Bienvenidos!

The craziest thing about this trip is that we'll have to do it all over again in reverse in the fall. After all the rains  of the summer, though, we are told the country will look quite different. 

For all of you who were as nervous for us as we were for ourselves, and for those who may read this to get information for future trips, I hope you enjoy this very long, very detailed post about our drive.

Day 1

9:30 am                Left Vegas (reset trip odometer).

 

 I was on the phone with our insurance agency cancelling our policy. We purchased an international policy through another company to cover us while we are gone. We had to take advantage of our last day with our phones.

There was no traffic near the dam. Thank goodness! Before the new bridge was finished we have been stuck there for hours!

11:20 am              Stopped in Kingman, AZ for ½ tank of gas and bathroom break (111 miles).

I started reading a James Patterson novel aloud. I should have been paying more attention to navigating. We had taken this route to Arizona to visit family and must have gotten comfortable. It’s easy to forget that it gets confusing.

Shortly thereafter I realized that we were on the wrong highway! I re-directed our GoogleMaps and it had us taking a scenic route through a state park. Since it didn't add on too much time we decided to stick to it. It was beautiful and green and we were grateful for the mistake. There were sooo many cops, though. I don’t know what was going down but we had to have seen 40 police officers pulling people over, especially semis trucks.

2:00 pm                Stopped in Somewhere, AZ for ½ tank and bathroom break (305 miles).

3:30 pm                In Phoenix, AZ (409 miles).

No stops in Phoenix and it felt like we were ahead of schedule. The GPS was giving us confusing directions.

6:00 pm                Arrived in Nogales, AZ, our destination for the night (577 miles).

It already looked like Mexico. It seems like such a tiny town so we were surprised to drive by a college.

We check in at our hotel, the Americana Inn. Jade was a little carsick so we took a short nap. We didn't have a lot of time, though, so we got up and ran to Wal-Mart. We didn't want to stop during our drive the next day because we knew we would be pressed for time. We got fix-ins for sandwiches and other snacks.

It took forever to find a gas station that was still open. It didn't seem that late! The one we found was actually like 2 blocks from the border. We got to a point where the signs seriously said, “If you keep driving you will be in Mexico. Turn around if that’s not what you want.” We filled up and noticed the big fence along the hills.

We had a quick dinner at Denny’s, last chance for terrible, delicious American food for a little while. We made a couple last minute phone calls to family then headed back to our hotel. We made our sandwiches there in the room and then hurried to get ready for bed.

Despite our best efforts we slept terribly! The bed was horridly uncomfortable and we were a bit nervous for the next day.

When we woke up we spent a few minutes on the phone telling our credit card companies that we were travelling and then we had to turn off our cell phones so we wouldn't be charged roaming. There seemed to be so many last minute things…

Day 2

5:45 am                Crossed the border into Nogales, Mexico.

It was 2 minutes from our hotel. We got a green light so we kept driving straight through. I had been expecting more stops, more guards, more checking for documents or something. It felt bizarre to drive a couple blocks and be in a little Mexican town.

Jade had done a lot of research beforehand so we had most of the documents we needed. The only thing we still had to get was our FMM, our tourist visa. No one was stopping us and asking for it but if we were caught without it we would probably get in trouble.

We had driven a little too far so we parked on some random street and walked back up to the immigration building. No one was around except for 5 or 6 homeless guys sleeping right outside the door. We walked in and were directed around the corner. There was a nice guy who helped us fill everything out. It was fast and helped that I had exact change of $55 USD.

We walked back to our car and since we had to get off the main road to park we were worried about getting back on the highway. Looking for directions was so intimidating because there were no street signs! We just kept driving until we figured out that we were in the right place.

Once we found the highway it was very easy. Jade purchased a map online from Bell & Bell for $10 USD at http://www.ontheroadin.com/.

It was INVALUABLE!! It gives turn by turn directions for the entire drive, lists most gas stations and km markings, even topes (Mexican speed bumps) to warn you to go slow. Our trip would have been 1,000 times more confusing and stressful without it.

Also invaluable to our sanity were our books. I finished the James Patterson novel and we started Ender's Game, on tape. Although I love reading aloud, after an entire novel within 24 hours my voice was glad for the break.

11:00 am              Stopped for ½ tank and bathroom break near Guaymas (826 miles).

Their normal bathrooms were closed so we went around back. They were disgusting but did have free toilet paper, which I had been warned might not always be the case. Small victories…

12:10 pm              Hit a detour. The highway was closed heading into Obregon.

We didn't know where the detour was going. It was extremely hard to follow people since we were heading towards the town. People were going a lot of different places. We couldn't count on them leading us back to the highway. After driving around a little, knowing we couldn't waste a lot of time, I broke Jade down and asked him to ask for directions.

We finally found our way in the city only to have another road closed. We had to ask for directions again. It blew us away that many people didn't know what roads to take with the highway closed. Eventually one lady told Jade that we could cut through the parking lot of a nearby store and cut onto the highway just past the blockade. We were a bit uneasy but decided to give it a shot. Luckily there was a truck that pulled in just ahead of us that was doing the same thing. Monkey see, monkey do, right? The Policia would accept that wouldn't they?

It worked. For about 20 yards and we hit another road block. What in the world was going on!? Was there a big event or something? This time we were on a stretch of highway that was leaving the town. Jade pulled up the Policia and quickly asked where to go, hoping for better instructions. No such luck. “Just follow all the other cars. You’ll see where they cut across and come back on the highway a little ways down.” 

Hmmmm…  Alright… What else could we do?

He was right, though. Since we were leaving the town all the cars were heading in the same direction. We took a dirt road down to someone’s farm. I would have been nervous if there weren't 30 other cars and semis doing the same thing. There was a HUGE ditch and the Policia had directed one-way traffic down either side of the ditch. We were not “flying” by any means but at least we were not at a stand-still. And at least we were not lost.

The dirt road was kicking up A LOT of dust. At times we could barely see the car ahead of us. We got down towards the end of the ditch where the cars were cutting across a narrow bridge of dirt and the highway was in view from there. FREEDOM!

That was when we hit a dead stop. Seriously? SERIOUSLY? As we sat perfectly still in a cloud of dust I tried to recalculate our trip. Our buffer window of time was nearly spent.

Jade used that time to try to figure out what was happening ahead. It seemed that a semi truck had gotten a couple wheels stuck off the edge of the bridge. Many people were helping him but it didn't look very promising. There was a line of cars behind us and a line ahead of us. We were only about 10 cars back from the bridge ourselves. One brave Tacoma driver decided to 4-wheel-drive off the road and cut through the weeds. He was able to circumvent the wedged semi truck and we watched him drive victoriously onto the highway. I was filled with jealousy. Leaving our Tacoma in Vegas had been my choice. The Honda CRV we were driving was certainly more capable of off-roading than the Prius we left behind as well but since we weren't certain we could clear the same path, it was not worth the risk.

We waited, quite depressed, but trying to keep our spirits up. “We’ll be fine,” I kept telling myself. “We can pick up our speed later and make up some of what we lost,” …if we ever get out of here.

And we waited.

Then Jade noticed that the cars behind us were turning around and heading back down that farm road. It was the wrong way but at least we could move. Jade turned around as well (he turned about a 6-point turn and still got a little too close to the edge of the ditch that was deep enough to be called a canyon).

And then, there was a glimmer of hope. Jade saw that the cars that had turned around ahead of us were crossing the “canyon” on a rickety bridge that I had barely noticed before and were heading down the other side of the old farm road. The other direction of traffic had stopped so we had the road all to ourselves now. 

We quickly followed and didn't breathe a sigh of relief until we had passed the downed semi truck and cut back on to the highway. No road blocks in sight. What a relief.

We had spent 2 hours around Ciudad Obregon when it should have only been 20 minutes. Everything else had to go perfectly smoothly for us to get into Mazatlan “around” dark. Forget our hope of getting there before the sun went down. We were banking on that half hour of twilight after the sun went down but before the light was gone completely. We had been warned not to drive at night.

5:45 pm                Stopped for gas and bathroom breaks an hour past Guasave (1134 miles).

I was getting more worried about getting to Mazatlan before dark. Jade was tense and quiet but was trying not to let it get to him. But the sun was going down too fast. Google said the sun would set at 7:50. We should have still had 2 hours of daylight but the sun was much too low in the sky.

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks… I hadn't thought about time changes. I didn't know what time zone we were in. Our clocks said it was 6:00 pm but we realized it must have been 7:00. We knew we had less than an hour of daylight so that was the only thing that made sense.

I looked on my map. We were going to have to brave the last 130 km (81 miles) in the dark. Yikes!

The sun went down at 6:50 on our clocks, right on schedule for Mazatlan being an hour ahead of us. Jade tried to speed up. We were worried about the dark but we were more worried about getting pulled over so that was a losing battle. We stayed less than 10 km over the speed limit and decided to take our chances in the dark. As we pulled up to our last toll booth there were several cars ahead of us. “Well, at least we are not the only ones on the road,” I said to Jade. But he looked in the rear view mirror and saw complete darkness behind him, not a car in sight. Luckily he didn't bring that to my attention until later that night.

We were watching for danger, for animals on the road, or anything suspicious but tried not to be too worried. We just tried to relax and listen to our book. As soon as we saw signs for Mazatlan we were overjoyed.

I had realized that I forgot to bring a map with directions to our hotel. Oops! I didn't care, though. At least we were there. We had looked at a map pretty closely when we were deciding on a hotel and Mazatlan is not very big. We were confident that we could find it pretty quickly.

We took the first road into Mazatlan which read “Mazatlan Beaches.” We remembered that our hotel was right on a beach with a string of other hotels. We were sure we were looking in the right place until we hit a dead end and hadn't seen our hotel yet. We must be too far north, still. We had to back-track a little until we found signs to Mazatlan Centro.

8:30 pm                (9:30 pm local time) Pulled into our Hotel Ramada.

It was the last one on the street. It was exactly the time we had planned on arriving, the latest possible time by which we needed to arrive, but that hour of sun that we lost had thrown us for a loop. We felt extremely blessed and since we had made it safely, none of the details mattered. We finally took a deep breath of fresh, sea air and felt re-energized.

We checked into our hotel and found our room. We took a quick walk around the grounds and sat down by the waves for a few minutes. All I could do was pray thanks that we were there, safe, and that nothing went terribly wrong. All in all we were very lucky. We had some hold-ups but what road trip doesn't? We still had a few hours ahead of us the next day and so far the trip had been fairly smooth.

We were too tired to even worry about a restaurant. We had our leftover sandwiches in our room and fell asleep watching tv.

We slept SO GOOD and sleeping in the next morning was heavenly. Our breakfast was more leftovers but eating them while enjoying the view from our balcony was fantastic. Our hotel was gorgeous! It made me wish we were staying longer.

We went down to the sand to watch a surf competition that was going on just down the beach a little. We toyed with the idea of getting in the pool or the ocean but felt so clean after our hot showers that we decided against it.

We soon decided we were ready for the last leg of our trip and got ready to hit the road once again. Before I jumped in the car I grabbed a Plumeria flower that had fallen from a tree next to our car. Man, I have missed that smell!

Day 3

12:00 pm              Left Mazatlan

Thanks to wi-fi in our room we took screen shots of Google Maps on our cancelled cell phones. The directions took us through sketchy back roads because of 1-way streets through Mazatlan. I started getting nervous because there were so few street signs. We would see a sign and be filled with confidence and then a few miles would go by on windy back roads through tiny shack neighborhoods and my confidence would be shaken. Sure enough, there were signs every once in a while and Jade did an amazing job of navigating them. We ended up being in exactly the right place to jump on the highway south toward Puerto Vallarta.

12:45 pm              Stopped for ½ tank of gas (1321 miles).

The map showed it was the last gas station for quite a while and we didn't want to chance it.

South of Mazatlan felt like a different country. While the previous day had been pretty in its own desert way, this drive was green and lush and unbelievably gorgeous. We drove through valleys and mountains (well, hills really) that were covered in jungle. There were farms and orchards everywhere.

The highway to PV is a terrible road. The drive was on a very bumpy, curvy 2 lane road through the hills but what a view! For about an hour we were driving through a cloud on a jungle hill.

Shortly after Las Varas we found the road to Chacala. It’s only a few miles and took us from the highway out to the coast.

5:45 pm                Pulled into Chacala (1530 miles).

Felt like home already.

A couple notes:

Every bathroom we stopped to use had free toilet paper, for the record.

There was construction off and on almost the entire way from Nogales to Mazatlan.

We never got stopped for an inspection or to have our passes checked.

Total driving time: 8.5 + 15.75 + 5.75 = 30 hours in 3 days

Total miles: 1530

Total Tolls: 16 booths = 1,113 Pesos ($85.62 USD) 

For future reference for time zones. Although I don't think Mexico's Daylight Savings Time changed to reflect the changes the US made in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.