis Potosi, a very large city, and capital of the state of the same name. Named in honor of Louis the IXth of France!

One million people and we better take the periférico, as we want to avoid small city street with our 55 foot rig. We succeed as Louise fights the map which is not clear and quite often omits the road number, when it does not state it wrong as we learned later in the day…

Our trip is going well. Barely 10:30 and we are less than 350 kilometers from the campsite.

Simple enough, Mex70, Mex80…Guadalajara 5 or 6 million people—big, but we will take the north periférico and then it will be smooth sailing to Jocopetec. We should be there by 5 at the latest.

I will pass the details. The Mex 70 is a two lane highway through mountainous region; the Mex 80 is cuota (toll), rather nice but so bumpy, I need to slow down to 70 kmh. Then, Louise suggests, based on our past experience with Guadalajara, to take the NORTH beltway, instead of the south one, which was a nightmare earlier in November. We did… and blew a couple of hours on a beltway with red lights (we had a few green ones). The traffic was intense and we were never too sure of where we were…

But we see the light at the end of the tunnel and reach the autopista towards Colima, which is a few hundred kilometers south but on the road that will eventually connect to the Jocotepec road. The autopista starts as a multilane road, meaning that people drive all other as these lanes are not marked by white lines. We fight and suddenly, we see a junction for something like Jiquilpan on Mex 15… remember we are going towards Jocotepec on Mex 15. Louise stares at the map which says Mex 35, not seeing that it turns as Mex 15 later in the map; a map error as there is no such Mex 35 here… I drove, pass a toll booth, get some gas, as the attendant for Lake Chapala and he shows me that we are on the right road…

We pass a beautiful marsh, as the sun starts to set, Laguna San Marcos. Now we now we are NOT on the right road. Retorno… as two caballeros look at us wondering… we are on a four lane divided highway, facing the entrance of a ranch, in the middle of nowhere. Fantastic  feelings.

At the toll booth, we asked for a refund and the attendant says, in English, sorry no refund and you have to pay again, but she gives us a bargain… truck only, no trailer. She also shows the junction, ½ a mile away.  We take it and within a mile we see a very large banner: JOCOTEPEC!

We make it to the campground by 6:30… and driving on Mex 15 at night is NOT recommended. After so many hours of driving, it took me tons of adrenalin (cheap here) to get through the last 30 kilometers.

As we arrived, our friends welcomed us, helped with torch lights and we finally ate and set for the night!