We’ve been back in Mexico for several days now. Longer travel times than we expected on this new, unfamiliar route have prevented us from posting earlier. Mexico’s department of transportation, SCT, has a very informative website that provides trip planning between many Mexican destinations. Although their itinerary, along with our indispensable Guia Roji Mexico Atlas, have been very helpful, we have found SCT’s travel time estimates to be more than a little optimistic.
For one particular drive (Zacatecas to Patzcuaro), SCT estimated a time of 5 hours and 16 minutes. It actually took us 9 hours. So much for our joy ride. Of course, about 30 minutes of that was us going the wrong way. And we never did find 2 of the toll roads that SCT said we should take; although they would have only taken us very short distances, they would have been faster than their free alternatives. Oh yeah, and then, there was that hour-long wait to cross a bridge that some maniacal speeding jerk drove off of. You may think we should be more sensitive, but we have little sympathy for those who choose to drive blindingly fast into dangerous curves or while passing in the opposing lane of traffic. They put all of our lives in jeopardy. We could write a whole blog entry on driving in Mexico … and probably will … one day.
Our journey into Mexico began with immigration just over the border. This time around was a little more hectic than last as we were less prepared, but playing the dumb tourist helped us out in the long run. We even got lucky and won the border lottery; we got a green light and didn’t have to stop for a customs inspection. In case you’ve never been to Mexico, you might find it amusing that passing through customs entails a sort of stoplight. Green light … go. Red light … pull over, amigo. It’s the same in the airports, but in the airport you actually get to press the button that randomly generates a color yourself. We made it through without any of the complications we had been worried about. We love you, Puente Colombia border crossing. (We’ve heard horror stories of the nearby border point at Nuevo Laredo.)
Although we aren’t big fans of Monterrey and its crazy traffic, we ended up there after 10 hours of driving, and needed to find a place to stay. We naively thought we’d get a room at the Best Western we stayed at previously with its comfy beds and wifi in the rooms. Finding our way back to the hotel was a nightmare because someone in Monterrey city planning must have read our blog and decided to improve the traffic situation by adding overhead bypass lanes. During construction, traffic was diverted through winding local streets. Nothing like sending 4 lanes of rush hour traffic through crowded one-lane residential streets. With no detour signs to direct us around the construction, we just followed the chain of bumper to bumper traffic until we were back on the main route. We eventually made it to the hotel, only to find that they had no rooms left. Oops. Knowing that Monterrey was not a cat-friendly city, we headed north to a highway auto hotel aka motor inn. (”What’s your price tonight?” Any Night Ranger fans out there?)
Although these types of hotels were good to us in the past, with their “ask no questions” attitude, the free “cable entertainment”, and their convenient “hourly rates” (9 hour minimum, for the record), we made a major mistake in judgment; we paid our $210 pesos before inspecting the room first. (Puedo ver el cuarto? We have that line down pat.) The resident inhabitants of the room were quick to find cover once we disturbed them by turning on the light. We ended up sleeping with the lights on during the night, to keep the more timid ones from saying hello. Although we’re not normally morning people, we were anxious to get an early start at 6am the following day.
After a very scenic 6 hour drive through the mountains, we arrived in our next destination, Zacatecas city in Zacatecas state. (Mexicans had a habit of naming their major cities after their states, or vice versa.) Like many other small mountain cities we’ve been in, Zacatecas is located in a valley between the mountains. Although this location was probably great for keeping out intruders in prior centuries, the city has grown and car traffic along with it. Noxious fumes from ancient city buses and those old non-environmentally friendly VW bugs become trapped in the valley. No emissions testing going on here. Aside from the pollution, Zacatecas is a wonderful city, and we chose to spend an extra night here so that we’d have a full day to explore.
Luckily, we were able to secure a “luxury villa” in the Hotel Don Miguel, which we referred to as “that huge yellow monstrosity”. (Our hotel was the biggest structure in town, and is still growing.) Although lacking a marble bathroom and his and hers spa robes, our room certainly was a luxury to us after the previous night’s stay in Monterrery. Despite the hard bed, we enjoyed sleeping in late and then headed out to explore the city. We found Zacatecas to be a cosmopolitan town with sophisticated eateries and bars. We had a delicious lunch at the French La Creperie. Next, we donned hard hats and boarded a rail car for a tour of one of Zacatecas’ mines. Zacatecas is a silver city, although, gold, quartz, calcite (and probably other elements we don’t know the Spanish words for) have also been mined. The mine we toured was no longer in operation as it is in the city center and could cause serious damage to its’ surroundings in the event of an explosion.
After understanding only about 30% of our tour in Español (silver … miners … children … working … dangerous, etc.), we headed for higher ground. Zacatecas’ dominant hill, La Bufa, affords a great view of the city, so we headed up via the Swiss built cable car, Teleférico. Our cable car operator spoke perfect English after having lived in the suburbs of Chicago and Racine, Wisconsin for 16 years. He told us that Zacatecas’ winters are even colder than Chicago’s. At an elevation of 2445 meters, Zacatecas is quite chilly even in the summer. We were thankful to have heating in our hotel room.
We decided to walk down the hill instead of returning by the Teleférico as we love randomly roaming through Mexican towns. Unfortunately, the menacingly dark cloud cover finally materialized into a good rain about halfway down the hill. We ducked into a tiny convenience shop and enjoyed some snacks as we watched the rain in the doorway. A random man walked by and wished us a ‘buenas tardes’ (good afternoon). When the rain slowed down, we ran out and made a couple of wrong turns (must have been fate as it gave us the opportunity to help a distraught mother move her wheelchair-bound daughter around an obstacle), and eventually found ourselves in tourist central. There we flagged down a cab to take us directly to the door of our villa (at the top of yet another hill). We rushed in, turned up the heat and removed those wet clothes.
We headed to Patzcuaro the next morning, but we’ll leave you here for now. Stay tuned.
When we finally arrived, we found Patzcuaro to be a small, quiet town that pretty much shut down by 9pm. Aside from the requisite church on the zócalo (main plaza), all the architecture looked pretty much the same. In fact, everything in the historic center was painted white and burnt orange to look the same. Nice, but a bit boring. To be fair, we didn’t spend much time in town so we may very well have missed some of its’ nicer features.
