LOS MOCHIS
this morning i walked around downton los mochis for a bit. it was pretty quiet as it was during church. the ‘centro’ is very similar to all the other towns i’ve driven through…kina a mess…in fact, surprisingly similar to the mission district in san francisco. los mochis has a small, old park with a nice church across the street (still in use).

FEDERALES
next. i drove over to mazatlan…which is beautfiul and has incredible water. after cooling off for a bit, ushi and i were on our way to Tipec. Along the drive i followed some federales for a while, until i finally got enough guts to overtake them (…actually, they slowed down on the side and waved us by…even though we were all going 20-30km above the speed limit). so far, it seems that the police here get a bad rep. i saw some cars pulled over, but they were speeding….and a $50 bribe is still better than a $200 speding ticket + driving school in the US. (hopefully i won’t ever have to find out).

SENTRA TOP GEAR
it was along this stretch between mazatlan and tipec that i decided to try to keep up with the other cars….on the flat, i got the sentra up to 95mph, on the downhill up to 100mph. even though the speedometer goes up to 130….getting above 105 may be impossible, and the car starts shaking a lot above 85mph. the sad thing is the sentra couldn’t keep up with the other cars….no more speeding for a while.

SCENERY
the drive today was much different from yesterday’s desert/sahel-likr. between los mochis and mazatlan are literally hundreds of miles of corn farms along route 15…it must be the corn basket of mexico. the corn fields lead into the ocean at mazatlan and then into mango farms which lead into tropical-like trees in tepic. tepic is also much more tropical than any of the other cities thus far — it even rained here as i was driving in.

OTHER
-although poverty in mexico is bad, what’s even more shocking is the juxtaposition of the apparent wealth. Below are two pictures from mazatlan…one near the hotels @ the beach….the other 5 minutes away. the small dirt houses seem kinda quaint in the countryside….here it becomes shockingly apparent how dysfunctional the society is.
-toll roads are ridiculously expensive. they are typically every 50 miles and cost between $4 and $10. today, during my 400 mile drive, i spent over $50 on tolls.
-it’s funny to see signs for patagonia and costa rica…i’m always tempted to try them out.
-hotels and food (esp. supermarket) are so much cheaper than us/europe. gas and driving is more expensive than the us (but probably still cheaper than europe).