Bypassing Mexico City

We will be leaving Patzcuaro tomorrow morning. We will stop outside of Merida, about an hour East of Patzcuaro. We will leave the motorhome in a WalMart parking lot and take a cab into the Centro to have a look around. We have enjoyed Patzcuaro with it’s thin air and cool nights, a by-product of it’s 7,100 foot altitude, but it is time to move on. Almost a third of our time down here has expired and there is much more yet to be seen!

Mexico City is a traffic nightmare. Driving a fifty foot long motorhome / Honda combination through the city is not an option. For some years now Mexico City had had a complicated system of certain vehicles being banned from driving on certain days, this system being based on licence numbers of vehicles. Now this same system is still in effect but now not only includes the whole Federal District State (DF) but also includes all licence plates, not just DF plates as in the past. In other words, it includes us. I have also been advised that all vehicles driven in the city must have a smog test sticker on them.

We have been searching for a simple route towards the South of Mexico which avoids the DF. They have a saying down here that “All roads lead to Mexico City”, and that is becoming glaringly apparent. I asked Forum members on RV.Net and received an excellent suggestion. This however took us to the North of Mexico City into territory we had explored last winter. We wanted something new so we started looking again. We think we have found a route to the South of the DF that will eventually get us to the city of Puebla. We think it will take us two or three days from here to there and it is unlikely we will find Internet along the way. Be patient with me and I will post again when I can.

One bonus is this route takes us through the territory controlled by Emiliano Zapata from 1911 until his ambush and murder by Government troops in 1919. Zapata, along with his contemporary, Pancho Villa, fought for the return of Hacienda land to the peasants with the cry of “Tierra y Libertad!” (Land and Freedom). The building to which he was lured and ambushed is still standing and the walls still display the bullet holes of the ambush as well as a small museum featuring the bullet riddled and blood stained clothing he was wearing at the time.