First Two days in Mexico

We left the Wal-Mart in Harlingen at 6 AM and got to the Los Indios border crossing and flew right through. No red light this time. We decided since we were unsure of whether the construction was complete on the direct route to Tampico through Soto La Marina, we chose the longer route through the outskirts of Ciudad Victoria. The pavement was good the entire way, we encountered no Tope's since Valle Hermosa, which is full of them. However it seemed more hilly but we found that they had completed a new section which bypasses Gonzalez & Manuel near the intersection of MX180 & MX80. However we missed the new bypass on the East side of CV which would have saved even more time. This got us to our planned campground, Country Express Hotel, at 1 PM. We thought that it was a little too early to stop for the night and once before we had made it all the way to Cerro Azul and the Condado Auto Hotel & RV park, so we pressed on.

Mexico Day 1 Map & Plans

The roads just outside of Tampico on the truck bypass route are terrible, full of large chuck holes. Then further on, we got into some road construction and heavy truck traffic which slowed us even more. But we got to the hotel by 4:45 PM just before sunset and had the grassy campsite all to ourselves.
On the first 330 mi we averaged 50 mph and the second leg of 130 mi, we only averaged 35 mph.

Friday morning we decided to sleep in and have a short 105 mi drive to the Emerald Coast. Well we should have left 5 minutes earlier. We left in a light on-off drizzle and on a winding hilly road the traffic stopped going in our direction. Then it stopped in both directions. I walked past the five cars in front of me and saw that a semi with a double trailer had slid off the road and partially down an embankment and a tow truck was trying to pull all of it back onto the road, blocking all the lanes. After an hour the traffic really backed up and a big semi following a police car passed everyone up and they then used that truck to also pull on the doble remolque. I couldn't believe it, but they not only pulled it back on the road but it drove away to the nearest truck repair. We no sooner got out of that traffic jam but hit another snag. Another truck going in the opposite direction crashed into a bridge railing and was totally destroyed.

Mexico Day 2 Map
We still got to Trailer Park de Alba at 11:15 AM. We have stayed down the road at Quinta Alicia in the past but saw this place on our beach walk 2 years ago and it looked better. We got a site next to the swimming pool overlooking the beach and have fast wireless internet service. It's early in the season so there are only about five other campers here. It looked like it was going to rain but the sun came out and we had a nice relaxing afternoon.