“Vibradores...”

Back in the land of speed bumps, sweet dirty Mexico. I suppose there are pros and cons involved with the speed bumps. While they are extremely annoying and absolutely everywhere, especially when you finally achieve a decent driving speed, they also give an opportunity for passing when there is nowhere else to pass. Leaving Antigua behind that morning, after taking another picture for the "Our Canada" magazine, we soon climbed high between the volcanoes to an altitude of 3015 meters. For those of you keeping score at home, the highest point on the TransCanada Highway is Kicking Horse Pass at 1630 meters. This road is higher than any mountain I have climbed thus far. We zipped along the highways with very little traffic, being limited in speed by the threat of careening off the side of the mountains, and soon arrived at the Mexican border in a mere four hours. The crossing lasted 16 minutes and cost us 6 dollars for fumigation, a new record perhaps, although we did not need to go to the aduana on the Mexican side as we already had the papers.

Just when I thought the roads could not become any more tortuous and twisty than those of northern Guatemala, we entered the mountains of southern Mexico, climbing high into the hills and descending deep into the valleys. Dry pine tree forests soon gave way to thick carpeted greenery as the humidity level rose with our descent towards the Gulf of Mexico. Eleven and one half hours later we are now sitting in a hotel, somewhere in Mexico that starts with a P, just south of Villa Hermosa, about 650 kilometres outside of Mexico City. Soon we will join up with the toll highways and will be cruising towards the capital, which I might add has more people than all of Canada in one city. I’m a little scared about getting around that monster, but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. No luck yet in tracking down a headlight, but we keep driving in the dark for some reason.

Tyler.