We leave the very nice B&B hotel Casa de la Tia Tere this morning and head to the toll road to Puebla. It is every bit as nice as we heard the toll roads are: well-paved, well-marked, not much traffic, and safe. We see the occasional Policia Federal but mostly enforcement of speed limits is by radar which translates to not applicable to us since we have Honduran license plates and there is absolutely no way they will be able to track us down. Not that we go much faster than the 70 mph (110 km) speed limit anyway, it's just the principle, not having to worry. The scenery along the way is varied, beginning in the mountains then passing through flat, open somewhat barren terrain with a couple different type of cactus, then finally into ... read more

Day Three We are just taking it easy today after all the driving and checking out the historic center of Oaxaca which centers around the Zocolo, the main plaza. We are fortunate because today happens to be the 3rd anniversary of major protests here in favor of better pay for teachers. The protesters occupied the Zocolo for months hoping to force the governor of Oaxaca State to resign. They neither received the pay raise nor saw the governor leave office. What did happen though was a lot of violence and the deaths of 23 protesters—supposedly the biggest political protest that has occurred in Mexico in many years. We got to watch a protest march and a lot of leftist speech-making led by the teachers union. We also got to witness a lot of vandalism—political graffiti on ... read more

Ok, staying in big hotel on a world class water park. At least it´s supposed to be. We are just staying the night and heading out tomorrow morning for Oaxaca, the first stop. Well, now that it´s over I guess I can talk about our first big excitement--at least we got it out of the way on the first day so we can do an after action review to prevent a repeat occurrence. Anyways, approaching Acajutla in El Salvador which is on the Pacific Coast and about 15-20 minutes from the border with Guatemala there is a turn-off to the highway that goes to the border. It's a pretty well-marked turn with a big sign that says to the border crossing. Lucky for me I´m not traveling wtih small children making a nuisance in the back ... read more