Tolls

Tolls, tolls and more tolls.  That's what we did today.  The Toll road.

Every 50 km, in some cases every 20 km, we came to a toll booth.  And we paid, and paid… and paid.

About $60 US today alone.  Each toll booth has a different rate, and after about 10 of them, we caught on that we were being charged about 1 peso per KM.  So, 50km=50 pesos.

It gets expensive after a while, in addition to having to stop all the time for the booths.  Each one is manned by the toll guy, and there is usually one or two Mexican Army guys there as well, with machine guns.  They are either friendly or disinterested.

We got stopped today at one military check, and for the first time, got pulled out of line, where an in charge fellow asked us 20 questions off a piece of paper, none of which we understood in the slightest.  So we laughed, and made "I don't understand" gestures as he dutifully read out each question.  The other soldiers standing around just laughed along with us, and after about 5 minutes of this, he ran out of questions, and the other soldiers lost interest when a cute girl drove up,  so they said we could go.

I don't know what we may or may not have agreed to.  He may have been asking us if we had drugs and guns in our panniers, we just nodded and smiled.  

A mountain along the way.

We hadn't intended to ride as far as we did today, but about the time we started looking for a place to stay for the night, we came up on a HUGE traffic jam, and our early evening turned into 2 hours and 28km through bumper to bumper traffic.

Oh, and it started to rain.  And got dark.

So for what seemed like forever, we rode the shoulder, in the dark, and wet, with truck after truck 3 or 4 inches away from us, along the shoulder.  If we hadn't, we would still be out there somewhere on the road.

After a total of 520 km for the day, we were exhausted and just looking for the first hotel we could find, which turned out to be a Mexican "motor" hotel.

After 2 hours in the rain and dark and the traffic jam

"Motor" hotels here are interesting.  They are hotels, with individual garages for each room.  This is so men (maybe women too?) can go there with their mistresses, and park their cars in the garage and close the door so no one can see them.    They have room rates by the hour.

Seriously.  They are everywhere.

I'm getting this weird face tan that is a combination sunglasses/helmet visor thing where my nose is burnt, my right cheek is burnt and my forehead and eyes are not.  12 hours a day on a motorcycle.  :)