Yesterday we set off from Oaxaca bound for Puerto Angel along the coast. It took a while to escape the Oaxacan sprawl, but following the signs for Po. Angel was easy enough, right up until we came to the fork in the road—neither left nor right listed the highway number we needed, or Puerto Angel (despite being the city they had listed at every point up until said fork.)

I chose wrong, but didn’t realize it until we were well past where we needed to be. Oh well, “Highway” 131 led to Puerto Escondido about 40 miles further north up the coast from Angel. Not the end of the world.

The drive out of town was slow going because of the traffic and the topes. After clearing the city it was a series of tiny towns, each of which had a half dozen topes of their own. Mexico has basically no traffic law enforcement in place, which leaves locals and their topes as the only defense against speeding scofflaws. Unfortunately, because there don’t appear to be any laws in place as to who can place a speed bump in the road, everyone who ever wanted to sell a coconut or get people to slow down long enough to peek inside their small store has planted a speed bump or two immediately in front of their business. It can be painful at times. But enough has been written about topes already—I’ll move on.

Can you spot the tope in this picture. I missed it and it was enough to send Lowe airborne.

Hundreds of topes later we hit the mountains—a wall of mountains with roads that climbed at sharp angles and switchbacks that were never more than fifty yards apart. Our bus spent the rest of the day in first gear and struggled once or twice to climb even then—on one particular hairpin turn the road seemed to climb immediately straight up and I was sure the bus wouldn’t make it. It did—at four miles an hour. Times like this I’ve often wished that we had a manual transmission so I could goose the RPMs.

After six hours of driving we’d covered just ninety miles and had seventy to go. We came to a tiny mountain river town where we both noticed a big grassy field freshly cut alongside the water and decided to call it a day. We drove down to the field—really just the front yard of a small home—and I asked the grandmother if it would be okay for us to camp there for the night. Si, si, of course. I asked her how much we could pay and she waved me off with a smiling nada. We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out in the shade and playing on the river’s edge.

After dropping off a couple of dolls for the granddaughter of the house we began leg two of what had turned out to be a much more epic drive than we had anticipated. It was extremely slow going again, averaging the same fifteen miles an hour that we had the day before.

It was the kind of terrain and scenery that always makes me think, if you walked two miles into those hills you could live forever without seeing another person. It’s my Grizzly Adams fantasy.

We were happy to round a corner and see this down below us. The clear river tumbled down with a pedestrian bridge leading across to the village. If the locals wanted to drive their car home they had to go right through the water. A couple of them did, and it was some serious off-roading.

I’m certain that this little roadside stop of ours was the highlight of many a dinner table conversation this night.

Lowe spent his time here climbing and throwing rocks—Ouest spent hers digging through the mud looking for sparkly rocks.

So what if building construction spills over half a lane of highway? Yep, that’s highway.

There aren’t a ton of ways to earn a living way out here in the mountains, so quite a number of locals have taken up road maintenance as an occupation. Some fill potholes with dirt, some cut down the ten-foot high weeds around corners, some rake back the jungle which is growing right onto the road itself, and some just sit there and beg—you can hardly blame any of them for their choice.

Most of them pull a rope across the road to get you to stop. I have to imagine that method is much more successful than the guy who just stands there hoping you’ll slow down and be generous. We were in a good mood despite the horrendous roads, and everyone along the route wore a smile when we pulled away. Days like this are always good to remind us of just how easy our life really is simply because we were born in the States, and not on a Mexican mountaintop.

Day 1: 90 miles, 6 hours.

Day 2: 70 miles, 6 hours.

With maybe two hours worth of breaks, that means it took us ten hours of driving to cover 160 miles. A rather exhausting 16 mile per hour average. At least one of us was happy to hit the beach and the beach shower.