Mexican Roads: Off Road Experience Now Included!

We don’t really go out much on the south side of the border. Quite frankly being out at night is unsettling at best, and scary at worst. Even the 15 minute drive from the border to our house requires full attention at night. Forgetting about the possibility of bullets, you have to be alert for the ever changing pothole situation. And if it’s rained, which has happened disturbingly often in our first 3 months here, then oftentimes two out of three lanes on a street will be flooded, and forget side streets. Unless your idea of a good time is driving in a lake, then by all means ford away. We do, however, at least try to sample the local restaurants. A nice 7:30 dinner gets you home by 9, and while the 5 minute drive can be stressful, its generally worth it for a nice meal at a nice place where you are the only table there. So that’s what we did last Saturday.

We had a very nice meal with friends, and then promptly missed our turn on the drive home. We should have turned left, but went straight, and promptly arrived in La Hoguera de las Vanidades (which google translator assures me is Spanish for Bonfire of the Vanities). The next ten minutes involved 3 illegal u-turns and going down two one way streets in the wrong direction. Eventually we found a road we recognized and guessed that we were a mere block or two from where we needed to be. So I made the turn onto the incredibly dark and disconcertingly empty road. The only other car was a 20 year old pickup truck about 50 yards ahead of us.

The road was one way and about four lanes wide (A note on Mexican lanes: they don’t really exist. The road paint is so faded that the only thing defining lanes is where the collective Mexican subconscious decides to drive), and as we drove we could make out some construction ahead of us. There was a well lit sign in the second lane from the left. A generic construction arrow pointed left as if to indicate that all traffic must get in the single left lane and filter by. But to the right of the arrow there is nothing blocking the road. No cones, no barricades, no construction tape, no nothing. I wonder aloud what it means, and the LR suggests that the sign is probably indicating a whole behind it and assuring that cars avoid the lane it was placed in. Makes sense to me, I plan on staying to the right.

The pick-up in front obviously had the same idea because it stayed right. And then the front end of if disappeared. We both saw it at the same time. The LR screamed “STOP!” as I was already swerving to the left, going the way the sign pointed with plenty of time to spare. As we drove by the suddenly stopped pick-up we could say that the front wheels had driven into a deep crevice in the road, which was conveniently about a wheel length wide. The truck had hit it with such force that its wheels were wedged in and the back of the truck had popped slightly up in the air. Of course behind the gap in the road somebody had thoughtfully placed protective mesh, so that if you were driving the wrong way down the one way street (like we had been three minutes before) you would be protected.

We drove on by and got home safely. Just another night out in Mexico.


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