Mountainous Highway 175

It was about as tough for me as it was for Rusty to leave the joy and serenity of  El Rancho RV Park.  You meet people on the road, you exchange stories, then one fine morning you say goodbye. Or au revoir, hopefully. It’s a wrench. Bugger; but we did have a committee to cheer us on our way inside and outside the gates. Greg, Duwan and  Lauryn came by to see us off, a lovely gesture at an ungodly early hour. But once outside we met our real friends at breakfast: 

I chose our route to the Yucatán Peninsula so I picked the hardest route to get out of Oaxaca, a twisty thread called Highway 175.  “Be careful,” Paco the RV Park owner said as I discussed it with him. “Secure your home, enjoy the bends and the views are five times more spectacular than you expect.” He was correct on all counts. I’d been looking at these hills for three weeks from the campground and now was the time to drive them. I couldn’t wait. 

I knew we were going up to 10,000 feet (3048 Canadian feet) and I expected to see a variety of flora but I wasn’t expecting a reasonably smooth road with not too many topes. But of course this is Mexico so there had to be at least some speed bumps. “¡Pinche topes!” 

The rule is if Layne wants me to pull over she has to say “Stop!” so that’s what I did.  I pushed the idiot button which fires up the four-way flashers to warn other drivers the gabacho is about to do something idiotic:

In this case a half assed parking job with a chunk of the Promaster stuck in the travel lane. So the other Layne could do some vital shopping. Mexican motorists overcame my flunked parking job with their usual unnaturally  serene calm. In the US I’d have been shot in an act of justified homicide. I love Mexico. 

We ended up with some extremely peculiar leathery Mexican bread along with some surprisingly delicious strawberry preserve. In Mexico? Who’d have thunk? 

Up we went on a road that lacked its fair share of rough patches and potholes and also came equipped with very few topes overall. And one killer stretch of fresh asphalt - be still my beating heart! 

What a glorious morning. We had left old friends and new behind in El Rancho but this was pretty enough to take the edge off the pain. 

“Keep The Highway Clean” and it really wasn’t that messy, most of it. 

We slipped through a village crowded with a basketball tournament which I thought was an eccentric way to celebrate the birthday of the national hero Benito Juaréz. Then we got held up by some rather energetic women lugging a flame for some obscure reason  through the mountains. Hats off to them as we were around 7500 feet under the burning sun. Also a Benito Juaréz thing I assume. Eccentricity is everywhere. 

I said there were few topes, not none. 

We stopped for tea, as you do, at a more or less flat spot at a restaurant that has seen better days. The concept of panoramic vista points and turn outs has not yet reached Mexico, worst luck. 

It was in a scenic spot surrounded by lichen covered pine trees. 

And a rather relaxed neighbor pondering the meaning of life while chewing the cud. 

They must have had quite the bonfire party judging by the size of the twigs in the ash pile. 

Layne enjoying life in a van while presenting me with a Tervis tumbler of Yorkshire Gold. 

After we slipped over the top of the last summit the road continued as it had started unable to make up its mind which way to go:  

But the weather and the vegetation changed completely as we drove into the east facing watershed. What had been a bright crisp sunny day among the pine trees turned into a soggy, gloomy fogged-in tropical rainforest.  It reminded us of a long  ago vacation driving the mountains of Puerto Rico, all lush decay and abnormally huge ferns drooping into the road. 

We could not avoid at least a little unnecessary drama in this motoring backwater, so it was that we found a truck that had shed its load, just like that. Bummer. 

The tow truck driver waved us on and I felt the best thing to do was to extricate ourselves as fast as possible from the scene of his excruciating embarrassment. The driver appeared to be alone so I don’t know who was going to break the news to the owner of the pick up that his problem vehicle was now totaled. 

I don’t normally enjoy rain very much but the heater was working  splendidly and the scenery was just mind boggling. 

Beyond the trees we could only catch glimpses of plunging canyons and everywhere the mountains wreathed in fog were covered in shiny wet greenery just like this. The few visible locals looked like a hardy bunch. 

The temperature hovered around fifty degrees (10 Canadian) but felt colder.  

As we descended I stuck GANNET2 in manual first gear and we maintained our earth scorching average of a rather sedate 20 mph. 

Derrumbes, slides and random sharp pointy rocks in the road were all things to observe and ponder. 

We dodged all attempts to slow our progress including one lane blocked by a fallen tree and finally we arrived in Textepec back down at a reasonable four hundred feet above sea level. The town was being held hostage by a vast covered street market that occupied the Main Street for blocks and required some rather deft use of the idiot button, hand flapping out of the window and some mild steering wheel chewing to extricate ourselves. 

Lunch. What bliss, Rusty walked and snoozing in his bed aboard, a table spread with nourishment and absolutely no internet to interfere with the feast. 

Meat, salad, spicy condiments, beans, hot corn tortillas, and a glass of horchata, the vanilla flavored life giving rice milk drink, suitable to soothe a burning esophagus. I felt like Mole going on a picnic with Ratty in the Wind in the Willows. 

Outside the foul weather persisted but I was immune. We had descended the mountains and our brakes hadn’t burned up. We had punctured no tires on sharp randomly scattered rocks and I was full of lunch and coffee and all was right with the world. My dog still loved me. My wife fell into a carb coma and Highway 175 continued to unspool. 

That was when we met sugar cane traveling at four miles a fortnight towed on creaking trucks and in long caravans  of trailers pulled by asthmatic tractors. Progress was in fits and starts as the road opened up and passing was made possible. 

Check out the sugar cane tractor passing over Highway 145D, the toll road to Villahermosa, capital of Tabasco State. I would pass it on foot hopping on one leg at the rate all that sugar cane moves. 

I’m damned if I believe it myself but while we lunched the dropped pick up truck passed us riding high again on the tow truck and we caught a glimpse of it just before we got on the freeway. That must have been quite the reloading job. You can see it floating rather battered  just above the traffic in San Juan Bautista Tuxtepec below: 

The sun was so low in the sky the suggestion came from the passenger seat, quite forcefully I might add that it was time to stop.

This vast parking lot behind a Pemex near Oluta, Veracruz State, made itself known. 

Naturally the cell signal was feeble so, nothing daunted I pulled out my personal satellite receiver and in five minutes I was well on my way to solving an NYT crossword puzzle. The blessings of science. 

Allow me to point out the only reason this excessively long post is on this page with all these photos is thanks to Starlink with its blindingly fast upload speeds. 

Modern life continues to baffle me with bull shit at an ever faster pace. In less than a week we may be sweating profusely and eating terrible food in Belize. With Starlink in tow of course.

The Waterfalls

Did you ever swim under a waterfall? I’m 64 and I did just that for the first time this weekend. Youngsters like to over use the word “awesome” but in this case I’d like to join them. I had never understood the power of falling water but this modest 15 foot waterfall pushed me away easily as I approached swimming through the crystalline waters. It pounded the deep pool of water below it, the pool I was swimming in and I felt the power of the water such that I felt new respect for idiots leaping over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

It was a primal moment.  I looked around and it was us alone swimming in a deep clear pool of cold spring water. How extraordinary was that? The river tumbled over a whole lot of rocks on its way to the sea. 

It didn’t last. A whole bunch of people showed up to see what we had found, the garden of Eden on a Mexican hillside just out of sight of the Caribbean Sea, near Montepio (“Pius Mountain”) in Veracruz State. 

After we had screwed up finding a waterfall last week we stopped for two nights at the Jungle Campground on the shore of Lake Catemaco. I took the time to figure we could make a day trip around the peninsula and see what we could see driving from Catemaco north to la Nueva Esperanza. The blue dot that marks our position on the map is a mere thirty miles from the lake. More than an hour’s drive for us cautious van lifers. We found a smooth well paved road with millions of topes. We counted seven speed bumps in one small village. Seven, and they gave me a gringo moment.

We overshot the Cascadas Gemelas (Twin Waterfalls) site the first time as there is only one sign for traffic coming from the other direction, and we drove through Colonia Revolution (Revolution Village!) without noticing the turn off. We got it right on the return and found ourselves bumping down a rocky dirt road. Layne wanted to see waterfalls so by God we were going to see waterfalls!

The sign said one kilometer to the falls and we just kept going assuming the best. I was not keen on the possibility of having to reverse long distances between trees and barbed wire fences but there we were!

Yes, there were cows in the road, but we were visiting a privately owned site in the middle of farming country so we had to nudge them out of the way slowly, coming and going from the waterfalls. A large Promaster van is good for that. Finally we arrived and a woman came out to meet us to take our  visitors' fee of $1:50 each. We parked and went for a swim.

We looked around and found the twin waterfalls, the main one above was not swimmable, at least not by us. Further on we found the swimming pool over a wooden bridge, of which Layne was not a huge fan.

We decided we would stay the night if the gatekeeper was okay with the plan. There were of course no signs or advertising or encouragement for such a rash course of action. We returned to the parked Gannet 2, in splendid isolation in a vast field and got dressed to swim under the dark cloudy skies which looked pregnant with rain.

The young Mexican couple that were swimming on our arrival left before we arrived to join them so we had the pool to ourselves, and yes it was cold to get in but we were soon used to the temperature and didn't notice it. Ron who we met in San Carlos taught us a lesson about cold water swimming we have never forgotten, swimming in cold water is a matter of adaptation.

Rusty is not and never has been interested in water, other than drinking it.

There was plenty of water to go round.

The swimming hole was under the lesser of the two cataracts and was the prettiest spot, possibly in the river system that ran alongside the field where we were parked,

Naturally we weren't alone for long and even a tour bus arrived bringing twenty five people on a three day tour of southern Mexico from the capital city.So much for our concerns about the narrow access road, as the coach did just fine.. We approached the lady at the gate and she charged us eight bucks to stay overnight so we moved Gannet2 down the field away from the waterfall, the day use parking area and the toilets and had us a field to ourselves. It was quite astonishing. The views were spectacular even under heavy clouds.

Rusty had no desire to approach the cattle or the horses as they grazed.

I was fascinated by the stands of bamboo all round the perimeter of our field.

There were four local dogs and three of them made friends with Rusty, the fourth kept to himself. Two of them came by the van and I gave them our street dog food in plastic bags until nether could eat anymore. I scooped up the leftovers for the next dogs we would meet along the way. Even though most dogs that you meet on the street belong to families they don't always get fed terribly well. They aren't strays but they aren't treasured family members either and they will grab what they can to eat. I like to fill them up when I visit because I don’t  like eating well when I’m around hungry animals. 

Rural life:

The weather stayed gray for the twenty four hours we parked at Las Gemelas and the second morning we had bene thinking about staying another day for another swim but it was drizzly and not very appealing so on a whim we packed up and drove out. 

And that's what I like about living in a van. Choices.

Leaf cutter ant freeways around the field. Ants use these paths they make to transport pieces of leaf:

Gumbo limbo trees pruned to shapes:

Plastic water tanks and laundry: ubiquitous signs of life in rural Mexico:

Food vendor at work. Som people in North America recoil at the idea of street food muttering about sanitation and department of health rules and other such nonsense. The street is where you find delicious local food and I've never had any trouble digesting it. Or paying for it either.