Guilty as charged. It was my first day riding in Mexico and Latin America. I was nervous and eager to put distance between me and the border, and the all the stories I have heard of border towns. Indeed I expected the services on the tool road to be like the US, which is not the case. I have also allowed myself to be victim of the evil schedule. When I get to the end and look back I hope it was just a phase or a notion that I could get a taste of many places by traveling quickly. Hopefully the next time I will travel slower and take more of the back roads. Stay in little towns and villages longer...

In 2008 I pretty much screamed through Mexico, stopping in Oaxaca for an extended period, then screaming to Belize, per the schedule (meeting my wife...) Leaving Puebla I was looking for a Santander, which took me off the toll road. I got confused by the lettering that designates free verses toll roads and took the local road for a stretch. I passed fields with farmers harvesting flowers with carts drawn with donkeys, so beautiful. Traffic slowed, then came to a crawled for quite sometime, until I realized all the traffic was heading to a commercial wholesale depot. It was there that I saw several pick-up trucks overflowing with with flowers. Turns out the flowers were for the Day of the Dead festival that coming up (and the reason I was in a hurry to get to Oaxaca, perhaps the best place to be in Mexico during the Day f the Dead.) I would have never seen truck loads of flowers if I had stayed on the toll road.

After taking a few pictures security guards with shotguns came over and asked me why I was talking pictures. Holy crap, I thought, these guys are packing serious heat." Just taking pictures for myself" I said. "Oh, that's cool." They were just curious.

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Peter B
2008/09 - NJ to Costa Rica and back to NJ
2012/13 - NJ to Northern Argentina, Jamaica, Cuba and back to NJ
2023 - Peru, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia...back to Peru.

Blogs: Peter's Ride