2000 miles this month in three weeks so we were
travelling a bit more than usual. The biggest problem is that there are no
campsites to speak of between Zacatecas and Chihuahua (points 1 and 3 on the
map), a distance of over 500 miles. It is a good dual carriageway toll road
which makes it a bit easier but it is still a long haul. It is fairly boring
country too, with long flat straights across the desert. Not that New Mexico is
much different.
One of the interesting points is the truck
transport, or lack of it. There are only three major routes out of Mexico into
the US. The other crossings, and the roads to them, are very small. There is a
big crossing at Tijuana but that is really only into Baja California and there
is little industry down there. The next one is Nogales and we think a lot of
transport must cross there and then travel down the Mex15 as we did part way,
and we certainly saw a lot of trucks on that route. The next major crossing is
at Ciudad Juarez/El Paso and we saw almost no truck traffic on the Mex 45 so we
assume not much crosses there. Most of the industry is around Mexico City and so
we conclude that most transport must go out through Monterrey to Laredo in Texas
since that is the only other significant road.
Crossing the border proved less traumatic than we
had anticipated although the Mexicans had their bureaucratic processes and the
Americans searched fairly thoroughly with dogs. We had no queues since we had
chosen to cross at a minor crossing.
We spent a couple of weeks touring New Mexico which
looks much the same but costs three times as much. The US is becoming a more
expensive place to travel and the exchange rate is not helping. Gas prices seem
to be rising at 10c/week and $2.75/gallon is the price as we leave (apparently
the composition of petrol is changed for the summer in the southern US, and it
costs more). Not quite European prices but we anticipate next year in Alaska
will be expensive for us. |