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| Driving to Acapulco, Mexico |
Driving to Acapulco, Mexico
Driving, a subject close to my heart. I recently drove from Acapulco to Michigan to San Francisco to L.A. to Austin, Texas to Mazatlan to Guadalajara and back to Acapulco again passing through many cities on the way. I suppose I was trying to prove that the shortest distance between two points isn't a straight line and failed miserably. Anyway, I love the freedom of driving and all the things you see out there on the road. Some of the best starry nights I've ever seen have been out on a lonely desert highway. I especially love driving in Mexico with all its stunning scenery, interesting people and beautiful chaos.
Driving in Mexico can either be peaceful and safe or nerve racking and dangerous as hell, it all depends on you. I usually enter at Nuevo Laredo (the worst part of the trip) and head toward Monterrey and Mexico City then down to Acapulco. I can make it from Austin, Texas to Acapulco (with a couple hours set aside at the border for red tape) straight. This is the safest route in all of Mexico as wide, mostly well groomed lanes run all the way down on which you can drive as easily at night as you can in the U.S. or Canada and break the sound barrier during the day.
That is if you take the sparsely populated cuotas (toll roads). Trust me, when driving on a Mexican highway, it's no time to be a cheap skate. Though some cuotas can be as high as $20 USD for a short stretch of road, they're worth every peso. If you decide to go Mexican style, be prepared to deal with two lane roads with huge trucks barreling down at you head on, narrow lanes. blind curves, burrows, cows, or peasants jetting out into the road, unknown distances between gas stations, and virtually no visibility at night (which I do not at all recommend so much as contemplating). While the toll roads have the Green Angels (a pickup with mechanics and medical aid that patrols the toll roads looking to help stranded motorists) the freeway is marked with crosses where fatal accidents have taken place.
If you break down and decide you need to start hiking, pay somebody a deposit to watch your car and promise them three times the amount when you get back. All I have to say is an unattended car on a lonely highway conjures images of Vultures picking apart a fresh corpse.
Though I've never actually added it all up, I'd say the tolls are about $200 USD for a trip down to Acapulco from the border and gas (which is more expensive in Mexico) is another $200, roughly.
Especially when out on the highway, be careful that the attendant sets the gas tank to zeros (ceros, pronounced say-rows) before he pumps. Starting you out with $100 pesos or so is the oldest trick in the book and the gas stations ARE corrupt. If they do it and you figure it out after the fact, there is really nothing you can do. Same goes for watering the gas down or shorting you (claiming the tank is full when you later find out it wasn't). I've been burned countless times and I see no way to really deal with it unless I can convince Presidente Fox to ride around in my trunk and spring out at the attendants to try to catch them in the act. The short of it is that gas is expensive. If you're driving a gas-guzzling SUV, don't expect to escape the green of the PEMEX station (Mexico's state-owned oil and gas monopoly) for anything less than a small fortune.
No matter which route you take, make sure to buy Mexican auto insurance. It's not that expensive unless you have an expensive car. Maybe about $10 to $20 bucks a day. You can get it at the boarder (there will be places to buy it everywhere) and it's a big help if you get into a spot, and spots are not uncommon, believe me. Buy enough to get you to your destination city where having insurance won't be as big a deal... provided nothing happens.
One thing that always shocks people from the U.S. is when they find out that in Mexico, there is no law requiring auto insurance. In fact, unless you have a new car or a car under lease, most people don’t have any. A definite difference from the “let me see your driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance…” routine that has been hard coded into the U.S. national fabric. That’s right, once you cross the boarder you are no longer in the land of no-fault, but you have stepped back in time to the days of Napoleonic Code. So what happens if there's an accident? If there's an accident and it's your fault, they put you in jail until you settle with the injured party. No jury trial, no innocent until proven guilty, you're guilty and have to make restitution and that's that. Is it fair? No. Is it efficient? You bet. People settle really fast under such circumstances. What might take years to settle the U.S. can routinely be settled in a couple days in Mexico.
Another common occurrence that might unnerve you is the presence of military checkpoints. In the U.S. we're not accustomed (not yet anyway) to being stopped by young stone-faced military men toting machine guns. In Mexico, you actually don't see them when you're heading South, but you do see them often when heading North. They monitor the north-bound lanes of the major highways to check for contraband ranging from drugs, to guns, to Central Americans and stop them before they make it to the U.S. border. As far as I've experienced, these guys are all business. No mordidas (bribes), they take a quick look and send you on your way.
If you're driving to Acapulco by any route other than my aforementioned favorite Nuevo Laredo passage, things can get a little more difficult. From Tijuana, it's best to head down the Baja Peninsula and ferry it over (about $150 to $350 USD for you and your car) to Los Mochis (or to nearby Topolombampo actually) or to Mazatlan then down the coast. If you're heading from Juarez, you'll want to go through Guadalajara. Any place else and your guess is as good as mine as to road conditions and what to do.
One place to avoid, unless you're really into extreme sports, is the highway between Durango and Mazatlan known as El Espinazo del Diablo or Devil's Spine. I am comfortable in saying this is the most dangerous stretch of highway on earth. It's damn near impossible to navigate during the day with a small highly-maneuverable sports car, at night it would be plain suicide. Imagine snaking down steep, blind curves on narrow two lane roads high in the mountains with no guard rails for 10 hours not knowing who or what is heading at you around the next turn. This, all the while signs tell you to break with your engine because people are known to loose their breaks. The turns are so frequent and mountain so steep, breaks just disintegrate. I did burn out my breaks (they weren't kidding), and had to break with my emergency break before I made it to Mazatlan and got both fixed.
If you're not heading down the coast, then you're most likely coming from Mexico City. Getting thought the city can be challenging (not Espinazo del Diablo challenging, but challenging). You really don't want to get off the highway because if you do, you're in for a.... what's the opposite of treat? A shit pie. I've gotten lost in Mexico City and it can kill half a day easy. The key is to head toward Cuernavaca. There are good signs all the way through until you get to the Periferico area and the big helpful signs become tiny signs off to the side and partially hidden by overgrown trees limbs. The exit for Cuernavaca doesn't even look like an exit at all, it looks like you're getting off in some neighborhood. You generally tool around what feels like a suburb until you finally meet up with a real highway again. The highway most associated with Acapulco, Highway 95, the Highway del Sol, is a truly beautiful stretch of pavement between Acapulco and Mexico City. Once you make it onto 95, you're pretty much home free so enjoy the drive.
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| What's happening
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