Tough Day

Our day started out pretty good, the roads were great and the weather perfect. Everything was going just the way we wanted until 12:30. We were 37 kms from our destination when we were stopped east of Puebla.

The truckers reported to us that there was a major accident about 15 miles ahead. We were surprised at the use of miles instead of kilometres but took them at their word.

Two hours later we were still in the midst of the huge jam. We could see nothing but trucks ahead and back. We knew there was a good possibility that we would be spending most of the day [and maybe the night] right where we were.

After another hour or so we went for a walk and could see a turn off not far ahead. With the help of a couple of truckers we were able to manoeuvre between semis and hit the turn off. One trucker told us which way to go and how to get there.

It meant a lot of backtracking and we ran into some pretty poor roads but at least we were out of the jam. Fred estimated that the back log was at least 60 miles long.

We finally made it to Orizaba at 6:00 pm instead of our estimated 1:30 arrival. Long and tiring day!

At 8:30 Fred checked Live Google Earth and the jam was still there and miles long. Thank goodness for the truckers and their advice on what to do. They couldn't do what we did because the road we took was narrow, high up and had lots of hairpins [no guardrails, of course] along with tope after tope!