The Road To Tepic

We got away from Mazatlan at about 11:00 after having breakfast and tipping Arnoldo, the cook who provided us with so many good meals and Maria in the office, who made sure we had a space to stay in and who created room for our friend Les when he arrived. Tepic is 277 KM from Mazatlan and I expected it to take about four hours or maybe a little more. We were barely out of town when the highway turned into a parking lot with traffic stopped for as far as the eye could see. After cooling our heels for about 45 minutes things started moving again and when we got to where the problem was it turned out to be a truckload of red bricks that got dumped on the highway.

Trucking is a little different in Mexico. If you want to move a load of red bricks, you simply start piling them on the back of a truck until the wheels are just about touching the body from the weight and then you throw a half inch rope over the whole works and take off, swaying away down the road. The odd time it falls off but then everyone who has to stop pitches in to throw the bricks off to the side and next thing you know, traffic is moving again. Nobody complains because that is the way they do it themselves. No Problemo!

That delay put us a little behind and my decision to take the “Libre” or toll free highway made the trip a little longer because you just can’t go as fast on it because of all the trucks and hills. We finally arrived in Tepic at about 5:00. We had decided to just pull into a Wal Mart or some other large parking lot and stay the night but darkness started falling and we still had not found a place to settle. Finally we saw a Soriana Grocery store sign and pulled in there. That is where we are now as I write this. There is no WIFI of course so I will send this whenever I can. Dinner was a frozen microwaveable pizza purchased in Soriana washed down with two cups of coffee. It is now 9:00 and I am watching for a parking lot guard to ask if we can stay. I will give him $20 Pesos which is about four hours pay at minimum wage of $47 Pesos per day for him to watch over us. We will be as safe as in the Proverbial “God’s Pocket”. Right now it is 22 degrees Celsius outside and 23 inside. Here in the Soriana parking lot in Tepic Mexico, Life Is Good!