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Trip Report: Ajijic to Pharr, TX


Mainecoons

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Drove from Ajijic to Pharr, TX on Sunday. Used the same route with one change, drove straight on 80 at the end of the new cuota from Lagos de Moreno to Villa Arriaga.

The first part of the road is as good as the cuota itself. About 5 klics from the end of the cuota there is a very nice roadside service center with gasoline, very nice store and fast food area and bathrooms.

However, when you come to the end of the good part, the game changes drastically, the road becomes narrow, windy and rough in spots. There are very few passing opportunities but it trends down hill so traffic moves OK, even trucks. We went through several small towns before coming to a much larger one which apparently holds its Tianquis on Sunday so it was a chore wading through that.

Finally popped out on the south side, went straight across a big roundabout as the directions indicate, then two traffic lights and after that it became a primitive freeway. Tons of traffic. We kept following the signs to Matehuala and that worked fine going through all the interchanges.

Emerged on the north side of town. It seemed as it would be a fairly quick run to the rejoining with Ruta 57 north of town until we came to this one area that just had dozens of the smaller, car rattling topes and they were putting more in! It is the absolute pits and it goes on for several miles.

We may have saved at most 10-15 minutes going this way, and about $14 in tolls but it was a lot of work for the driver and hard on the car with all those topes. I can't recommend this route unless you just want to sight see some but I sure wouldn't suggest it going the other direction because that very curvy road going uphill is sure to find you trailing behind a truck at 10-15 kph for many miles.

A compromise might be to use it northbound but use the standard route going the other way.

We had hoped to avoid much of the traffic as we arrived there by 10AM on a Sunday morning but that definitely was not the case. I would expect it would be pretty difficult later in the day when everyone is out.

I agree the long way around, using the south and then the east bypass is longer and the south bypass is a pretty poor road as well, but I still would recommend it over the direct route for most drivers.

Nothing much else to report. We hit rain outside of San Luis Potosi and it rained almost all the way to Pharr. There were police and military checkpoints everywhere, I counted at least 8, far more than we've encountered on previous trips. There has been substantial improvement of Ruta 101 south of Ciudad Victoria and on the mountain crossing right out of town as well.

It took exactly 10 hours 40 minutes from Ajijic. The rain definitely slowed us down.

As a footnote, the massive construction in Texas on I35 north of Georgetown continues. Traffic moved well but it was sunny and dry. It will take years to finish this 50 or 60 miles of construction. Only one new section was opened since our trip 6 months ago.

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