| We left Punta Perula and carried on down Mex 200 still
heading south. There are some amazing trees that we pass from time to time
but don't have the camera ready. However Jan caught this beauty covered with
yellow flowers (but no leaves) although we don't know what it is. |  |
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We are now definitely into tropical plants and coconuts are very common both
as trees and as piles at the roadside like these - drained of milk already
and just discarded, or waiting for some other processing? We couldn't tell. |
| Mature coconut palms are very tall and don't cast
dense shade, so are often underplanted with bananas. |  |
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They are often planted close together and crop over an extended period.
However labour in Mexico is cheap and plentiful. |
| We came to the port of Manzanillo where we got lost in
the old town. This is an occupational hazard in Mexico but can be a
nightmare in an RV. This is down by the docks and shows just how big the
container port is. |  |
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More containers, the dockside container handlers and the railway to
transport them onwards - all in one shot. There is a lot of trade with
China, probably an even greater proportion of total trade than it is in the
US. |
| It is a good deep water port capable of taking very
large ships. |  |
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We didn't stop but eventually found our way out and headed south eventually
leaving the main road which heads inland to Guadalajara.. We turned off back
onto the 200 and headed for Tecoman. At this point we noticed some odd
noises and eventually discovered that the valve extenders on our rear inside
tyres had worn and deflated the tyres. One of them had shredded the
sidewall. So we had a two hour stop in Tecoman while a mechanic sorted us
out. Cost was 300 pesos which is ridiculously cheap. We had five spare tyres
of which we had to use one. |
| Tecoman is another place with no signs and the main
road turns sharp left leaving us heading into smaller and smaller streets.
Fortunately every junction seemed to have a traffic policeman or two and we
were rerouted back to the proper road.
The public art we saw here is on a much larger scale than we have been
used to seeing, as in the above picture. The one to the right we saw as we
left the town - I'm not sure if these are pigs or what. |  |
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The 'microondas' installations are always signposted and named. These are
both telephone and cellphone towers. Cellphone coverage looks to be good and
plenty of Mexicans use them. We haven't used ours yet. |
| Despite the 'wear your seatbelt' signs along the
roadsides, this is a common method of travel, and if the police do it it
must be OK. There are several different forms of police: federal, municipal,
preventive. These are state police. |  |
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There are lots of small shrines at the side of the road. They appear to be
well used as there are often lit candles in them, and much effort is put
into decorating them. This one is about Wendy house size and looks to have
been solidly built but probably should have had slightly better foundations. |
| The road is very twisty and up and down as it follows
the coastline. But there are some spectacular beaches along this coast. And
it is basically undeveloped still. This was one of the most spectacular. The
campsite we are heading for is towards the far end of this bay. |  |
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The village of La Penita is just before the site. Here at the Pemex gas
station we found a number of trucks parked for the night. I wouldn't want to
be driving any of these any further south on these roads at night. |
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