| We left Zacatecas before eight in the morning because
it is almost 450 miles to the next available campground. It was a good job
it was all main roads. This was a huge granary we passed early in the
journey. Zacatecas state is very agricultural. |  |
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There is a mixture of large scale industrial farming and small, very labour
intensive farms which haven't changed much in their methods in decades. |
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We haven't a clue what this is! |  |
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However this is fairly clear. There was a monument which we missed when we
crossed this line going south but there was nothing more than a sign here.
Considering how far south we are going (almost to Mexico City) and the time
of year, will the sun ever be to the north of us? |
| The scale of the farming here is enormous. This is
much more like Nebraska or Kansas and at times we couldn't even see the
mountains in the distance. |  |
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We found this symbol several times as we have crossed from one state to
another. It is something to do with the revolution and standing together
bound by a common interest. |
| Sometimes we came quite close to a mountain. Given
that we are generally up at 4-5000ft, the mountain is probably 8-10,000ft. |  |
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But is is the road we will remember. I'm sure we had a stretch of straight
and flat road that was 100km long.. |
| No trees and no mountains at this point. Shame we
couldn't get the horizon straight but one does bounce along sometimes. Note
the mirage effect in the distance - one can understand how it could be
confused for water. |  |
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You see a road like this and you know it has to turn, but you might be ten
minutes before you know which way. |
| I make no apologies for showing so many pictures of
the road. I can understand now how someone can wander off the road and there
were signs warning against this. This road is deadly! |  |
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Interest! A railway line runs parallel to the road, sometimes one side, and
sometimes the other. Given there were 80 wagons and only one engine, I
suspect this car train may have been empty. Heading south perhaps to ship
some more Nissans north. |
| And back to the open road. We had over 400 miles like
this. |  |
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There was surprisingly little truck traffic. I don't know how they import
and export between Mexico and the US because there are only two good roads
to the north and today at least they weren't using this one. This was a
convoy of oversized loads. |
| And so we reached Camargo only to discover that the
site was not really operational - no water, limited electricity and that was
only after we insisted. I didn't fancy another 150 miles to the next
possible site having already covered 450 miles in 9 hours driving, so we
stayed. |  |
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The following morning we carried on. Still no trees, this is the Chihuahuan
desert so we did get some sotol. |
| Also some industrial scale farming again as we
approached Chihuahua. Too early to know what they were growing here, but it
could be chillies. There are lots of nuts produced in this area too. |  |
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No, they don't grow aluminium cans, but they do collect and recycle rubbish.
We did see several groups of workers cleaning up the roadside, and signs
exhorting the public not to throw their rubbish on the road. They are trying
hard to clean up their image. |
| We passed a lot of orchards with trees planted in neat
rows. There are a number of Mennonite communities in this area and they grow
a lot of nuts and apples. |  |
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But still you get sections of open road. There are few population centres
here and they are far apart. There are virtually no advertised campsites
in the state of Chihuahua but we did find one about 12 miles to the west of
the city of Chihuahua, hidden behind a Pemex station. |
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