| The Americans seem very worried about Mexican trucks
on the roads in the US. We have seen under-powered overweight trucks here,
mainly American Dodge 6 wheelers and mostly used by the farming community. |  |
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However these double semis, 110ft of trailer and 34 wheels are mostly
powered by Kenworth or Freightliner tractors and can outrun me fully loaded.
Mind, you can get stuck on the mountain roads because you just can't see far
enough ahead to get past. It's a hell of a shock when one passes you
though. We were following one and two buses and someone in a 4x4 decided
he couldn't wait. He ran out of road and cut in on me so sharply because of
oncoming traffic that my wing mirror took his passenger window out. He
pulled off but there was nowhere on the winding road big enough for us so
they waved us on. We were undamaged. |
| From Mazatlan we travelled south on Mex 15 to Tepic
before turning off onto the much smaller 200 road. This is not toll and not
as wide as the 15 and our average speed has certainly dipped. We quite often
passed marshland as we followed the coast. |  |
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There is still a lot of unused (and probably unusable) land in Mexico. More
salt marsh - probably a haven for birds at certain times of the year. |
| Although we have no pictures, we have seen areas where
they harvest the salt from lagoons and marshes like these. |  |
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A brief lunch break at the side of this mango tree. They are now a common
sight, and to judge from the amount of fruit here must be prolific croppers
here, but the ratio of fruit to pip is quite low. These are still unripe. |
| One of the last toll booths we passed on the Mex 15 on
part of the Tepic bypass. It is unclear whether they are collecting the toll
for the bit you've been on, or the bit you are about to go on, or just
randomly at this point. |  |
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Someone has done some forward thinking or maybe they just wanted to build a
bridge. We passed several 'Bridges to Nowhere'. |
| The coast road cuts inland in a number of places where
the mountains come right down to the sea, so sometimes the views on the
coast road are like this one as we came down after crossing the mountains.
We have been lucky to do 20mph at some points since Tepic. |  |
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But this is cultivated land and seems to grow mainly fruit. |
| Each small hamlet has a collection of roadside fruit
stalls offering citrus, bananas, mangoes, papaya and, increasingly, fresh
coconuts. |  |
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And so we reached an isolated beach at Lo de Marcos as we had had enough
driving for one day (two hours beyond plan). There are several RV camp sites
here and we picked the one on the beach called Pretty Sunset! |
| This is the view from the camper! Although the sunset
wasn't quite as spectacular as we hoped. Perhaps, like everything else, this
is the wrong time of the year. |  |
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