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That's OK, we'll just have to look out for our own topes, like the ones I happened upon today.
Even though they were on a side street that dead ends in a parking lot for a hiking trail, so not quite the same as ones on a main road, but seeing them made me think of your posts ;)
My neighbors recently passed around a petition to have two of them installed on the street where I live. There's no escape...
Looking forward to when you can pick this up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick Quinn
Mark
In Merry Ole England they refer to these as being a "SLEEPING POLICEMEN."Quote:
Originally Posted by BillyGr
Mark
They are also commonly referred to as "Speed Humps" (or Bumps) here in the UK. They're commonly used to try and reduce speed in built up residential areas and rural villages, that would be considered a 'cut through' by locals in an attempt to save time and avoid queues on the main routes, especially during morning and evening rush hours.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Sedenquist
Dave
Speed 'bumps' and speed 'humps' are two different animals. About a year ago I did a fair amount of research on this when my local homeowners association was proposing to spend $30,000 to rip up our existing humps (which had replaced previous bumps that the neighbors hated) and replace those humps with bumps!!! Bumps are high and very narrow, force you to slow to about 5 mph, and are meant for parking lots. Humps, sometimes referred to as 'tables', are lower and wider, force you to slow down to about 15 mph, and are meant for neighborhood streets.
AZBuck
I will be darned, learn something new here, just about every day. Armed with this new information -- I much prefer Humps!Quote:
Originally Posted by AZBuck
Mark
I paused this field report with the intention of resuming it in four to six weeks. That was all the way back in July, for pitiful sakes, so for those of you who were following along with me as I recounted the tale of my Mexican Road Trip, I must apologize for the crazy delay.
I was finally able to start writing again last month. I’m pleased to report that I’ve finished the report, and I’m ready to pick up where I left off in this Forum, with the third and final segment of my south-of-the-border adventures.
I’ll begin with a brief tribute: Mike Fritz, my shotgun rider on this month-long road trip, was a good friend of mine since high school, almost 60 years ago. Michael passed away in February, but his memory will live on: most of the “road” pictures in this report were his, and they lend a level of authenticity to this material that would have been impossible to achieve through my writing alone.
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Michael Fritz, 1949-2025
DAY 20: A World Class Drive!
From: PALENQUE
To: SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS
More than half of the mountains in Mexico, from the top all the way to the bottom, from the deserts to the jungles and all the volcanoes in between, are nominally considered the Sierra Madre, which is really just a sub-set of one of the world’s greatest mountain ranges: the American Cordillera, the longitudinal hump in the landscape that runs from Alaska all the way to Southern Chile. Once you cross the border into Mexico, the great range becomes the “Mother Mountains” and there are three distinct sections:
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The Sierra Madre Occidental, which runs parallel to Mexico’s West Coast, from the border as far as the State of Michoacan.
The Sierra Madre Oriental, which parallels the Gulf Coast from the Rio Grande south as far as Puebla.
The Sierra Madre del Sur, which begins where the Sierra Madre Occidental leaves off, also parallel to the West Coast, extending from southern Michoacan to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
The Sierra Madre de Chiapas, which picks up where the Sierra Madre del Sur leaves off, is not typically considered a part of Mexico’s Sierra Madre system. This seperate range parallels the coast beginning in Oaxaca, then extends southward into Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. (See map). There are actually two parts to the Sierra Madre de Chiapas: that coastal range, and, to the north, a mountainous plateau known as the Chiapas Highlands. MX 199, the route we planned to take, crosses the whole of the highlands from north to south. The distance from Palenque to San Cristobal de las Casas was only 132 miles, but it’s 132 miles of curvy mountain roads with switchbacks, steep grades, slow trucks, and villages chockablock with topes and bloqueos, unofficial road blocks. Google rated the drive at just over five hours, and it was likely to require at least that. Everything I read, and everything I heard, rated the drive as alternatively spectacular, dangerous, and fascinating, in seemingly equal measure.
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The Isthmus of Tehuantepec, where the distance from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean is just 137 miles. Map shows the relative location of MX 199 and the Chiapas Highlands.
We already had a bit of first-hand experience with the road. We’d driven it from Palenque to the Misol-Ha waterfall, and from there we kept going south, most of the way to Ocosingo, where we ran into a Zapatista road block that completely shut down the highway. They wouldn’t let us through, so we were forced to turn around, all the way back to Palenque, and save the rest of the drive for another day. The first week of our Road Trip, we encountered no less than four of those road blocks, known as bloqueos, all of them affecting that same road, MX 199. (See Day 4 of this Field Report). At that time, back in 2015, they were strictly a form of political protest. By disrupting commerce, the Zapatista political movement hoped to focus government attention on their grievances, some social in nature, others economic, and the rest environmental, things like putting a stop to illegal mining and logging, banning the cultivation and consumption of drugs, and prohibiting any intrusion by the national government into local affairs. The movement had a relatively sophisticated platform that did a great job of stopping traffic, but it didn’t seem to be helping all that much, when it came to improving the lives of the ordinary people in the region.
In the years that have passed since my own visit to Chiapas, the bloqueos have persisted, but according to reports from recent travelers, their function has changed. Rather than stopping traffic to attract attention, today’s road blocks are more like toll booths, collecting a fee ranging from 50 to 100 Pesos from each vehicle using the highway. This has become a significant source of revenue for these rural communities, and the authorities, reluctant to start another Zapatista uprising, simply look the other way, tacitly allowing it to continue. There are so many of these unofficial toll booths that drivers are understandably frustrated, and things have gotten ugly. In one widely reported incident back in 2022, a Russian tourist was dragged from her vehicle and attacked by an angry, stick-wielding mob when she refused to pay the “cuota,” (the toll). Since then, and even before then, most of the tourists travelling between Palenque and San Cristobal de Las Casas choose to take a lengthy detour through Villahermosa and Tuxtla Guttierez. That route adds almost 150 miles and and several extra hours to the journey, but it has the advantage of avoiding all those roadblocks. Personally, I’m not opposed to the notion of an informal “tax” on travelers that benefits the local community. Groups of townspeople politely collecting tolls is hardly cause for alarm, but when the crowds hanging around the roadblocks turn into mobs and the mood gets angry? That’s another thing altogether, and in the case of MX 199, that really is a shame. On Day 20, when Mike and I made our drive to San Cristobal, there was none of that going on, and we were able to savor one of the coolest stretches of highway on our whole amazing Mexican Road Trip.
Read on, and I’ll tell you all about the day we spent
CROSSING THE CHIAPAS HIGHLANDS
on MX 199
Next up: The roller coaster of a Road to Ocosingo!
P.S.: It feels good to be back!
Rick
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MX 199, from Palenque to San Cristobal de las Casas
Like most rural highways in Mexico, MX 199 is the only paved road for miles around. Property with frontage along the right of way is considered prime real estate, if only due to ease of access, so even when there’s no actual town nearby, it’s not uncommon to see houses (and tire repair shops) on any flat section of easement wide enough to accommodate them. Driving south from Palenque, we saw many of these isolated homesteads spread out along the road.
(Note that most of the images in this post are screen grabs harvested from Michael Fritz’s GoPro videos, shot through the windows as we drove)
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Isolated homes along the highway south of Palenque, near the Rio Tulia
This first half of the route, between Palenque and Ocosingo, was already familiar to us, after our aborted attempt to make this same drive two weeks earlier. We’d actually driven it twice, there and back again, and I remembered the road very well, one switchback after another, following one overloaded truck after another as they struggled up (and down) the steep grades. A closeup view of the map reveals just how many narrow curves have to be negotiated along the way. It’s a bit like trailing a long strand of spaghetti that was caught in a tornado, and flash-frozen!
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Driving mountain roads like MX 199 is my favorite kind of fun. After I finished college (half a century ago?!), I spent two years driving all over the northern Andes in a Dodge Powerwagon that I shipped to Colombia from the U.S., and those two years were some of the happiest times of my youth. The mountains of Chiapas were no match for the Colombian Andes, but with all the lush tropical vegetation, there were more than enough similarities to tickle my nostalgia bone. When the road was clear ahead of me, I sailed around those beautiful curves in a state of bliss.
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Scenes along the road, MX 199 between Palenque and Ocosingo: beautiful mountain curves, my favorite kind of fun!
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Passing those trucks became a minor obsession, but once I learned the rules of the road, that got a little easier. There’s no such thing as a passing lane, but if a truck in front of you moves over toward the right shoulder, and then puts on their left turn signal, they’re telling you that the road ahead is clear, and that it’s safe for you to pass.
Some stretches were more populated than others, with houses side-by-side, and on both sides of the road. Still not quite a town, but definitely a unique community with its own sense of identity. In most parts of Mexico, we saw welcoming smiles from the people we passed in rural areas. In the Chiapas Highlands, we saw resentment. They were, for the most part, too polite to say it, but what they were all thinking was “Yanqui go home!”
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The famous Pan American Highway passes through San Cristobal de Las Casas on the way to Guatemala, but there aren’t all that many travelers attempting that route these days. There’s an ongoing problem with criminal gangs in some parts of Central America, so people who might otherwise have done that trip are mostly staying away.
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The vehicle in this photo is an exception. They’re engaged in a “Pan American Expedition” (according to a sign stenciled on the side of their rig), and they’ve found a unique solution to the worrisome crime problem: their camper is a converted armored car, complete with gun ports!
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Approaching Ocosingo, the largest town along the route and the scene of frequent problems with the Zapatistas, we ran into the first military road block we’d seen along this road. The soldiers were polite, if curious, wanting to know where we were from, and where we were going.
Next up: Ocosingo, and on to Oxchuc, heartland of the Zapatistas
OCOSINGOThere was quite a lot happening in Ocosingo, the halfway point of this day’s drive. The town was bigger than I expected, with a population of 40,000 and many businesses. Ocosingo is the access point to Tonina, an important Mayan ruin, but, sadly, we just didn’t have time for it.
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We noticed an unusual stone building: the Hotel Hacienda La Ilusion (The House of Illusion). Not sure how nice it was, as hotels go, but I was intrigued by the name!
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We passed a group of children walking home from school; the young gentleman in the purple shirt shouted an enthusiastic greeting consisting of a single word: “PUTO!” (Loose translation: F**ker!)
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This young lady didn’t like us much, either, but her approach was far more pragmatic. She had a thin rope stretched across the road, with a red flag attached to insure that we’d see it. We stopped, and she demanded 20 Pesos to let us pass. I offered 10 Pesos, which she grumpily accepted.
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After Ocosingo, the terrain was a bit less rumpled, leaving more space for people. We passed through a series of small towns, including one that had a shrine emblazoned with the following: “APARECIO LA VIRGEN A LAS 8:00 DE LA MANANA EL DIA 12 DE DICIEMBRE DEL (2008).” Meaning that the Virgin Mary appeared in this very spot at 8:00 in the morning on December 12, 2008. That’s pretty darned specific!
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A grocery store/cafe, painted in rainbow colors and festooned with slogans inspired by the Zapatistas.
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MX 199 from Ocosingo to San Cristobal de las Casas
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (ELZN), has been in business for three decades, since 1994, and these towns and villages in the Chiapas Highlands are the heartland of that movement. At one time, the Zapatistas took over the local government in Ocosingo, Oxchuc, and even in San Cristobal de las Casas. They are nowhere nearly as active currently, but their influence, and their core philosophy of “Here, the People Rule, and the Government Obeys,” still predominates in this fiercely independent region.
OXCHUC
Oxchuc was another good-sized town, about halfway between Ocosingo and San Cristobal. That place was Zapatista Central, and the scene of many protests and other incidents, including the previously mentioned attack on the Russian tourist who refused to pay the toll at their roadblock. When Mike and I passed through Oxchuc, there weren’t any roadblocks (not even the little ones, with ropes and strings), so we didn’t have any negative encounters.
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Three wheeled truck with a Ferrari decal and a bullet hole in the back window
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Surly dude in Oxchuc, crossing his arms to hide his holster
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A pack of camionetas (small trucks) leaving Oxchuc
We did get a few surly glares. There was one dude in particular who appeared to be wearing a shoulder holster, but when he saw us driving by, he quickly crossed his arms to conceal it. Security guard? No uniform, so not likely. Mike and I speculated that he might be a cartel enforcer, supervising the loading or unloading of some sort of contraband. The downtown area in general was surprisingly congested; down every side street there were camionetas (little trucks) loading and unloading. Some carried cargo, others carried passengers, protected from the wind and rain by colorful canvas shells that formed a roof over the truck bed, and extended forward to provide additional protected cargo space above the cab. These trucks were clearly the vehicle of choice in the Chiapas Highlands, and we saw them everywhere along the road, sometimes traveling in packs.
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Arco de Bienvenida, the Arch of Welcome, Oxchuc, Chiapas
On the way out of town, we passed under the “Arco de Bienvenida,” the Welcome Arch, Oxchuc’s most recognizable landmark, and a convenient chokepoint for blocking traffic, any time the need arises (or whenever the mood strikes). There is spray-painted graffiti on the wall of the arch trumpeting the Zapatista credo: “El poder no esta en el gobierno, el poder esta en el pueblo.” Translation: “The power is not in the government, the power is in the people.”
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Up to this point in the drive we had good weather, but these were mountains, after all, and in the mountains, the weather is always subject to change. Clouds that had been building along the western horizon moved overhead and turned dark. We were finally getting close to our destination when the first fat drops hit our windshield.
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San Cristobal de las Casas is a mountain town, sitting at an altitude of more than 7200 feet. Even at tropical latitudes, that much elevation equates to cool weather in October, which was also the tail end of an active rainy season. Our first view of “the most magical of the Pueblos Magicos,” (as described by former Mexican President Felipe Calderon) came through a veil of frigid drizzle, to the beat of rapidly flapping windshield wipers.
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Driving in to San Cristobal de las Casas through cold, drizzling rain
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Next up: San Cristobal de las Casas: The most magical of Mexico’s Magical Cities
SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS
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We entered the maze of narrow, mostly one-way streets, with rain falling steadily, and no clue where we were, or where we were going. I’d reserved us a hotel room through Expedia.Mx, a place called the Hotel Hacienda Don Juan. It sounded terrific on the website, but it was NOT in the center of town with the rest of the hotels, so finding it proved quite a challenge. We programmed the address into Mike’s phone and started following the turn-by-turn instructions. If we’d used the GPS from the beginning, it would have been easy, but starting where we did, Google had us driving down narrow alleys and over tiny one-way bridges intended for horse carts and pedestrians. I assumed the GPS had malfunctioned, because there was no way in the world the route we’d just followed was going to lead us anywhere but lost. We popped out of another alley and onto a main street, and, much to my surprise, there it was!
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The grounds of the hotel were surrounded by a wall, so all you could see from the street was a long cobblestone drive through a tunnel of trees, leading back to a lushly landscaped courtyard. Still not quite believing that this was really the right spot, we drove in, and checked in, to what was probably the coolest hotel of our whole trip.
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We didn’t have a lot of time in San Cristobal de las Casas. We arrived in late afternoon, and we were going to have to leave first thing the next morning. Our whole visit was compressed into a single quite wonderful evening, wandering the cobblestone streets between storefronts of buildings that were hundreds of years old. Many were restored and newly painted, mostly earth tones, rather than the muted pastels we’d so admired in Campeche. The local folk were mostly indigenous, with roots in this region going back countless generations, but it’s important to note that most of the people we saw on the street that night didn’t appear to be locals. They were visitors, just like us, most of them Chilangos, a disparaging term for people from the D.F. (Mexico City). There were college kids in jeans and jackets, on holiday from their studies, as well as backpacker types from Europe and Asia, all checking out the scene. Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared San Cristobal de las Casas to be “Lo mas Magico de los Pueblos Magicos!” (“The most Magical of the Magical Towns!”) That’s quite a distinctive honor, when you consider the fact that there are no less than 177 cities and towns in Mexico that have earned the designation of Pueblo Magico, an honor bestowed by the Mexican Government, for the purpose of preserving cultural heritage–and promoting tourism.
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An evening spent in one of Mexico’s Colonial Cities always seems to include some sort of celebration in the main plaza. In San Cristobal de las Casas, they put on a concert, featuring a local orchestra playing both classical and contemporary instrumentals. The conductor was–let’s just say he was enthusiastic, and his musicians, of varying skill levels, did their best to keep up with him. The night was crisp and cool, the crowd respectful, applauding in all the right places. Colored spotlights lit the stage, and photo-luminescent plastic necklaces lit the faces in the audience with a ghostly blue glow.
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Like every Spanish Colonial City in Mexico, San Cristobal de las Casas has a centuries-old cathedral that fronts on the main plaza, in this case, the Cathedral of San Cristobal Martir. Construction started in 1528, making it one of the oldest churches in Mexico. There’s a simple elegance to the building’s facade, painted pale yellow (and in need of a fresh coat)!
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Mike was constantly shooting video with his GoPro camera, so I made a project out of reviewing those clips and capturing screen shots of anything interesting. The resulting images are a little blurry, and often at strange angles, but they’re fun to see. Here are a few from our evening in San Cristobal de las Casas:
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San Cristobal de las Casas in 1971
Original Photographs by Carl Duisberg
My good friend Carl Duisberg has been a world traveler almost as long as I’ve known him, and I’ve known him since we were both kids in school. I recently helped Carl resurrect two dozen rolls of black and white film from some of his early travels, negatives that had been packed away for half a century and essentially forgotten. No prints were made when the film was processed, all those years ago, so when I scanned and edited the images, I brought wonderful photos to life that had never been seen before.
One of those rolls of film was shot in San Cristobal de las Casas, more than fifty years ago, and Carl has graciously agreed to share them here. Viewing these old photos, it’s apparent how much has changed in what was, at that time, a primarily indigenous community. In 1971, the modern world has barely intruded on this charming Colonial City in the mountains of Chiapas.
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All in all, we sincerely enjoyed our brief visit to San Cristobal de las Casas. During my years in South America (back in the early 1970’s) I spent quite a lot of time in cities and towns surrounded by tropical mountains much like these, with cool climate, predominantly Indian populations, and Spanish Colonial buildings. Walking those streets felt like deja vu, even though I knew perfectly well I’d never been there before. It was the atmosphere, and the chilly evening, and the scenery, all of it together stirring fond memories dating back many decades.
Tomorrow, we’d push it a bit, as far as Oaxaca, and the next day to Puebla, or possibly Queretaro. From there, it was a short drive to San Miguel de Allende for a three day fiesta focused on the Dia de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. That was going to be the icing on the cake of our Mexican Road Trip. But first we had to get there, and it’s a long danged drive from San Cristobal de las Casas to San Miguel de Allende!
Next up: Day 21: San Cristobal to Tuxtla Guttierez
Day 21! We’d been on the road in Mexico for three very full weeks, and for most of that time, we had no fixed itinerary, and no set schedule. We never planned more than a day or two ahead, so the route that we were following evolved as we drove along. I prefer that style of travel, personally, because it affords maximum flexibility, but now that we were closing in on the last phase of our road trip, all that flexibility went right out the window. We wanted to experience Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead celebration, and we’d concluded that the best place for us to do that would be in San Miguel de Allende, the charming Pueblo Magico and UNESCO World Heritage site, five hours north of Mexico City. We’d passed through there far too briefly on our drive south, and we’d vowed to return for a proper visit on our way back north. The three day fiesta was going to be our last hurrah before our final push back to the border, the cherry on the top of our Mexican Road Trip, and timing was suddenly critical. It was going to take us two full days of driving, just to get there in time for the start of the holiday. We’d spend three days and nights in San Miguel, and that would leave us exactly two days for the drive to the border and on to Austin, where we’d be arriving just in time for Mike to catch his flight back home. It was all perfectly doable, and perfectly timed, but there was ZERO room for any deviation or delay.
San Miguel de Allende is one of the most popular destinations in Mexico during the Day of the Dead holiday; we’d been warned about that, so we’d used Expedia.Mx to find a hotel with availability (the Hotel San Ramon), and we’d made our reservations weeks in advance. Knowing that we had our lodging squared away for the necessary dates was a good feeling, but this two-day drive we were facing wasn’t going to be like crossing Kansas on the Interstate. There were at least a bazillion things that could go wrong and prevent us from getting to San Miguel on schedule. We had just two days to cover most of the length of the country, much of that considerable distance over dangerously beautiful mountain roads…
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San Cristobal de las Casas to San Miguel de Allende
Today, we’d be driving as far as the city of Oaxaca, 380 miles of curves, switchbacks, and rolling hills that would require at least ten hours of our full attention, crossing the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, traversing the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and entering the rugged, agave-studded landscape of the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca. If you’d like to know what that was like, read on!
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CROSSING THE SIERRA MADRE on MX 190
San Cristobal de las Casas is an old city that was laid out long before the advent of automobiles, so most of the roads are narrow one-way streets, and those few that are not tend to be jam-packed with more traffic than they can handle. In order to get out of town, we had to join that slow-and-go herd, dodging taxis, trucks, and pedestrians through the business district, until we finally spied a sign pointing toward the Toll Road to Tuxtla Guttierez.
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Scenes along the road leaving San Cristobal de las Casas
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Scenes along MX 190 from San Cristobal de las Casas to Tuxtla Guttierez
This portion of MX 190 is designated MX 190 D, because it is a “Cuota,” a toll road. What that means, in practical terms, is that there’s funding available for proper maintenance. Sometimes the cuotas are limited access divided highways, much like the modern expressways in the U.S. and Europe. More commonly, they are simply in better shape than the “libre,” (free) alternatives, with fewer potholes and topes (speed bumps), as well as less livestock, and fewer pedestrians, because they bypass the small towns.
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Construction zone: a portion of the highway is being resurfaced, using equipment and techniques that are all too familiar to drivers from the United States.
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There are few (if any) passing lanes on these mountain roads, so long lines of vehicles tend to stack up behind slow trucks and buses. An entitled idiot in a Suzuki SUV decided he just HAD to leapfrog his way to the front of the pack, so he whipped around me on the left, then cut back into my lane, forcing me to brake and veer onto the shoulder.
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The horn on my Jeep is linked to my car alarm, with dual trumpets and a very loud siren. I gave him an extended blast, followed by two or three more. That didn’t change anything–but it made me feel better, and it most definitely got his attention!
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Nobody likes being cut off; we stayed mad until the pendejo finally jumped every car in the line ahead of us and disappeared!
The area in between San Cristobal de las Casas and Tuxtla Guttierez is still the Chiapas Highlands, a mountainous plateau that forms the greater portion of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas. Tuxtla, with a population well in excess of half a million, is the capital of the State of Chiapas and the largest city in the region. The closer we got to it, the more level the terrain; since leaving San Cristobal, we’d dropped more than a mile in altitude, into a much warmer climate.
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TUXTLA GUTTIEREZ
Tuxtla (pronounced tooks-tlah) Guttierez is not much of a town for tourists. There are no Mayan ruins, no beaches, no picturesque colonial architecture. It’s a contemporary era Mexican city with nothing special to set it apart. There’s no significant local industry, so the largest employer is the Chiapas state government. The city ‘s main claim to fame is as a transportation center, the hub where all the regional highways and bus lines come together, and the location of the largest regional airport.
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Tuxtla Guttierez
For me and Michael, it was nothing but an unwelcome delay. We had no plans to stop for anything other than fuel; since there was no bypass route, we had to drive through the middle of town, and the traffic was tied in knots.
At one point we were stopped dead for at least ten minutes, nobody moving in any direction due to an accident in an intersection up ahead of us. Several of the sidewalk vendors took advantage of the situation to wander among the stalled vehicles, hawking snacks. I’d just recently recovered from a bout with the Turistas, so I wasn’t inclined to risk food from a questionable source, but Mike was hungry, so he called this guy over. Unfortunately, what he was selling wasn’t food. It was a unique local handicraft, a banana leaf, cleverly folded and trimmed to look like an oversized grasshopper.
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Mike decided it would make a great gift for his granddaughter, so he bought one. I can’t honestly remember if he got it home in one piece, but it was definitely an interesting souvenir!
Next up: Crossing the Isthmus of Tehuantepec
Everything was fairly calm, as far as police and military action, but we did see an occasional reminder of tension behind the scenes:
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A machine gun set up behind sandbags on the road out of town
After leaving Tuxtla Guttierez, we were back in the mountains once again.
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This was the point when we crossed the narrowest section of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and entered the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca.
Prior to the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, the shortest overland route between the oceans was right here; mule trains, and, in later years, a standard gauge railroad ferried cargo from the Atlantic to the Pacific and vice versa. They still transport some cargo along that route, which is billed as a faster, less costly alternative to the Panama Canal, but the most important thing moving along that corridor today is the steady breeze, created by the temperature differential between the two oceans. There is a gap between the Cordilleras of the Sierra Madre, the Chivela Pass, which concentrates and accelerates the flow of air between massive walls of rock, creating a source of power with enormous potential. The level ground on either side of the highway is perfect for wind turbines, so in 2009, the Oaxaca Wind Power Complex was built. There are hundreds of turbines, lined up in rows for more than 30 km, producing hundreds of megawatts of clean energy, offsetting vast amounts of CO2 and other pollutants.
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The Oaxaca Wind Power Complex is made up of hundreds of turbines installed alongside MX 190, beginning at about Kilometer 217 (as measured from Tuxtla Guttierez) and running west from there, all the way to Kilometer 250.
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TRAVELER’S ADVISORY (effective September, 2024):
The U.S. Department of State has issued a Level 4 (Do Not Travel) advisory for this region. The restrictions are mandatory for U.S. government employees, and strongly advised for all U.S. travelers, due to the high prevalence of violent crime, and recent increases in activity by the Mexican cartels.
• Isthmus region: U.S. government employees may not travel to the area of Oaxaca bounded by Federal Highway 185D to the west, Federal Highway 190 to the north, and the Oaxaca-Chiapas border to the east. This includes the cities of Juchitan de Zaragoza, Salina Cruz, and San Blas Atempa.
•
Please note that Highway 190 through the Isthmus region is considered the northern edge of the restricted area, but is not included in the restrictions. It’s still considered the safest route between Tuxtla Guttierez and Oaxaca, but if you’re driving this way, it’s important that you stay on Highway 190 until you’re past Tehuantepec. Don’t deviate toward the coast, and don’t stop along the way unless it’s absolutely necessary!
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Scenes along MX 190, West of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec
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The further we travelled into the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca, the more desert-like the terrain, complete with tall cactus such as this fine specimen.
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They don’t need flat land for growing agave. Any bare patch of dirt will do.
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A small mescal factory with a pulping mill powered by a cow in harness, walking in circles
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Scenes along the Road to Oaxaca
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Next up: Oaxaca!
OAXACA
Driving in from the east, the town comes up rather abruptly. One minute, you’re in the mountains, and the next minute, you’re navigating busy city streets.
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The City of Oaxaca, © Google Maps
Hotel Cantera Real
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When we finally arrived, it was already quite late in the afternoon. We’d booked a room through Expedia.Mx, the Mexican version of Expedia, and it’s a good thing we did, because the city was jam-packed, gearing up for their own very impressive Dia de los Muertos celebration, just two days away. Visitors were pouring in from all over, filling up every hotel, every bar, and every restaurant in a 30 mile radius. At just $52 for the night (at that time, back in 2015), the Cantera Real was a bargain, and considering the fact that we booked it blind, at the last minute, during the week of a major national holiday? It was far nicer than we had any right to expect. Located in an old colonial building with an interior courtyard, and an easy walk to the city’s main attractions. Our only regret? That we couldn’t stay longer!
I don’t know if it would still be the same good deal today, but at that time (2015), Expedia.Mx found us some excellent bargains, at rates that were actually cheaper than we could have gotten, walking in off the street and bargaining directly with the hotel. I’ve never been a big fan of booking services like Expedia. I always felt they increased costs by adding an extra layer to the booking process, charging extra fees to the traveler, while siphoning profit from hotels that are frequently operating on the narrowest of margins. My experience with Expedia.Mx changed my attitude, at least conditionally. The Mexican version of the service presented options that we never would have found on our own, and it helped the hotels by filling rooms that might otherwise have gone unsold. Of greatest interest to us were the independent properties that were not on the main drag, which tended to be not only cheaper, but far more interesting than the Marriotts and the Holiday Inns and the other business class chain hotels from the U.S. and Europe.
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Oaxaca City
Oaxaca was one of the places I most wanted to see on this road trip, and we were actually there, but it was already getting dark, and after two long driving days back to back, we were both exhausted. We had dinner, somewhere near the hotel, and afterwards, instead of going out on the town, we went back to the room. The city was worth a few days, at minimum, and all we had was a few lousy hours? Unacceptable! I added Oaxaca to the growing list of places I was going to have to come back to, because this was just a tease, even worse than San Cristobal de las Casas, where we’d at least spent an afternoon and an evening exploring. Our visit to Oaxaca was so short, I barely remember having been there!
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I would have loved to have had enough time to experience the city properly. Oaxaca is known for social and political activism, and a vibrant art scene. Student groups hold demonstrations, and indigenous activists organize protests. The Zapotecs, the largest indigenous group in the region, have roots here stretching back a thousand years or more. We saw a fair bit of graffiti, some of it wonderfully artistic, well executed and brightly colored, as well as some that came straight to the point: Turista Go Home (Tourist Go Home), Oaxaca AntiCapitalista.
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There was an ofrenda in the hotel’s underground garage, an altar, festooned with marigolds; the traditional shrine created by family members to honor deceased relatives during the Day of the Dead celebration. If we hadn’t been committed to San Miguel de Allende, we would surely have stayed in Oaxaca, which ranks right alongside San Miguel as one of the best places to celebrate the holiday. Out on the street, there was a frenzy of decoration going on, with ofrendas on street corners, and strings of marigolds draped from light poles, street signs, and trees. I got the sense that if I’d stood too long in one spot, I would have ended up with a painted face, and marigolds in my hair!
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A Los Muertos Ofrenda, and a warning on the wall of our hotel garage: They’re not responsible for damage due to fires, floods, and earthquakes.
I tried not to think about all we were missing, by not spending more time in Oaxaca. Their cuisine, heavy on the spicy sauce known as molé, is world famous, and so is the Mescal, a popular alcoholic beverage distilled from agave. Mescal did not originate in Oaxaca, but 90% of all the Mescal in Mexico is produced there, making it a major regional enterprise, and a source of pride for the locals. Personally, I’ve always been a bit turned off by that stuff. It’s a close relative to Tequila, which I’ve often enjoyed in the form of Margaritas, but, in my mind, at least, matching Mescal against good Tequila is like comparing moonshine to top-shelf sipping whiskey. Most of the Mescal sold in the United States has an “extra ingredient,” a little something that some of the distillers started adding to their product in hopes of attracting attention and boosting sales.
Each of the bottles contains a gusano, a dead maguey worm, (actually a type of caterpillar), preserved by the alcohol, like a lab specimen. The worm isn’t considered a contaminant, it’s an ingredient, said to impart a unique flavor, and it’s there in accordance with a tradition beloved by drunken fraternity brothers everywhere: when a bottle of Mescal is passed around at a party, whoever ends up with the last swig is honor bound to eat the worm.
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Mescal, with a plump maguey worm in the bottle.
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Paintings by local artists in Oaxaca
There are brilliant local painters whose work aligns with the “Oaxacan School,” a primitive style which draws inspiration from Native American themes, and features often bizarre depictions of “magical realism.” I would have loved to take in one or two of their good museums, or to browse in the art galleries. (See “The 6 Best Museums and Galleries in Oaxaca, Lonely Planet.com). Original paintings are beyond my means, even in Mexico, but it would have been cool to pick up a poster or two to frame on my wall at home. When it comes to art and traditional handicrafts, each of the different regions in Mexico has their own unique style, and Oaxaca has more to offer than most.
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Shortly after dinner, as we were heading upstairs to our room, there was a bit of excitement in the lobby. A crew from one of the TV stations in Mexico City had just arrived in Oaxaca to cover the holiday, and they were apparently all staying at our hotel. The two reporters, a silver-haired man in a suit and tie, and an attractive woman in a dangerously short skirt, were apparently well-known celebrities, and their arrival created a minor uproar among the staff, setting off a flurry of selfie-taking and autograph signing. Mike and I watched all that from behind the railing on the second floor, then ducked into our room for some much needed sleep.
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We were facing another long drive the next day, at least ten hours to Querétaro, where we planned to stay the night. From there, it was a hop and a skip to San Miguel de Allende, and if all went according to plan, we’d be arriving just in time for the beginning of the three day fiesta. We’d been looking forward to it for weeks. All we had to do now was get there!
Next up: Oaxaca to Puebla
Rick,
Great report--as always--and the photos are very cool.
I am not sure why this is, but for some peculiar reason this task has fallen on my plate several times over the years! Statistically, way, way beyond reasonable happenstance in my view!Quote:
when a bottle of Mescal is passed around at a party, whoever ends up with the last swig is honor bound to eat the worm.