The Ranch to Mexipipe

There are thousands of these speedbumps on the roads in Mexico. This one happens to be marked with a TOPE sign. Sometimes they aren`t and we hit them too fast.

We left the Ranch monday morning expecting to drive a couple km, get some money and food and stay at La Saladita for a few days. Unfortunately, the town we went to had no ATM and we had no cash. So we had to drive to Zihuatenejo and by then we decided it wasn´t worth the gas and time to drive the 40 minutes back to La Saladita. At 3:00 we made the push to Pie de la Cuesta, the little town just to the north of Acapulco. The highway was a windy concrete stretch that seemed to me an excuse for small villages that could install Topes (speedbumps) every couple feet. Sometimes we would see them ahead of time, sometimes we wouldn´t. Sometimes it didn´t matter because even at the slowest speed we would still bottom out. If I were to run for president of Mexico I would run on a Tope removal platform. Though it is an effective way to slow people down and a convenient place to pass a Semi which has an even rougher time with them. We were all set to go to the KOA at Pie de la Cuesta, but KOA doesn´t own the campground anymore and the two seemingly drunk guys who came up to us as we drove into the rundown area didn´t impress us too much. We ended up going back to the Pie de la Cuesta RV Park which suited us for the night. The next day we woke up and and drove south to Playa Ventura which our guidebook said has good waves for surfing. It was a decent place to spend the night, but the author of the book was probably not a surfer. The next morning we moved on to Punta Maldonada which was a 30 km drive from MEX 200 and came upon a tiny fishing village on a point. The town used up almost all the available land which makes sense for them, but didn´t leave us much room for camping and the waves looked less than inspiring. So after a great little seafood lunch we drove on to Puerto Escondido, home of the Mexi-Pipeline. It´s a neat little town with one of the heaviest bonecrushing, boardbreaking beachbreaks in the world. M Neither Brooke or I have ventured into the Mexipipe, but I bought a pair of boardshorts with the MEXIPIPE logo on it. I´m pretty sure that these will improve my surfing tenfold. Last night we ran into Greg Vogel, a fellow Badger alumni and traveler. It was fun to talk Badger for a night. His website is www.tresgringos.blogspot.com if anyone is bored. From here we are going to be exploring our final coastline between Escondido and Salina Cruz and then heading up to Oaxaca City. Until then.