Driving to Belize - Day 3

Kevin did all of the driving today. He says it keeps him busy. Me, I'm enjoying the scenery and trying to navigate as best I can but you win some, you lose some.

We're both pretty frustrated with things that happened today but Kevin more than me. I'm keeping a positive attitude and know that sooner or later I'll reach my destination. He's on a schedule though as he has a flight home on Thursday from Belize City and the trip is taking much longer and is tougher than we both imagined.

Today we hit the very worst roads imaginable, where we could only travel at 20 mph for very long stretches, and some that we could actually do 50 on for a short period of time. We found that driving in Mexico is not for the feint hearted because at times you find yourself driving in the left lane up hills or around curves because of the road conditions, never knowing what kind of traffic is coming at you. And you have no idea what speed bumps are until you drive in Mexico. They are EVERYWHERE and in great numbers and in the places you least expect to find them. Some are small and others nearly tear the under carriage of the car off. Sometimes there are 2 or 3 and sometimes there are as many as 10 spread over a half a mile. Of course that brings you almost to a stand still while you are trying to navigate over or around them.

The road signs are so bad too that we are constantly making wrong turns and having to back track to the direction that we should have taken in the 1st place. We've met so many very helpful truckers that have corrected the errors of our ways. It takes a while though because of the language barrier. Having a good map of Mexico would help but the best I could find was a Rand McNally folding map that does not have half of the cities / towns marked on it that the traffic signs list. So that's our major problem or was until tonight. More on that later though.

While we are making wrong turns we have been nowhere near as lost as we have been in Matamoros and Tampico. There we drove down streets that never seemed to bring us to where we wanted to go. At times we were sure we'd hit a dead end and have to back up a good distance. So we were always lookeing ahead to where we were going and judging street width and available turning room. Today it was just a matter of driving to the next exit. Sometimes quite a ways and sometimes not too far. It's just frustrating though as it adds time to an already long trip. According to an itinerary I’d been sent the entire drive should take 4 days. Well we’re on our 2nd and almost a half day and only ½ way there.

We stopped at a roadside stand in the morning and bought some fresh fruit and had them open a coconut for us to eat and drink. We also found a really good place for lunch. We drove through some beautiful mountains today but that was a bit disconcerting because at times we travelled all directions of the compass even though we should be driving mostly south and southeast. We also saw the Gulf a Mexico a few times. Now that we thought we'd see quite a lot because we're traveling so near the coast. But today was the 1st day for that.

While passing through Tuxpan we made our usual wrong turn. Driving along the highway we looked for a likely place to start a series of right turns to get us back in the right direction. We didn’t find one so started looking for a place to make a u-turn. We saw a couple that were marked no u-turn and kept looking. We finally found one and Kevin made it without disturbing traffic. As he straightened out a cop walked out into the street and was saying something about the illegal turn we made. Of course we knew we didn’t and the stories we’d heard of cops looking for a payoff came storming into our minds. Kevin asked how much the fine was and the cop, in his almost non-existant English said US$100. “You gotta be kidding!” came flying out of Kevin’s mouth. “No kidding” said the cop in whatever language he was speaking. It sure didn’t sound Spanish to us! I was trying to get Kevin to calm down because it was Sunday and I sure didn’t want to spend the night in jail until court opened on Monday. Kevin pulled some bills out of his pocket but didn’t realize that there were 2 $20’s stuck together. Me I’m telling him we had “no mas dinero”. He kept insisting it was $100 bucks. There was no way we were giving him the hundred. He finally settled for the $40 and we were on our way much the worse for wear. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again. If it does we’ll be sure that we know exactly how much is in our pockets and it won’t be more than $20.

Tonight, as were found ourselves headed in the right direction after a wrong turn, we pulled into a PEMEX station for gas. PEMEX is the national gas station in Mexico and the price is always $ 1.93 a gallon. While we still had over ½ a tank I like to fill up whenever we have a long stretch of highway ahead of us. We have not had any trouble finding gas stations but better safe than sorry! Anyway after pulling up to the pump and asking the attendant to fill it up (all gas stations are full service which is nice) the attendant pointed to the trailer. Kevin got out and noticed that there was smoke pouring out from the left rear wheel of the trailer. I noticed that the paint was bubbled on the hub. He started pouring water on it to cool it off. Boy did it sizzle! I had him pull forward a bit and turned a hose on it. We were lucky it did not catch fire while we were driving! God only knows how long it was heating up but, once again, our Angels were protecting us. Had we driven much farther it very well could have burst into flame and everything in the trailer would have been lost. That would have been terrible.

Along the highway I'd seen signs for first aid and auto repair that said to call 047. So out came the cell phone. One of the attendants sort of knew what was going on so I asked him to talk to whoever answered and tell them where we were. It actually got more involved than that but he took care of it, giving them my car information and the like. He hung up and said someone would be here in a few minutes. Well a car pulled in and came over and 2 guys hopped out. I had looked up the words "brakes" and "smoke" (as in “Where there is smoke there is fire”) and was waiting for them. They understood and started pulling the rear wheel off. I immediately thought that the bearings were the cause. Kevin thought brakes. When they started pulling apart the wheel tons of brake pad dust came pouring out. Well it turned out that we were both right ... The mechanic said that he could not get parts until tomorrow and was hoping that he can even find the parts here in Mexico. So who knows how long we may be camped here waiting for replacements. We're talking full time to our Angels and know that they will come through for us because they have so far. Thankfully this station has free Wi-Fi so we can give you all an update. While we were sitting here eating a rather terrible dinner a small group of Americans walked in and we started talking. The main guy is in the Army Infantry and stationed at Ft Sam Houston TX. I mentioned our mechanical problems and he made a call for us. He's fluent in Spanish, and that's a definitely plus here in Mexico! He's trying to help us locate parts and a back up mechanic. Funny thing is that he and his party are also headed to Belize to deliver a car.

We certainly have to keep our spirits up and know that we will prevail!!! Sometimes it's a little hard to do though. Maybe more tonight because it's been such an exhausting day and we're so punch drunk. Maybe all we need is a good night’s sleep. Let’s hope so...