Mexico – Page 18 – My Thought Spot

Detour

We normally plan 3 days for the trip from Tampico to Mérida. It is not a hard 3 days. In fact, it is quite relaxing. We usually pull into our place to stay each night with plenty of time to talk with our hosts and do not have to rush out the next day. But because the car problems delayed our trip a bit, we needed to make this jaunt in 2 days if possible.

We left Tampico about 9:00 Friday morning. It should have taken no more than 8 hours to make it to Veracruz (the city). There was an accident on the road in Emilio Carranza, Veracruz. We did not get full details, but the road was down to 1 lane because of construction. Apparently this was a bridge. Either a construction crane or a tow truck (the word in Spanish is the same thing) fell off and damaged the good lane to the point where traffic could not pass at all. This meant that no one coming from either direction was able to travel on this road.

Not believing there would be no possible way to pass, we drove about 6 miles from where we were told we needed to detour just to see if it was remotely possible. It wasn’t. There were transport trucks lining both sides of the road just stopped waiting for the road to clear so they could go on. They were not able to take the detour because of their size. One driver told us that the road was not expected to be cleared until Monday. It was Friday then. He told us that he was parking his truck and going to walk down to the beach and spend a few days there until the road was cleared. We declined his invitation to join him.

We turned back and started towards the detour.

Let me see if I can describe this clearly. This is a major “interstate” level road. If you want to get to certain places, this is the only way to get there. In some places you have the toll road and the free road available. Where there are no toll roads, you only have the free roads. This is a free road. But, it would be a major artery. If you don’t take this road, the optional major road to get from Tampico to Veracruz would take at least 14 hours.

That said, this is not a 4 lane divided US Interstate type road. This is a 2 lane that sometimes has a bit of a shoulder, but when it does not, is just barely wide enough for to tractor trailer rigs to pass one another.

The detour was worse.

3 hours of worse.

Here are some photos of the event. The first is the major highway we were on, then the rest are from the detour. You can see it progressively got worse. Click each photo to see them larger.

We did get back on the big road eventually after a three hour detour. In that three hours we covered about 30 miles on the main road.

Ritz Hotel We did well and hit the bypass around the city of Veracruz in 10 hours. We pushed another 2 hours going as hard as we could so that we could make it to another big town before it got too dark. I ended up driving about 1 hour in the dark on the main road. Night driving here is a big No-No. Fortunately this was a section of the road that is like a US Interstate. I was reasonably sure of no major pot holes or cows on the road.

We ended up in the town of Acayucan. This was our first time there and we were able to stumble into a pretty nice hotel. It was the Hotel Ritz. Definitely not to be confused with the Ritz in London. It cost $41 for their deluxe room. It had 2 double beds, Air Conditioning and a fan. I had to pay extra to get the A/C and double beds, but it was worth it.

Police: Round 2

Yesterday as we were pulling into Tampico on our way back south, we were about 10 minutes from our friend’s house when a police car pulled up beside me. He asked me to pull over.

His claim was that I did not use my blinker when I changed lanes. I cannot say whether I did or did not. I most often do, but not always.

This is a particularly bad area where the police try to take advantage of the people. This is my third encounter with them in town.

It all boiled down to he was going to write me a ticket for $120 and take my license. The fine I could pay the next day at 5:00 in the afternoon. Or, I could give him $60 on the spot and he would take care of the ticket for me. After I lectured him on how illegal that was he asked me if I was a Christian (as opposed to a Catholic). I told him that I was, but that it did not matter. What he was asking me to do was illegal and that I would not do it. I would rather take the ticket and pay the proper fine than to do something illegal.

My wife was getting a little panicked at this point. She thought I might be facing arrest if I did not back off. But the officer knew as well as I did that what he was doing is called extortion. For one, I do not think that the failure to use a blinker would really command a $120 fine. Nor would he want to go through the paperwork to make it happen. I was not at all concerned.

He then backed down and said that if I would just buy him a coffee, then all would be good. I told him to give me my license and paperwork and let me go, or to give me a ticket and leave me alone. He handed me my papers but still asked for a coffee. I shook his hand and walked away. I got in the truck and left with him still standing there with his hand out for his money.

I will not bow to that!

What hurts is that there are so many people who do. On the other hand, because it is such an easy money making (illegal) business, he would rather let me go than to have a fight on his hands. It is not worth the time for him to escalate to actual legal proceedings.

This is a follow up to a post from 2 weeks ago.

Crossing the border

The border crossing went fairly well. We got the green light at the main crossing. That is where they will tear into you car and check everything for legality. You would also apply for your car papers here if you need them. Since our papers are tied to our visa, then we did not need to renew papers.

The second check point is about 75 miles into trip. This is the customs check. If the man chooses, he can request a written statement of everything you have in the vehicle and then charge you duty of anything of his choosing. Also, they check to make sure you have the car papers in order from your crossing 75 miles back.

He asked for our visas and car papers. I gave him my visa paperwork. Our visas are actually in Mexico City being renewed, but I have a paper stating that we do have visas and they are in Mexico. He then wanted the car papers. I found a copy in one of my big files. He wanted the original. So I handed another big file to my wife. She started thumbing through that while I thumbed through the first one. I took my time and never found the original. Finally my wife found it in her folder.

I handed it over to him with the comment, “It sure does take a lot of paperwork to live here in Mexico.” He casually looked over our papers and handed them back and told us to go on. I think he was afraid that if he asked for anything else it would take 10 minutes.

We were thankful it went so well.

We are not in Mexico anymore

After we crossed the border into Texas, we drove about 10 miles before we hit our first red light. Which, because of the fuel pump problems, meant that the truck died. We had a bit of trouble getting it restarted before the light turned green. By the time I got it started and was able to move at a crawl, the light turned red again. Native Texan

Here is the difference between Mexico and Texas. In Mexico, the man who was sitting behind us at the light would have been honking his horn the whole time and probably yelling curses at us for making him miss the light. But, since we were in Texas, what actually happened was that the man behind us waited patiently and as soon as he knew we were having problems, he pulled up beside us and asked us if we needed any help. There were no horns. No curses. Just a friendly smile and an offer of help.

Where was he when we were sitting on the side of the road in Mexico for 3 hours waiting for someone to help?

Can you tell I am a native Texan?

The root of all evil

We finally found the root of the truck problems. To make a very long, and somewhat boring, story short it was the fuel pump.

While the fuel pump was suspected early on, it was ruled out by just about every mechanic who laid hands on the truck. In fact, I think they all suspected the fuel pump as a possible cause, but upon further questioning, it was ruled that it could not be the fuel pump.

The reason it was ruled out is that the truck would maintain speed when you got it up to speed on the highway. Even though it was rough to get going sometimes, and sometimes top speed was only 40 MPH, it was always able to maintain that speed…until Saturday.

While changing the timing chain and a few sensors that mechanics said were probably the cause, I even did the “bang on the tank while the truck is running” trick. The idea is that if it is your fuel pump and you bang on the tank while it is running rough, that shock may kick the fuel pump into action. Though the test does not rule out the fuel pump as the problem, if it does run better, it is almost assuredly a fuel pump problem.

I have changed sensors and timing chain (which desperately needed it anyway) and reset the timing and checked all the vacuum hoses and replaced the gasket in the glove box. But because the truck was not showing some classic fuel pump symptoms, it was determined that it was probably a computer problem. The reason that was suspected is that each time you started the truck, you would get a whole new set of symptoms. If it ran poorly after a restart, then starting it again may give you better results. That certainly did not indicate fuel pump.

Then there was Saturday. This was the day the transmission had been rebuilt. We got back on the road to make it the last couple of hours to the border. I could not hold highway speed. The 1 hour 20 minute trip took 3 hours. Most of the time we were cruising along between 40 and 45 MPH. Not fun. Every time we slowed down the truck would die. Each time you hit a speed bump. Every town that you had to go through. It was fun restarting the truck several times while waiting in line to cross the border into Texas.

As soon as we got across the border we headed straight to the place we are staying. We pulled in and that is when the truck would no longer start. The fuel pump completely died. It no longer kicked in when the key was turned on.

1300 miles and 2 weeks traveling, it at least waited until we pulled into our destination of a few days before it gave up the ghost.

I borrowed** a bicycle and made a few 10 mile round trips to the parts store to get the truck going again. We called a church that we had visited before and they sent someone to give us a ride for church Sunday.

Monday morning we borrowed** some gas cans from the same place where the bicycle came from to empty the 20 gallons of gas that was still in the tank. There ended up being another 10 gallons in the tank that we were unable to get out because we did not have enough cans.

My wife is becoming a pretty good mechanic’s helper. Also, since we did not want to risk blowing up the house we were staying in if something went wrong, she did a good job of helping me push the Suburban to a less damaging location if something went BOOM. (BTW, 9 year old boys are not real helpful when trying to push a Suburban.)

**Listen to the upcoming episode of the podcast to hear where the bike and gas cans came from.