We go through all these round about routes because we don't like driving across Mexico City. I say that first because today we really meandered through Estado de Mexico, Morelos and Puebla to avoid the really big city. We had to navigate through 3 pretty damn big cities to do it. Crossing Toluca is a hassle, no ring road from our direction so we went right through the middle. Next we had to find the small mountain road that cuts across to the next highway. In this area, all highways lead to Mexico City which meant they are all going east/west. We had to find our way between two east/west highways so we could continue west and catch another highway back east but with a branch to Puebla which is south of the big enchilada. Confusing, no? We were high in some beautiful pine forests, most of the day we were over 9000' and we topped out at 10,340' on our little mountain road. After that, we had to cross Cuernavaca, get on the road to Puebla and then navigate through that huge city.

Who knows if all this is worth it or not. We have driven across the DF (Mexico City is the Districto Federal much like Washington is the District of Columbia) but we planned our time and route pretty carefully. While the big circle we took today definitely takes longer, it is less stressful so probably worth it. You wouldn't believe that if you'd seen us when we couldn't figure out what street we were on in Puebla. Again we were coming from a direction that didn't have a ring road so we ended up driving through the centro of this huge city. We found the road out though and made it through. The GPS saves us in these situations because even if I can't find the street on the map, I can tell if we are heading the right way and we can eventually find the highway.

Right now we are stopped for dinner about 30 km south of Puebla, we are still over 7000' but within a few miles the road will start to drop and in a very short distance it will hit sea level. We're trying to decide if we want to spend one more night in the cool mountain air with our feather comforter or if we want to go on down the mountain to the warmth and humidity of the lowlands. We're parked at a nice, level Pemex but it looks like we are blocking some school buses that will probably want to leave at dark-thirty in the morning so we'll move on at least a little ways after dinner.

We moved on and just kept on moving, down the mountain from 8000' to about 2000'. This is one scary road on a good day and why we decided to keep going at night is beyond me. The actual road is in good condition, divided and with multiple lanes each way. It's what is just over that small guard rail that really spooks me. It's a loooong drop down and the road is steep for about 30 km. In fact, it drops around 5000' in that distance! Sometimes we do some stupid stuff and this is one of those times. Just after the last chance to back out of this downhill slalom, it got foggy. Then it got really, really foggy! As in the big semi truck in front of us disappeared when it got one car length ahead. I'm a bit of a fog expert, grew up on the Calif coast and drove through a lot of coastal fog and tule fog in my lifetime... this was as bad as I've ever been in. There were no places to stop and we wouldn't have stopped anyway, that is the most dangerous thing you can do in fog. If I hadn't been on this road in good weather I wouldn't have known about the many thousand foot drop just outside my window, perhaps ignorance would have been bliss. It was a white knuckle ride until about 4000' when the fog lifted and all I had to worry about were the brakes and the tiny lights twinkling so far below. It ended well and we promised each other we wouldn't do this kind of thing ever again. We stopped for the night about 30km from Veracruz at 2000' in elevation.

It's warm! and it's humid! The warmth is nice but the humidity will take awhile to get used to. It's been so dry for the last few months, from Alb to Denver to Guadalajara it's been high altitude and dry. We pulled off the down comforter and got out the fan.