VISIONAIRES
Zacatecas: Live To Fight Another Day
For those interested... just updated my Skip Hunt Vagabond travel blog with fresh text and photos from Zacatecas, Mexico
"At what point do you cut and run? I was so Hell bent & committed to making good distance away from Puerto Vallarta before I slipped into even more days of lazy balmy leisure… that I just kept telling myself that the black cloud mass would just “burn off” like JR speculated. But, it got just got darker and darker. Even still, I told myself that it would likely just be a quick summer storm and I’d pop out the other side of it in a matter of minutes. And, that it’d likely just be a welcome and refreshing shower that would make the rest of the ride a little more delightful.
I was wrong.
The two-lane from Puerto Vallarta towards Zacatecas is actually a pretty cool road in good condition that ascends through thick jungle foliage. It whips back and forth through sharp technical curves with no shoulder at all. The only problem is that this road is congested with buses, cars, semi-trucks, and local motorbikes. You’re constantly leap-frogging around blind curves or doomed to crawl at a snail’s pace behind a semi truck inhaling huge plumes of diesel exhaust as you climb up and up.
Imagine you’re focused on the road curves and obstacles while managing as best you can… trying not to get creamed by someone behind you trying to skip their turn in the leap-frog game, or you timing your blind-curve pass wrong and becoming a gooey smear on the front of a bus flying down the mountain with a full load of tourists all excited about long week of basking in Puerto Vallarta’s moist romance. Now imagine this scenario darkened with heavy black cloud, gusting wind and giant tropical raindrops falling as your vision is obscured down to almost nothing. You try to maintain constant speed so as not to lose traction and thus squashed by the truck driver behind you who likely can’t see well either.
You decide that perhaps you should give up, pull over and seek shelter. But, guess what? There’s nowhere to get shelter and not even a shoulder to pull over on. You’re locked in and have to look death in the face as he laughs at your bull headed decision to ignore all of the clues that would be perfectly clear to any other sane person. The clear-cut that one should have paid heed to all of the available intelligence that forging ahead was a very bad idea.
Lesson learned, but now I’m stuck and have to stay focused and not panic. It seemed like an eternity, but the worst of it was only a couple hours. After that, it calmed down to a light right for the next hour or so and had stopped about the time I’d entered Guadalajara."
To continue reading the rest of "Zacatecas: Live To Fight Another Day" and see fresh photos that go with this entry, go here: http://skiphuntvagabond.tumblr.com
Hasta,
Skip
"At what point do you cut and run? I was so Hell bent & committed to making good distance away from Puerto Vallarta before I slipped into even more days of lazy balmy leisure… that I just kept telling myself that the black cloud mass would just “burn off” like JR speculated. But, it got just got darker and darker. Even still, I told myself that it would likely just be a quick summer storm and I’d pop out the other side of it in a matter of minutes. And, that it’d likely just be a welcome and refreshing shower that would make the rest of the ride a little more delightful.
I was wrong.
The two-lane from Puerto Vallarta towards Zacatecas is actually a pretty cool road in good condition that ascends through thick jungle foliage. It whips back and forth through sharp technical curves with no shoulder at all. The only problem is that this road is congested with buses, cars, semi-trucks, and local motorbikes. You’re constantly leap-frogging around blind curves or doomed to crawl at a snail’s pace behind a semi truck inhaling huge plumes of diesel exhaust as you climb up and up.
Imagine you’re focused on the road curves and obstacles while managing as best you can… trying not to get creamed by someone behind you trying to skip their turn in the leap-frog game, or you timing your blind-curve pass wrong and becoming a gooey smear on the front of a bus flying down the mountain with a full load of tourists all excited about long week of basking in Puerto Vallarta’s moist romance. Now imagine this scenario darkened with heavy black cloud, gusting wind and giant tropical raindrops falling as your vision is obscured down to almost nothing. You try to maintain constant speed so as not to lose traction and thus squashed by the truck driver behind you who likely can’t see well either.
You decide that perhaps you should give up, pull over and seek shelter. But, guess what? There’s nowhere to get shelter and not even a shoulder to pull over on. You’re locked in and have to look death in the face as he laughs at your bull headed decision to ignore all of the clues that would be perfectly clear to any other sane person. The clear-cut that one should have paid heed to all of the available intelligence that forging ahead was a very bad idea.
Lesson learned, but now I’m stuck and have to stay focused and not panic. It seemed like an eternity, but the worst of it was only a couple hours. After that, it calmed down to a light right for the next hour or so and had stopped about the time I’d entered Guadalajara."
To continue reading the rest of "Zacatecas: Live To Fight Another Day" and see fresh photos that go with this entry, go here: http://skiphuntvagabond.tumblr.com
Hasta,
Skip
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