January 20 - Tuna

I drove my buddy back to Bucerias Wednesday afternoon, and on the return trip to La Peñita, found myself with a rare opportunity.  Normally, I almost welcome the heavy trucks and often slow, slow traffic through the mountains, as it gives you a chance to look around and appreciate the stunning beauty of the area.  This time, however, I had both, no passengers whose lives I'd be risking, and no spouse along, to advise me on the error of my driving decisions.  Traffic was light, going north on Highway 200 through the mountains north of Puerto Vallerta, and I was following three luxury class buses.  These buses are the top predators in the highway traffic hierarchy, powerful, fast, and aggressively driven, the better to stay on tight schedules, and usually, I'd never seen more of them than the roar and flash as they bulled past.  I had never had the opportunity to stay with them in Mexican traffic, to better see them in action (see above)  With three of them, the natural competition between drivers was resulting in a breath-taking pace, as the highway wound through the jungle mountains, two lanes of good pavement, no shoulders, lots of rock faces, and vegetation overhanging the road, resulting in tight, blind, steeply ascending and descending 270 degree corners.
Alrighty then.
My basic premise was that the CRV should be able to make it around any corner at a pace that the bus could, that I should be able to out-brake the buses, should surprises occur, and that having three buses clearing the road ahead of me should minimize the chances of blind corner surprises, like over-turned trucks, or donkeys pulling carts (or at least the multiple bus momentum would clear it down the road far enough to let me stop first).  I was correct, just.  The buses run this route to Guadalajara continuously, so the drivers know every corner.  They follow the old Sterling Moss adage, "If you're not braking, you should be accelerating".  The trip was a thing of beauty.  Traffic was light, so the pace was seldom balked for long.  The trick was to stay close enough to the tail of the last bus to know the exact entry speed of the next blind corner, and to also keep the gap small enough that impatient drivers in oncoming traffic didn't dart out in front of you in a head-on semi-suicidal attempt to pass.  The trip was ten and fifteen minute segments of flow concentration, separated by brief relaxations as the train of buses slowed to crawl over a run of topes taming traffic through pueblos, and then on again.  Suddenly, we were in Rincon.  It was (and likely, will remain) the quickest trip I've made to town.  I have a lot of respect for the skill and professionalism of the bus drivers who hump those beasts through traffic, and over hill and dale.

On another note, one of the boats from the park got 13 tuna today.