ON THE ROAD AGAIN

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I know, it's been a long time. It's taken me a long time to plan my life in a way that may allow me to travel for part of every year. I've been working on this plan since the last time I set off across the United States by myself. I'm about to drive across again, and I'm still working on it.

My last cross-country trip was from Connecticut to San Francisco in an old Jeep Cherokee that my daughter and I planned to drive down to Nicaragua. I was picking her up in the San Francisco area and then we would be driving on down through Mexico to Central America. I drove from Connecticut to New Jersey where I picked up Rte. I-80, the Northern route across the United States that would take me all the way into downtown San Francisco. The I-80 is the second longest Interstate highway in the U.S., (behind I-90), and is about 2900 miles long.

What I remember most about my cross-country trip was being awed by how big and beautiful our country is. The open spaces, the painted deserts, the Salt flats that looked like snow and shimmered pink in the sun. The enormous moon kissing the tips of the mountains in the night. I wanted to stop and take pictures of that moon but realized that there was no way possible that a picture could ever capture how extraordinarily amazing the moon really was hanging over those mountains. I would have had to be Ansel Adams to come close. Maybe it was the vast desert sky full of stars. It was one of those moments when something is so beautiful that it doesn't seem real and you wish there was someone there with you to witness it.

I drove happily along listening to music and when, in the center of the country, I could no longer get any radio stations to come in, I listened to books on tape (unabridged of course). I had a small cooler sitting in the passenger seat next to me filled with cans of light pink lemonade, and some cheese and turkey. In a picnic basket was a loaf of bread, mustard, peanut butter, strawberry preserves and some fruit. That was all I needed. There were sections of the interstate where I saw no other cars for what seemed like a hundred miles and it was so flat I imagined I could see into infinity. At times I would drive along making myself a sandwich without even stopping. When I stopped for gas, I wrote down where I was and how many miles I'd come. I'm not a coffee drinker so I'd get hot tea on those stops and if I wanted to drive into the night, I'd gulp down a Red Bull that kept me going for another three to five hours.

I'd get up at about 7:00 a.m. from whatever small, cheap, motel I'd stayed that night and have a cup of tea and be on the road by 7:30. I averaged about 12-14 hours of driving per day. I made it across to San Francisco in three and a half days.

I picked up my daughter in Mill Valley where she was visiting with her boyfriend and his family and after a false start, my daughter got the flu and we decided to wait a week till she got better, we were finally on the road to Nicaragua. We drove from San Francisco to Arizona and crossed the boarder into Mexico from Nogales. When I was originally looking at the map to plan out our route, it was tempting to want to go through the mountains and into Mexico City. It looks like the quickest route. But after talking to people who had made the trip and discussing it with a friend who had lived in Mexico City for five years while attending Veterinary school, we decided to take the Pacific Coast Highway all the way down into Central America. My friend said he'd heard of bandits hiding along the mountain roads, stopping cars, and robbing and hurting travelers. He also felt that Mexico City was becoming more and more dangerous as reports of foreigners being kidnapped were more frequent.

Just before leaving Arizona we stopped at an auto glass place and had the windows in the Jeep tinted very dark so no one could see who was in the car. The owner of the garage told me it was illegal to have such a dark tint on the windows in the U.S. but he did it for us anyway when I explained that we were driving all the way to Nicaragua alone. He told us not to say where we'd had the work done if we were stopped by the police before crossing into Mexico...we weren't.

Mexico is a big country and the Pacific Coast Highway is a nice way to get through part of it quickly. The only thing is that there are TWO roads to choose from. The toll road, which is the highway itself, or the free alternate route which is the road that runs pretty much parallel to the highway. We took the toll road and soon found that about every twenty miles or so there was a toll booth that charged about twenty dollars. The highway was new and there were hardly any cars on it. We could speed along as fast as we wanted to. We spent $100 dollars on tolls the first day. That seemed ridiculous to me so the next day we got on the alternate route. Every tractor trailer in the country was driving along this road. There were also lots of cars. Old cars mostly. The people just can't afford to pay to drive on the toll road. The road itself wasn't even paved in sections and the parts that were paved were in bad shape because of all the truck traffic. It was bumpy and dusty and unbelievably SLOW. At that rate it was going to take us forever to get to Central America, so after half a day on the free road, we got back on the highway. We spent another $80 dollars on tolls. If you can afford the tolls, it's worth it. The third day wasn't as expensive and the toll highway ends at about that point. From then on the road goes through cities and mountains and little towns and sometimes it's highway again, but we never had to pay any more tolls.

To stay safe, we planned never to drive past sunset. There was only one night when I couldn't find a place to stay before dark and had to drive several hours into the night. My daughter was asleep in the passenger seat and I didn't feel safe driving in the dark on unknown roads. I sandwiched myself between three large trucks and stayed with them for hours until we finally came to a small city where I was able to find a hotel that seemed alright. I'm positive those trucks knew I wanted to stay with them and they played along, signaling me to go ahead at times and then passing me other times. I was grateful for their company.

Driving along these dusty roads in Mexico is slow going. There are many small towns and people love to walk and sit along the side of the road. About half a mile before any town there are signs warning of coming speed bumps. My daughter was my co-pilot and it was her job to let me know when a speed bump was coming up. It was sometimes difficult to see these signs, especially at dusk. One evening when we were just a few miles outside of Acapulco, where we had planned to stay the night, I was speeding along hoping to get there before dark. I was exhausted from a long hot day of driving and not feeling well. I would soon discover that I had a full blown case of pneumonia, but I didn't know it yet. My daughter and I both missed the speed bump sign and we hit that bump going about 50 miles per hour. The car went flying into the air and came down with a hard thump. It was like an amusement park ride and was actually kind of fun, until we discovered that something was leaking. I didn't want to know what it was right away so I just kept driving and got us into Acapulco.

As a kid I had seen the movie "Fun in Acapulco", starring Elvis Presley, and had always wanted to see the divers jumping off the ocean cliffs. I had planned for us to stay at a hotel with a view of this nightly entertainment. We went right over to the hotel and checked in before trying to get help for our car. Acapulco is a large well worn city that has long ago seen it's better days. The hotel looked like it had been a top-of-the-line resort back in the 1960's. Nothing seemed to have been done to it since then. I felt like we had stepped into a time warp but instead of new and luxurious surroundings, everything was a bit shabby and depressed. We didn't know it yet, but we were going to be stuck in this city for three days trying to get the hole in our gas tank fixed!



The Journey / Travel With Me

A. Zudro a.k.a. Gloria

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