Mexico RV Trip 2012 - un viaje mas grande - Day 14, January 10 Tamazunchale to El Tajin

Today I had my first meltdown – however, a pitcher of strawberry margaritas tonight has helped. Thank goodness Tobey can keep his cool!

We were supposed to have a fairly long driving day – about 160 miles. We knew that there were winding roads, lots of small towns, and topes (toe-pays = Mexican speed bumps). That said, we were on the road at 8:15. Well, Microsoft Streets and Trips is not always accurate. Today it was TOTALLY NOT ACCURATE - it routed us where there are no roads.

It was quite mountainous with winding roads and lots of road construction. Just outside of San Felipe Orizatlan, the roads were horrible!

This is the route S&T had us taking.We ended up going a MUCH different way! We drove through Huautla at least seven times before we found a different road. The kids were getting out of school and I am sure they were laughing their heads off at those crazy Americans trying to find their way! We took the road our GPS showed and that turned out to be gravel and dead-ended in a town 10 miles or so down the road. I couldn’t find ANY roads on the GPS close to where we were – and wasn’t sure WHERE we were! We found a woman that told us we had to go back PAST Huautla to the gas station and turn a different direction. That added two hours to the trip.

We finally were able to reroute ourselves with the help of a PDF map we had, but the roads were terrible – when there wasn’t construction, they were in terrible condition.

In the state of Veracruz, we passed through lots of agricultural areas and when we weren’t watching for topes or potholes, it was pretty. There were lots of orange groves and we passed many trucks carrying oranges.

Shortly before we got to Alamo, a driver motioned to us that the scooter was wobbly. The tie-down strap we had repaired broke and flew off who knows where. Tobey had an extra strap but no hooks, but he was able to tie the scooter to the bumper of the RV. (Thank goodness for his Boy Scout training with knots!) That held for a while, but started to loosen and we had to stop again to tighten it. In Poza Rica, we found an AutoZone and purchased a new tie-down strap with the hooks. The manager was very helpful. We hope it holds.

We FINALLY arrived at El Tajin, at 6:30 pm – 10 hours after we left Tamazunchale (and in the dark)! We are again boondocking (dry camping) in the parking lot of the ruins. The administrator in the office is letting us stay for free and they have a guard. We will tour the ruins in the morning after a much needed night of sleep.

GPS 20.44186°N, 97.37770°W