So, which Spanish word do you think we have said the most since entering Mexico?  Buenos Dias?  Good guess, it means good morning, and when we are walking around we say it to everyone we meet, but that is not it.

Mas?  Also a good guess.  It means “more” and in Spanish they do not have comparative and superlative forms of adjectives, so you use mas instead.  (Note:  I am still in the very early stages of learning Spanish, so there are no guarantees that anything I say about the language is accurate, it is only my initial impression.)   For example, in English we say “cold”, “colder” and “coldest”, in Spanish you would say “frio” and “mas frio” (cold and more cold), so yes, we say mas a lot, but still not the right guess.

Is it muy?  Muy means “very”, and in our grade one level vocabulary, we use it a lot.  Everything is muy bueno (very good), locals talk muy rapido (very fast) or is it muy mas frio (very more cold)…you get the point, but muy also is not the word I am looking for.

Okay, the Spanish word we say most often down here is tope!  Pronounced “Toe-Pay!”  And usually with the exclamatory intonation!

Tope is the spanish word for what we would call a speed bump, and they are everywhere here;  in towns, at a stop light, in the middle of nowhere and sometimes for reasons beyond our comprehension.  And if you hit them at any speed at all it feels like the camper lifts right out of the camper box!  We know, we have hit a few unseen topes way faster than we would have liked.  They are hard to see, seem to always be in the shadows of trees, and as I stated above, often in unexpected places.  So, we have a little ritual that we do when driving;  when either of us see an oncoming tope, we shout out “TOE-PAY!”, so that we both know that the driver has seen the oncoming hump in the road.

Okay, those were painted yellow so fairly easy to see…many are not.

There are a few other interesting details about driving in Mexico.

First, what would you guess it means if the driver in front of you has his left hand turn signal flashing?  Is it that he is about to pass another driver?  Is it that he is turning left?  Is it that the automatic signal canceller is not working?

Most of the time, but definitely not always, it means that it is safe for YOU to pass HIM!  But, it could be any of the above as well.

Speaking of passing, they have an interesting system down here on the bigger roads.  A typical two lane highway would have lines painted down the middle, a normal sized lane on either side of the lines, and a paved shoulder that is about half the width of a normal lane.  When you want to pass, you pull out and drive with the centre line under the middle of your vehicle, and both oncoming traffic and the vehicles in front of you pull over and drive on the shoulder while you pass between them down the centre line…..took us a while to figure this one out!

The other thing we have noticed, is that any time there is a traffic jam, everyone puts on their hazard lights.  Not sure why…here we are, all crawling along at 10km per hour, and everyone has their hazards flashing….not wanting to stand out from the crowd, we have started to put our hazards on too, but we have yet to figure out the purpose of it when you are stuck in the middle of a huge traffic jam.

All in all, the driving hasn’t been too bad yet.  The topes reduce traffic speed allowing you to enter a busy road without the need of traffic lights, the drivers seem very good at taking turns in unmarked intersections, and many of the roads are in very good shape.  I say this having observed the driving conditions mostly from the passenger seat.  I have driven a bit in Mexico, but Derek has driven about 99% of the time.  We find that I am less stressed looking after all of our digital devices that we use while driving (SPOT GPS device, Google maps navigation on the phone, dash cam camera which continues to be a source of frustration), and Derek is less stressed driving the truck.  He refers to my role of looking after all the digital devices to being similar to “herding a bunch of three-legged, blind cats, with dementia, on a work-to-rule campaign, but for which they have forgotten why”.

Here’s a little video we took when driving through the town of Quiroga…very busy little town.  I have sped the video up to shorten the playback time…..busy, chaotic, unpredictable…..

Here’s another video of a rough road we drove….definitely one of the worst of the paved roads we have been on.  I like to call this video “Just Drive Wherever the *%#@ You Want!”….also sped up to reduce run time.

We have been stopped a few times by the police, but so far they have all been pleasant experiences.  Once the policeman just wanted to ask where we were from and shake our hands.  Another time they wanted to see what we had for “cargo” in the camper, but I think they really just wanted to see what it looked like inside.  I am sure we will experience the “shake-down” that police in Latin America are so famous for, but as of yet, no problemo.