Diving off into Mexico:
“She’s doing it!”
An undeniable feature of travel is confrontation with the unexpected. What we usually have in mind in that regard is the pleasant surprise. The flip side is that the unexpected is not always pleasurable. The nature of the travel plan allows the individual traveler the option of circumscribing that discomfort. We all make a travel plan based on a sliding scale somewhere between “cushy spa” and “wing-it adventure”.
Most travelers opt for a middle road, expecting the unexpected but controlling for frustration and confusion. It’s perfectly understandable that a family of four on a week’s vacation would want a good number of things pre-arranged in order to ensure a positive experience.
But it is a simple travel truth that there is an inverse relationship between controlling for comfort and true adventure.
We like a bit more edge to our travel. I don’t particularly relish the thought of getting lost in a souk in Fez, Morocco but I won’t go out of my way to guarantee that it can’t happen. With that premise, a plan shapes up: a minor wander into the fringes of the enclosed marketplace to explore the situation. In Fez, that actually resulted in a plunge into an unparalleled adventure which ended by getting totally lost in the warren of paths through the shop stalls, and by ultimately asking a young boy to guide us out of the souk for a few dirhams.
People have a wide range of tolerance for frustration and confusion. But it is a simple travel truth that there is an inverse relationship between controlling for comfort and true adventure. Another travel truth is that, regardless of the best laid plans, sometimes you simply must improvise.
My wife and I were in Mexico with my sister Andrea and her husband Ralph for a location wedding. We were driving in a rental car westward from Guadalajara to a former hacienda outside the city called Hacienda El Carmen.
Mexico has a weird tollway system. It usually involves somewhat parallel roads called cuotas and libres. The cuotas are toll roads with extremely limited access. Did I mention “extremely”? The libres are the free roads that resemble our state highways here in the U.S.
My wife Stefanie and I have a good deal of experience with these roads through our many drives down from Texas to near San Miguel de Allende where we have a home. That doesn’t mean we have the system fully comprehended. I’m not sure that last description applies to anything related to Mexico.
At an intersection about 45 minutes from the Hacienda. We had the choice to take the “cuota” toll road and opted for it to save time (or so we thought). Just as we are entering the ramp for the highway I see a sign pointing down the “libre” that reads “Hacienda El Carmen” with an arrow pointing straight ahead in that direction. Turns out that sign was there for a reason.
Our trusty GPS seemed perfectly happy with the choice for a moment. The signs showed that we were headed to a city I thought was on the way. Again, my assumption was that the roads ran roughly parallel. The GPS suddenly re-routed and added another 30 minutes to our travel time.
There was no turning back for the next 15 minutes as our car pointed northwest rather than due west. No exits, no “retornos” (u-turns). Stefanie was driving and Andrea and I scoured our map apps for info. “We’ll just have to take the next exit south and hook up with that libre”, I said. We finally found one after ten miles or so and took it.
Problem solved right? Well our GPS devices had bad news. We were on another “EXTREMELY LIMITED ACCESS” Mexican toll road that didn’t have an interchange ahead on our original route. Our GPS apps had added a full hour to our travel time by creating a giant loop southwest towards Lake Chapala and then back up to the Hacienda. Again, no “retornos”.
We were all in a state of shocked disbelief as Stefanie and I tried to explain the Mexican highway system to Andrea and Ralph. My map app was upside down as were my bearings and I was incredulous that our travel options were so limited. We were now approaching our original highway 70 and my mind raced towards possible solutions.
After the episode which I will soon describe, I thought about how a likely decision process might have played out when Mexican highway officials decided not to create an exit at that interchange. “These roads are for long distance travelers only”. “But what will the locals do?” “They will find a way”.
And so they did. As we approached the overpass for Highway 70, we could clearly see dirt paths leaving the roadway where cars had made their own egress. I blurted out “We can get off! Slow down here!” but we were flying down the highway and that understandably seemed too crazy and sudden for Stefanie. I mean, who does that? Ralph joked about wishing we were in a four-wheel drive vehicle.
We drove on and talked about our options. Stefanie was sure there was some other exit ahead but both Andrea and my GPS apps said nope, an hour and a half travel time. Stefanie was quiet. It was now clear to her that we either had to suffer an additional hour of travel or make something else happen. I kept thinking “What would the locals do?”. Well they would find a way for sure.
I was thinking that we still might have a chance to jump out of this weird parallel universe when just up ahead three overpasses came into view. Stef slowed down a bit to around 50 mph and we searched for a place to exit. I spotted a small ditch just before the overpass. Not as nice as the one back on Highway 70 but it might just work.
“Here!” I said. Stefanie hit the brakes. The tires skidded in the gravel. “She’s doing it!” Andrea called out. Stefanie jerked the wheel and we dove down into the campo.
We were in a Chevy four door sedan on a rocky dirt car path. “That’s my wife!” I laughed and we all giggled like naughty school kids. My GPS clicked over to a new route. “Thirty-five minutes to the Hacienda!” I called out as we bumped up and down on our newly chosen route.
Stefanie picked her way around the ditches and potholes and we soon joined up with the dirt and gravel road that crossed over the highway. We turned in the opposite way, west towards the hacienda. We could see a better road for a moment down a defile to our left but it soon disappeared god knows where.
After a mile or so we entered a little village we later identified as Tala. We just kept following the turns indicated by our navigation apps. At one point we had to work our way around a road blocked by construction. Stef looped back and found her way back to the original intersection.
We decided to point north towards where we knew Highway 70 lay and just make our way there somehow. My GPS re-routed us again down another set of very rough dirt roads but eventually we reconnected to the route that led us to an interchange west of Tala and back on to 70.
Our car was in full merriment mode at the audacity of Stef’s brake-slamming maneuver. Stefanie said that after passing by that first potential exit she’d be damned if she was going to miss the next. Andrea’s comment as we ditched the highway was our refrain, “She’s doing it!”.
