More Road to La Carrera Panamericana

Yesterday we left San Miguel late with the goal of getting through the center of Mexico City sometime after midnight. Only at that time of night was the traffic going to be light enough for us to hope to stay together as a convoy. Pretty much as soon as we set off, this leg of the trip was trouble. We ran into a cloudburst with all of the convoy driving trucks and trailers on slippery windy roads while the traffic picked up around us. Then the third truck in line lost the head of the convoy at a Y in the road, leaving about 20 vehicles without official guidance. Mexico City is a dangerous city so none of us were particularly happy with the idea of attempting to find our own way. Luckily, one of the members of the convoy had a Mexican Mechanic with them who lived in Mexico City and took over the leadership.

Before long we got pulled over by the Federales. There are roads in Mexico City that you are not allowed to drive trucks with trailers on. The convoy had special permission to drive on those roads, but that permission didn’t filter down to the guys in the police cars, so we all got pulled over. That Mexican Mechanic once again proved to be worth his weight in gold.

Mexico City was still not over. It’s home to 30 million people, though luckily most of them were not on the road after midnight. The cloudburst that had hit the convoy earlier had also hit the city and on one of the roads the sewers had flooded to about a foot deep.

Which wouldn’t have been so bad if we weren’t passed by a bus at about 40mph as we attempted to creep through it. The truck is now the worst smelling vehicle ever. At least The Elise was in an enclosed trailer. In some ways it’s almost a blessing that the honeymoon couple in the Volvo broke down just after leaving San Miguel. The car was not exactly waterproof and I seriously doubt a marriage can survive 8 days in a car that’s been washed out with raw sewage.

And still Mexico City went on.

Today, the run from Puebla outside Mexico city to Veracruz on the gulf of Mexico was a piece of cake. Only about 4 hours of driving through some amazing mountain roads. We’ll be competing in these roads on the way back out. The roads were so nice that we got the Elise out for the final stretch into town.

Of course as a result we got lost again.

I will tell you right now that a truck and trailer combination is even harder to drive through the center of a Mexican Market than it was on the cobble streets of San Miguel. At least market stalls are soft and don’t damage the trailer.

I have a better idea of what I’ve got myself into with this event. There is a documentary available through Google video (search for La Carrara Panamericana) that was taken on last year’s event. It’s in French as the driver they are following is French, but still well worth taking a look.

Two days into tech and registration and we are done. We’ve been standing around in a Costco parking lot for 2 days doing all we needed to do to be able to run in this race, everything from having blood pressure sorted out to shelling out 250 bucks for a Mexican driving license. The only thing that made the heat bearable was the collection of old cars around us. The smallest entry is not the Elise, but a classic Mini. The largest entry is a Buick Regal (I think). It is my personal goal to beat that Buick. I hate being beaten by Buick Regals.

As part of registration the car got fitted with a GPS receiver. It should be possible to track our progress from the official website (www.lacarrerapanamericana.com.mx) as the race progresses. We are car 500.

The car has been hand painted by a local in about 2 hours flat. It has our names on it and some other stuff. Go over to Rachel’s blog http://www.mil0.com/blog/ for pictures of it and other stuff.

Our car is also signed by Coop. We had the poor guy lying under the front of the Elise taping it up to hope to hold it together over some of the killer speed bumps. How cool is that?