The Mexican adventure continued…..Tuesday- June 9th: We awoke before the sunrise to get an early start. We opted to wait to have breakfast, so those that wanted coffee….got coffee. Estarado checked in with his new friends to gather information about the best routes and a possibility of a place to stop later in the evening. We all piled in the bus, Dave was going to drive, a plan in hand and headed south. Today was going to be a difficult day, we had many miles to go…

We drove into Tampico thinking that it would be a piece of cake. Tampico is a tourist town. However, apparently they have a ‘rule’ that if you are passing through you should be taking a bypass road. We missed the turn and continued into the city. About two blocks into town people started waving and banging on the bus when we went by. We were stopped by the local police who said that we were driving in the wrong lane. He demanded to see our papers and Dave’s driver’s license…..since Dave was driving. The guy came on the bus and asked us each where we were from….of course we said Iowa. Since none of us spoke Spanish Estarado spoke for us.

The police officer wanted money, but he wanted too much money. Another police officer came, demanded money, and began mentioning that he could put all of us in jail for 5 days. We told him we did not have the amounts of money he was talking about (over $2100).

There were long negations followed by Estarado trying to fill us in on what was happening. After about an hour of this the police said to follow them. We followed them through the very narrow streets of the town. My imagination went wild, but mostly I was trying to figure out how to let someone know where we were. We had been out of phone contact since we crossed the border on Monday afternoon.

We wound around the city and turned to go down a road that had a cemetery on both sides of the road. As we came over a hill we saw the cemetery, a parking lot of confiscated cars, trucks, and buses, and at the bottom of the hill….a prison. The police officer came back in the bus and pointed out the choices. I was scared out of my mind…All I could think about is that no one knew where we were, and we had no way to contact anyone. The guys all had different reactions.

The bottom line was that the officers wanted a bribe and if we didn’t pay it, we were going to jail. Estarado got him down as low as he thought he could go. We ended up paying $450.00 American money to stay out of jail. The police then escorted us out of town.

We later learned that this is a common occurrence in this town. After that our nerves were on edge if we saw any kind of police or Mexican Army I echoed Sue Mercer’s prayer to be invisible to anyone who would cause us harm.

The trip that day continued fairly uneventful except for Gary eating Ken’s breakfast later that morning (ya, that was funny. LOL). At least until Friday when we reached the border, but more on that later.

These are a few thoughts about the trip through Mexico. There were very few women traveling on the road. But there were a lot of Guatemalans. Some were American citizens. They had bought or were transporting cars that had been in wreaks. They could buy them at a reasonable price and get them fixed in Guatemala, and then sell them for a profit. They filled the cars with anything they could sell. Shoes were a very popular item. We could have sold the shoes right off of our feet. Some of our shoes seemed to have disappeared.

We drove by small towns on the Gulf of Mexico. The scenery was very beautiful, but it was evident that the area had been affected by hurricanes in the past few years. It was too bad there was a lot of litter along the roads. Finding restrooms was also an adventure….If you want to know ask me, I will fill you in.

All along the sides of the roads were fruit stands. This time of year there were bananas, mangos, pineapples, and melons. They smelled wonderful.

We drove into the Serria Madre Mountians and cut across Southern Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. Very beautiful. As we came down out of the mountains we came into a place where miles and miles were being developed into wind farms. They were building more wind generators as we drove through.

Wednesday night we stayed at an interesting hotel. One positive was that our showers were warm, but other than that it set a new bar for an adventure! It was an “auto hotel” There was a garage on the first floor for you to park in. You went up steps to find the anti luxury of your dreams. The electrical wiring was coming out of the walls and every wall was painted a different color with the bed spread yet another color. The bed frames were cement….Yes you read this right, they were cement. The mattress was one of those foam ones that you find in campers. I guess it goes to prove that if you are tired, you will sleep anywhere…..and it was better than sleeping in a Mexican jail.