Driving through Mexico - The final part

When we left Villahermosa it was pouring rain, roads were flooded and detours were many. Also we were driving over some of the worst roads of our trip. Think pot holes that jarred the car so hard that the door alarm went off. Luckily there was not a peep from the cats.
We took MX 180 which went along the bay of Campeche. The weather in the US had produced an "El Norte" which are winds coming across the Gulf. Wow was the sea angry. Huge crashing waves almost to the road. Pretty scary winds made driving very difficult and tiring. We went in and out of rain storms and hoped that we would drive out of the weather soon.

We arrived into the small beach town of Champoton. Seeing a Pemex station with a Italian Coffee Company (like a Starbucks) we stopped. It looked pretty popular as there were lots of people standing around and many stopped tour buses. Think German tourists... But we than find out through the Federal Police that there is a labor protest ahead and the road into Campeche is closed by this protest. But however we are not to despair...the District and Federals have made a detour so we can go around this disturbance....problem is that it will take an extra 2 hours on the back roads. Because the roads are rural and narrow only cars and small vans can go this way. What should have been said was that only 4 wheel drive could travel this way.

We started off with pretty good roads. At intersections there were police pointing us the right way. There were many cars and they jostled for position and passed in a desperate way. Scary. The good roads quickly became roads that we could only travel at about 20 mph....however there were pickup trucks and vehicles like taxi's that were going at least 50 mph. In some places the roads were close on being impassable....think single lane bridge made out of logs...

Finally at about 5:30 we were approaching Campeche and the road to Merida. We debated staying the night in Campeche, but the road seemed that it would be fine as it was a 4 lane highway and we remembered that it was fairly new. So we chanced it, even though we had not driven 'after dark' the whole trip.

3 Hours later we pulled up in front of our house. Carlos, I and the 4 cats were tired, hungry and happy!