The most well known train ride in Mexico is the Copper Canyon, a giant cleft in the mountains in the northern part of the country. There is a hair raising hairpin drive down on a single track dirt road but winters at high altitude are not for us. It’ll be there when we have an opening for a drive in Spring in moderate weather.
From last year we remembered Highway 135 a mountain freeway from Puebla to Oaxaca, a long empty stretch of sinuous asphalt, much of it in good condition. It was as we remembered. 
Dry desert slopes, saguaro cactus, with hardly a sign of human interference. Miles and miles of arid brown hillsides gashed by granite cliffs.
It was a great drive and we took it slow and steady, mostly half on the shoulder to allow people with appointments to fly past us.
The views are magnificent but the pull outs are few. We found a dirt area to pause to get rid of some used tea and drink some more. In the US this would be a national park with rest stops, picnic areas, scenic overlooks and all that good stuff. In Mexico no one seems to notice except for the lone gringo couple mooching along dragging their lower jaw on the floor.
Directo Highways in the mountains are two lane affairs and that’s how you find 135D but this is Mexico so two lanes are not necessarily a restriction. Even when the government is maintaining the highway for your safety.
Slow trucks can be extremely slow on the uphills grinding as slowly as 15 mph pulling two fifty three foot trailers…paying attention is mandatory! Losing patience isn’t. Look closely below! The slow truck with the flatbed trailers is being passed by a box truck and a van but the third truck just said screw it and took over the rest of the road. On a blind curve uphill into a hump with no sight line. I hung back and took a bunch of shots with my Panasonic GX85 and held my breath. Nothing happened. I passed later on the downhill with a long view ahead feeling if not virtuous at least a little cowardly!
Or this below. This obviously is the normal magic third lane in action just hoping the uphill traffic around the curve isn’t doing the same thing! My position is behind the slower truck with two wheels on the shoulder. Should anything go wrong I’d have had plenty of time to stop and pull out the first aid supplies.
Aside from the vagaries of passing which never affected us the drive was magnificent winding around mountainsides with scenic vista after panoramic canyons opening up just beyond the guard rails.
A cell signal might have been nice had we broken down but the motorcyclist we saw was one of four who had stopped and was waiting for his companions to catch up. We saw one in the classic pose making his liquid offering to the mountain gods. This drive takes a few hours and only has a couple of Pemexes. In between gas stations there are no facilities anywhere. It is desolate and lovely.
I got up to 60 mph on the long straightaways but mostly we were tooling along at 50 or less on the uphills admiring the scenery. The air conditioning was blowing and we had a Longmire novel on the Libby app playing through the speakers. I enjoy Mexican banda music from time to time, lamentations to lost love supported by trumpets in a polka style, full of drama but after a bit…well you know. Longmire.
A bit more magic third lane where I stood aside to let the impatient pull ahead.
And here below, you see an example of high loading on a pick up valiantly planning to take on the hills toward Puebla. If you look closely you’ll see they have roof racks built specifically to take tall loads. If you want the freedom to do it your way come to Mexico. If it works you’re good and if you fail there’s no one to sue. A libertarian’s paradise you’d think! But usually the love of freedom falls short of taking a chance in Mexico! “There should be a law against that,” say the freedom lovers appalled, and there probably is. I like Mexico the way it is.
Directo highways are privately operated and the tolls add up. We just drive and pay though I believe there is a website that lists the toll amounts everywhere in Mexico. One very long day Layne added up $72 US in tolls. The peso is getting stronger as I write. Last year it was 21 to the dollar but this year it’s gone down to 18.
I was hungry and I prevailed on Layne who was anxious to get to the campground, to stop and have some oatmeal. We found a crappy stretch of dirt with no ditches thus easily accessed from the freeway and we pulled over.
Rusty and I hopped the fence and went for a walk. It was hot desert air in the upper 80s so we were definitely in southern Mexico. A motorcycle bumped past on some agricultural mission. Layne sounded the horn summoning us to lunch.
Father and son home from school or off to the fields?
As we walked back I spotted another high top pick up truck:
A not scenic lunch stop in the hot dry desert air.
“Has a family member disappeared?” A startling public service message near the entrance to the city of Oaxaca.
And finally our destination, at one of the best campgrounds in Mexico. Here we shall rest and regroup for our final weeks in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula such that after Laynes’s teeth are finished and her implants installed in her jaw we shall advance quickly on Central America starting with Belize in mid April.
I hope.
