March 16 - CIUDAD VICTORIA

We drove to Ciudad Victoria and camped at Hotel Hacienda Escondido.  $100 pesos for the night with sewer no water or electricity although it is available but only in back-in sites and we wanted pull through.  (This means we want to be in the open field not on the edge of the field).  We were stopped and "inspected" at a station just before the city.  Two guys, one with a very friendly chatty attitude and a machine gun came into the RV.  One looked around while the other with the gun mostly wanted to know about Kirk.  I told him "mi perro no es peligroso".  He laughed.  He also asked if the jar of Pretzel Pub Mix was Kirk's food.  Cam told him no that was for his esposa.  The guy had a big smile over that one.

We drove though the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains today, very beautiful.  Very green and lots of trees,  many in flower.  The organ cactus were blooming with large pink flowers.  We also drove through some incredibly desolate countryside where even the cacti wouldn't grow.  The highways were unbelievably great, better than the transcanada in many places.  The drive down from the mountains into Ciudad Victoria was steep and long with semis barely crawling up while we zoomed down.  The following photos are in order of the drive.

started out early leaving Villa Hidalgo 

scrubland with cacti and Yucca trees

small homes along the highway

Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains and a Superhighway

large scale greenhouse

not so large scale agriculture, gathering feed

gauchos

mud brick homes

a cactus fence along a village

gorgeous country, photos don't capture it

lots of flowering shrubs, cacti, poppies, wild sunflower, etc

large orchard in the distance probably oranges

Tropic of Cancer

gathering feed, wonder where that road goes

then we began the descent down

beautiful canyons

and down...

and ever downward

The crawl back up these mountains must be excruciating for truckers.  They were barely moving upwards.  Meanwhile we saw 2 fresh runaway truck accidents on the way down, nothing too serious just rolled over sideways against the slope of the mountain against the road.   Also a lot of old truck bones along the road from previous mishaps.  The road is amazing so this must be mainly due to being overly zealous or poor brake maintenance.  Or both.  

Prickly poppy

had our choice of spots

This campsite was right next to a police training centre with a lot of trainees jogging around, also great security.

sunflower

barrel cactus

274 Km.