Drive home from Mexico: Days diez y once

Post 10 of 10 of our trip to Mexico. I would advice scrolling down to Day 1 and reading up to get the whole story.

We had just 2 days to get home (and 3 days to get down) so we were a little worried. We therefore determined to leave early (we got out at 5:30am) and that we would take every paid road possible to cut off time. The first stretch that took us 9 hours to get down (from Mazatlan to PV) took 4 hours. An amazing difference! It cost us almost $20 for that stretch but it was sooooo worth it! We weren't frazzled at the end of the day and we arrived with some daylight!!

The rest of the drive home was fairly uneventful. The only thing that really caught our eye was this pick-up truck bed full of men (there were at least 6). This was a common site in Mexico. We even saw whole families in truck beds sometimes. I guess they know what it means to carpool!

Some other sites of note seen while driving in Mexico:

Saw a mom, dad and baby riding on a motorcycle, no one wearing a helmet.

Plenty of crazy driving styles. For instance, you get in the right lane to turn left. How the roads are designed is to have the main road in the middle separated by a median. Along each side of traffic is a frontage road of sorts that people cut in and out of to get around traffic. That is the lane you must get in to turn left. Odd but once I understood it, it made sense.

People pass everywhere. Didn't matter if there was a double line or signs saying you shouldn't, they did. Sometimes passing very long lines of traffic. I read in the guidebook that if you see that happening in the approaching lane of traffic and the passer hasn't gotten back into their lane, that they expect you to pull over until they pass. Kinda crazy and very dangerous.

Another thing- roads are very narrow. There is no shoulder anywhere so the semis and buses just hang out in the middle of the lane until someone wants to pass. Then they'll signal you by putting on their left turn signal to let you know it's clear to pass them. That actually helped, especially around the windy roads.

For a long time, I couldn't see the wisdom in having no shoulder until we came to stopped traffic on the highway one day. We couldn't see what was wrong so just assumed there was an accident ahead. There was only one lane and a right turn lane. We waited in the one lane but started noticing people trying to pass in the right turn lane. Then they started to pass in the dirt shoulder past that. And then they created a 4th lane out of a slope. I couldn't believe it! After we had waited politely, not moving, for half an hour, we decided to see how it was possible these people were getting through. We drove down to that "slope" lane which then led us down this rutted out muddy frontage road of sorts. We didn't think there was anyway we'd get through but we just kept following the big buses in front of us. Finally we emerged and got back into the single lane. Waited some more and then saw the reason for the hold-up: a one lane bridge. No accident, no road constuction. It was just people being so impatient and trying to cut each other off that you couldn't move. So crazy!

Needless to say, I did a lot of white knuckle driving.

...We finally arrived home at 2pm on Sunday afternoon. I was so happy and amazed to be getting home so soon. Taking the paid roads made ALL the difference. We would highly recommend that route. It was worth the $80 in tolls, hands down.

Some accolades: Ammon did a great job reserving the 3 extra hotels we used along the drive there and back. He also printed out maps of those areas as well as the temple destinations. Good job planning dear!! Also, we wouldn't have made it if we didn't have his Spanish speaking skills to get us out of a few scrapes.

All in all, it was a great trip. We'd recommend it to anyone in the mood for A LOT of adventure. :)