The Wild Ride To Parral

I am sorry to say we were a side show when Squirt got dropped off. He and Sassy ran into the garden and Andrea hustled us out while they weren’t looking (at us).

It was I confess slightly weird as I didn’t even get to say goodbye. I was about to and Andrea said quick quick through the door and then we were on the street. Rusty, who had stayed outside had no clue what was going on. 

It wasn’t until our first stop and he got out by himself that he really believed we were alone at last. His tail went up and he got a spring in his step. It was really quite obvious.

We got up at 5:30, and it was cool and damp so naturally we enjoyed a hot shower. Then we were on the road with dogs walked and Starlink packed away.  

One slight problem from our attempt to get ready for the road by getting an oil change. Somehow the guy put too much oil in GANNET2’s engine. I double checked after we started on the road when I could park on the flat and wait for the oil to settle by walking Rusty. Sure enough. I found an Autozone and bought an oil transfer pump and sucked out enough hot oil to get the level right. Those are the moments I love having a sink and soap right there, as the pump was cheap and not completely leak-free. 

I felt better. Then we handed Squirt over and there we were driving north toward San Luis Potosí. The fact is our extended sojourn looking after Squirt meant that most of our drive north was going to be just that,  driving! Tourism will come at a later date.

Layne says there are a couple of amazing museums in San Luis Potosí and a couple of hotels that are dog friendly. Noted, now on to the drug dangerous state every sensible gringo avoids. 

This is high desert driving. “Bring what you like, we love you here.” Sounds like Key West’s “come as you are.”

If you’ve driven the southwest you’ve seen this countryside, minus the occasional unattended farm animal grazing the edges of the freeway. 

Zacatecas has been the scene of quite a lot of fighting between cartels, principally Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Sinaloa mob led by El Chapo until his arrest. There have been all sorts of nasty murders and disappearances as the crime families struggle to dominate the region. You can Google Zacatecas Cartels and spend many happy hours reading the details.  

A YouTube video seeking likes would headline this page as “Driving the Most Dangerous Road In Mexico” or something but it really isn’t. It’s the road between San Luis Potosí, Durango and our destination which is the city of Parral in Chihuahua state.

The reason I call this a wild ride is because it was nothing like what I had expected. Almost all of it was wilderness. Most of the asphalt was very good with, as we shall see, some notable exceptions. 

Only one of us has previously traveled this area, my younger self had made an incursion 40 years ago into the Sierra Madre of which I remember only biting cold and tedium. 

For now we stopped at a truck stop outside the city of Fresnillo (“frez-knee-oh”), a DANGEROUS city where people were being beheaded and hung from bridges a year or two ago. I have nothing to report except the gas station dog is so well fed he only ate a little of the dog food we left out overnight for him. 

Spot the Promaster:

In the morning we pressed on toward Durango, about three hours away. It was in the mid 50s when we got up and stayed overcast and cool for most of the morning. 

Woah! Brakes screeching! I know this place or somewhere very like it. My old friend The Tropic of Cancer. 

2023 above, 1981 below with a Vespa P200 and a sleeping bag. Much less comfortable than a Promaster. I slept by the side of the road and was never bothered by anyone. 

Top marks if you know what the tropic line marks and I will  say it runs between Havana and Key West which fact actually makes the Florida Keys sub-tropical, technically. Think of the highest northern point where the sun is directly overhead before it starts it’s Fall descent. 

The trash delighted Rusty but we are used to it by now and pretty much ignore it. 

For the technically minded I went to Wikipedia for the proper explanation: 

The Tropic of Cancer, which is also referred to as the Northern Tropic, is the most northerly circle of latitude on Earth at which the Sun can be directly overhead. This occurs on the June solstice, when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun to its maximum extent.^[1]It also reaches 90 degrees below the horizon at solar midnight on the December Solstice. Using a continuously updated formula, the circle is currently 23°26′10.5″ (or 23.43625°) north of the Equator.

Agricultural land giving way to desert scrub. Much of this route resembles the desert southwest in the States. 

Stop! Layne found us breakfast, a fancy joint with indoor seating (No Pets) and menus. I walked Rusty first and I have to say he did really well when three local dogs came out of their barking. I yelled at them while he stood his ground and before I could reach down to pick up a stone, a gesture known to all Latin street dogs, they were gone. Instead of running for the safety of GANNET2 Rusty and I continued our walk uninterrupted. He has increased his self confidence exponentially in Mexico. 

“I want a barrel of coffee” I jokingly told the waitress. By God she took me seriously and brought me a vast cup with a smirk. I drained it and she got a huge tip, deserved for a good listener. 

Layne bacon (“tocino”) but I who have a gall bladder ordered spicy green chilaquiles with beef chunks. A breakfast of campions though I did taste Layne’s delicious fruit smoothie too. Back on the road and we hit the usual checkpoints. 

Many Americans think the checkpoints are shakedown points but we’ve never met a crooked cop in nearly a hundred such police stops. They wave gently, you stop and they ask where are you from and where are you going and wave you on. Done and dusted. Often they don’t even stop us. It’s really nothing but a reminder that the cartels aren’t in charge. Maybe I worked for the cops for too long but I like seeing them on the road. 

Driving through Durango a big industrial city. Tourism is in our future, right now it’s late morning and we are making miles toward Parral, Chihuahua. 

Mexico 45, not a toll road with a five hour drive to Parral. Suddenly we were in a hurry as there is a museum that closes at five. Google said we’d get there at 3:45. Hmmm

“Stay to the far right and allow passing.” I wish this sign would sprout on US roads and I dread the road rage and anti-passing mentality that permeates driving in the States. 

“The People’s Revolutionary” He’s being celebrated in this the 100th anniversary of his murder in Parral, where they happen to have a museum that closes at five on a Saturday afternoon…

We had to make tracks and some of the road was good, especially in the plains…

…even in the towns.  



Bloody topes (speed bumps )…

Out here in the open spaces I was pulling 65 or even 70 and making good time. 

Then we bettered a stretch of mountain road twisting up to 7,000 feet or more, full of hairpins, precipitous drops into the void and lots of holes and bumps and badly made asphalt patches. Our speed dropped to 35 or less. Grr!

I hope it’s clear the scenery was breathtaking. Not a speck of civilization for mile upon mile and no traffic traveling on our direction. It was as wild as you can imagine and with temperatures in the 90s I was glad we had powerful air conditioning along with the power steering. What a wild ride to end a ten hour day! 

We dropped into the valley and wound through an oasis of green, stark contrast to the rocks and dry grass and mesquite thorns of the high passes.

We’ve seen a little rain recently but up here it’s still dry season. In winter it will be cold which is why we generally stick to the coast in January. Being here in June is actually a treat. 

We were never sure if we were going to make the museum in time. We had no cellphone signal so we were following the blue line on Google maps when we last had contact very briefly with the internet in Durango. Our Verizon phones had a hard time finding any signal at all almost all day long and only briefly in the towns did we get contact with the world outside.

The thing is that Durango State is in Mountain Time  while Chihuahua State which starts just thirty miles south of Parral is an hour earlier  in Central Time. Had we known that we might have slowed down but even though the race seemed hopeless, especially on the tight rough sections in the mountain ranges we kept pressing on hoping to reach Parral in time. 

We had no idea the road was so remote but when we saw lines early on at a village gas station we lined up too to make sure. Good thing we did as civilization was a long way away. 

It was pretty wild and we didn’t even need any cartels to liven things up. 

In time for what? 

Me and my buddy Francisco better known as Pancho, the last guy to successfully invade the United States with an army.