Putting in a shift!

 

Today the team put in a big shift. We departed our truckers hotel at Nuevo Morelas at 06:30 and spent the first hour or so ducking and diving amongst the trucks and the speed bumps both of which are entirely endemic in Mexico.

 

On the road we passed an itinerant who was walking north. Nigel had discussed seeing the same individual on the road the previous day about 15 miles further back and pointed him out, much, it turned out, to his chagrin. By the time the third car, Ham’s passed he had armed himself with a rock and hurled it across the road, making a direct hit on the side of the car. You have to say it was an exceptional shot, thrown from the other side of the road at a car passing at perhaps 45mph and hitting it dead centre. If such skills could be more positively channelled….. Fortunately only minor damage done and on we went.

 

We turned off the 185 road onto the 145D to Veracruz. This was the longest straight bit of duel carriageway I have ever driven on. The tarmac was pretty good, drivers having to keep their wits about them for potholes, but none of them was large enough to do serious damage. This allowed us to really put some miles on the clock. The biggest threat came from the enormous Freightliner road trains, hauling a full load and then a trailer and passing the old open cars with savage speed, ungodly noise and billowing smoke and fumes you certainly wouldn’t want your children breathing in!! The Rolls will cruise at 80kph so that is the maximum speed of the caravan and we continued on the road until 9:00am when we stopped for coffee and whatever could be found for breakfast. It turned out to be a somewhat unedifying ham and cheese sandwich but beggars cannot be choosers, and back on the road we went suitably fortified.

 

We had been told on numerous occasions to be careful around Veracruz. Do not drive at night, don’t breakdown, don’t stop for petrol etc etc. We had calculated that if there were such bad actors they probably wouldn’t be on stage on a Sunday morning. We experienced absolutely no problems whatsoever, so either the bad actors were having a lie in or perhaps there isn’t such a threat in the outskirts of the City as there is in the centre and around the port. Anyway our transition around Veracruz happened, I am delighted to report, without incident.

 

By the time we were leaving Veracruz we were on the 180 along the sea coast and for the first time since Panama laid our eyes on the Caribbean. We stopped on a beach where swims were had and managed to find some lunch in the nearby village by the main road. As we sat having lunch, watching the steady slow stream of trucks and cars heading along to road towards our destination we knew we weren’t going to make Tampico tonight. We needed to replot.

 

Poza Rica was a further 175km up the road, there was a hotel and we could make it before it got dark, so we booked the rooms and went. Within 20km the road separated and most of the traffic seemed to disappear. In addition the road turned into new tarmac, little traffic and we were at our best cruising conditions we had experienced all day. Chris ran out of petrol, Ham’s ignition switch is playing up and Nigel had shot off ahead so the last 75km was somewhat fraught. Chris cruised into the petrol station at Poza Rica running on fumes but we had made it.

 

By the time we arrived at the Hotel Marel in Poza Rica we had been on the road for 11 hours and driven 536km, that’s what you would describe as putting in a shift.