Driving in Mexico

I spent a portion of the night prior to crossing the border at Nogales, Arizona reading guide books on what driving is like in Mexico. No where did it mention that it parallels video games. It should. Driving here is paradise for impatient drivers. Stop signs are actually yield signs that have the same look with the exception of ALTO in lieu of STOP. No one stops at them if they can clearly see that no one is coming. I love that.

When experienced drivers in Mazatlan (think Mexican) approaches an intersection where they don’t have the right of way, they will drive half way into the turn at warp speed before applying the brakes. This is initially distressing causing gringos to flinch or stop, but you will be waved on even if you stop because you have the right of way. You just have to trust them that they will in deed stop. The trust issue is complicated by the reality that over 90% of the cars in Mexico have scrape marks, broken tail lights or bruised bumpers. Owning a body shop in Mexico is a losing proposition.

The speed limits are all in kilometers. 110 kms is the highest speed limit I have encountered on a toll freeway. Divide by 2 and add on 10% to get your miles per hour (67mph). If you drive the speed limit, get in the right lane with the carts pulled by donkeys. Yes, you will see carts pulled by donkeys. All Mexicans thing they are Italian drivers in training for a Grand Prix.

Cuota roads are toll roads and worth every peso. They have a built in AAA feature as the Green Angels (a group of fix it vehicles cruise the toll roads and help anyone having car problems). The lanes are narrower than gringo freeways, but well kept. You do need to be aware that all the buses that travel on them are high speed behemoths that take up a great deal of the road and can only be passed when they are going up hill. If you are doing 80 on a straight away, they will pass you like you are standing still. Oh, I forgot; there are no shoulders on toll roads. Make yourself small and try not flinching.

Highways are patrolled here by police, but I’m not sure what they actually do. I have seen them with lights flashing trail a speeding pick-up truck for miles. With the absence of a shoulder to pull over, I assumed that the truck would pull over in the next gas station or village. I assumed incorrectly. The police car continued for several more miles and then passed him. The truck impressed me by his lack of intimidation. He never altered his speed. I have not lost my reverence for the law and continue to slow down in their presence.

A curse on whoever invented the vibrodrones and the topes . The vibrodrones are a series of bumps on the roads that last for a hundred yards or so. The spacing between them progressively lessens. This gives the driver who refuses to slow down a vibration that picks up speed and shakes you to your core. Topes are worse. They come in a wide variety of sizes, and everyone stops for them. I encountered several that scraped the undercarriage. At the major bus station at Guadalajara I scraped all 24 of their topes. The toll roads have them in every village they happen to go through, and they serve dual purposes. One is to allow villagers to cross the street safely. The other is to provide them a livelihood. At every tope on the cuota roads you have an opportunity to purchase something. What I have not figured out though is why every location sells the same thing. In one village they will sell you frozen shrimp, or puppets, or candy, or pastries. There will be twenty different groups selling the same thing. This also holds true with villages that are famous for their furniture or pottery. Every shop in the entire town will sell the same thing. I’m not talking about a variety of furniture or pottery. It all looks the exact same. You can see ten – fifteen consecutive stores with the same furniture. Different prices though.

City street signs……forget about it. Maps rarely help because finding street signs is so iffy. You might be able to see them on the side of a building if one is located on the corner. One ways are a narrow arrow. Two ways have an arrow going in both directions. Parking will not help to determine if you are going the wrong way because you can park in whatever direction you want your car to face. But if you are going the wrong way, everyone you encounter will wave and point the direction you should be heading. This doesn’t of course mean that you have to heed their advice. The cars will get out of your way with barely an acknowledgement that perhaps you should go back to Minnesota.

Favorite driving moment. Friday Sharon and I were driving some friends around to shop. We came to a major intersection on a crowded six lane avenue. We could tell up ahead there was some kind of commotion. Cars started to back up. Trucks found the right hand curb manageable and drove over it and the grassy knoll that led to a frontage dirt road. Within five minutes without any honking, and shaking of fists, the entire traffic jam orderly had taken different paths to avoid the blockage at the intersection. In gringo land cars would have been on their cell phones demanding the police to take care of the problem. Not in Mexico. Police cars did the same thing that everyone else did. Just found a different route out of there in an orderly way. The blockage was a protest of employees of a hotel that laid off everyone, but had not paid them for the work completed. These protests are not uncommon. Earlier this year a group of folks were being forced from their homes due to a dam being built. They complained and blocked traffic to bring attention to their plight. They felt that the government hadn’t compensated them well enough. The newspapers picked up the story. Mazatlan came to their defense in mass, and the government eventually satisfactorily compensated them.

Speaking of stoplights. They are treated with significantly more respect. When the green light starts to flash on and off, it is a warning to speed up because the yellow light is coming. When the yellow light hits, you had better slam on your brakes. The time in the States that the yellow light starts before the red light is probably the same amount of time for the blinking green light and the subsequent yellow light. But you feel so less guilty for speeding up with a blinking green light than you do with an early yellow light.

Detours. In the States you receive so much warning of a detour that it is annoying. Not a problem for Mexicans. While work on a four lane road with a center divider with mature palm trees in the Golden Zone needed attention, three chairs with a tape stretched across signaled that the street was closed. It didn’t acknowledge what you were suppose to do, you just had to serve around the center divide and get into the right hand lane of one way traffic coming the other way. No signs were posted for those coming the other way, but when cars approached them on the right, they moved to the left. Very civilized.

No painted lanes. This constitutes the most significant parallel of driving and video games. You must have your eyes on your rear view mirror to negotiate around double parked vehicles. Most streets in the inner city are one ways. Major streets have enough space for two lanes and street parking. The terror exhibited by the newbie driver in Mexico makes sense. The joy of negotiating the streets of the inner city is an earned reward. Getting to know Mazatlan’s side streets, short cuts, appropriate lane maneuvering is even more fun than driving in San Francisco was as a twenty something. Did they have video games then? Imagine pulmonias (golf carts with Volkswagon engines), taxis, motor bikes with pizza delivery baskets on the back, clunkers, SUV’s with darken windows, trucks, delivery vans, pedaled bikes, pedaled carts, push carts, carts pulled by donkeys and horses, saddled horses all vying for the same space on a city street. Does it get any better than this?

Parking

1. I love parking in large parking lots. There are roaming attendants who have whistles to help you pull out. They stop others and wave you on to your destination. They put cardboard on your windshield when the sun beats down. Yeah, I mean every day. These are not paid employees despite the fact they have on uniforms. They work for tips only. I have no idea who buys their uniforms, or how they apply for a job.
2. Parking in crowded areas of a city is another animal entirely. Double parking is rampant and makes for long waits as lanes converge. When you finally see a parking space become available, a sign will designate that you must shop at that store to park there. I buy a lot of gum at OKKO (7-ll store) to send Sharon off to run errands else where.
3. Grocery stores have handicap parking just like in the States, but they also have parking designations for pregnant women with children.