Forums > General > Traveling Mexico

chinagringo

Oct 6, 2009, 5:40 PM

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There May be Hope

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That one of the greatest impediments to driving in Mexico may be modified:
http://www.usatoday.com/...-05-speedbumps_N.htm

After our most recent trip, I swore that Michoacan was the State of Topes! In fact, I planned to install a counter of my steering wheel prior to our next trip to count the damned things!
Regards,
Neil
Albuquerque, NM

(This post was edited by Rolly on Oct 6, 2009, 6:36 PM)

Hound Dog

Oct 6, 2009, 7:30 PM

Post #2 of 9 (3370 views)

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Re: [chinagringo] There May be Hope

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You are dreaming CG. There is ZERO chance that this program will succeed beyond the stage where some corrupt officiaLs take home big bucks and even if it lasts a full six months, it will be a memory only you and the corrupt officials who made millions on this standing joke will remember.

Dream on MacDuff.

(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Oct 7, 2009, 6:02 AM)

tashby

Oct 6, 2009, 8:33 PM

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Re: [chinagringo] There May be Hope

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I actually sorta like topes.....

Hound Dog

Oct 7, 2009, 6:18 AM

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Re: [tashby] There May be Hope

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Well, Tashby, to challenge your love affair with topes I recommend you drive from San Cristóbal de Las Casas to Palenque via Ocosingo which route has countless topes many of which are extremely high, narrow, dangerous, unmarked and located in each belligerent village along the way - some even in the open countryside. We have driven this beautiful highway several times and it is worth the incovenience but one reason I was kidding CG about these fancy new topes is because the state authorities are not about to go into these villages and mandate anything much less mechanical topes and even if they did the fancy new topes would be stolen overnight immediately unless, of course, the villagers could figure out how to modify them to make a peso with a coin slot. Who´s to say who is right or wrong. If there were no topes, outsiders would drive right through the hearts of these crowded villages at breakneck speed without any respect for the villagers or, even more importantly, their children, whatsoever. They are probably doing us all a favor because the last thing you want to do, fellow traveler, is run over an indian or his/her children or drunk uncle in an indian village in Chiapas ruled by local indian law.

Because of the huge number of topes, this relatively short drive takes at least 4 1/2 hours but man does it pass through splendid countryside.

belgique

Oct 7, 2009, 8:17 AM

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Re: [chinagringo] There May be Hope

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A serious question: how do emergency vehicles deal with topes? Gotta be a rough ride in an ambulance...or maybe they just don't rush and you'd better hang on if you're sick/hurt/house on fire.

chinagringo

Oct 7, 2009, 12:50 PM

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Re: [Hound Dog] There May be Hope

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Bubba:
Should you return to and read my original post - I used the word "may" twice. Knowing that someone as all knowledgeable as yourself would be making comment required that I choose my words carefully! Given the shear numbers of topes in MX, this company might provide an interesting investment opportunity. The again, probably not in view of your long term projection.

While I can grasp the need to slow traffic down in villages, towns and cities - does it really require six or eight of them in a row to get the drivers attention? In our travels around Michoacan in August, we had the opportunity to enjoy the countryside from the various back roads but constantly keeping an eye out for topes out in the middle of nowhere required way too much attention to the roads for me the driver. I would much rather be concentrating on the scenery.
Regards,
Neil
Albuquerque, NM

Hound Dog

Oct 7, 2009, 4:23 PM

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Re: [chinagringo] There May be Hope

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Neil, my internet amigo:

Dawg was not attacking you but was gleefully taking the opportunity you provided with the tope technical "breakthrough" to amuse myself. We have lived in Mexico long enough to know that it is the land of auspicious beginnings and no followup (the first part of that comment having been stolen from Jack Nicholson´s Five Easy Pieces filmed back in the 1970s as memory serves me which it doesn´t).

Topes are a way of life here in Mexico as both you and I know and, as I indicated in my response, much of the reason for that has to do with the Mexican propensity to scoff at the law - especially traffic law as well as the lack of speed limit enforcement geberally speaking. That´s just the way it is here as I am sure you are aware. The indigenous villagers in Chiapas are very practical about this. If you do not slow down and keep your eyes on the road they arrange to break your axle with a tope from hell.

Studies published in the national press some five years ago estimated that topes cost the national economy billions of pesos a year in all sorts of auto repairs from compromised undercarraiges to tires to wheel repair. It is a damned shame but I guess we have to compare the value of countless axles against the value of one kid´s life - not to sound melodramatic but that´s the game in Mexico and some other Latin nations and you should see the Africa Dawg hitchhiked in in the 1960s. There, hired drivers chauffeuring you about the countryside will race through villages at high speed and if they run over someone it´s your fault because had you not hired him he would not have run over the pedestrian.

About 1995, my wife´s sister and her husband from Paris and we were driving through an apricot orchard in Capitol Reef National Park in Utah from our home in San Francisco when we came upon an apricot orchard in the park in which they were selling beautifully ripe apricots on an honor system with no one in charge at that point which featured a table with a coin box and scale and a written admonition that, while one could take all the then ripe apricots one desired, one should weigh the apricots taken and pay whatever the posted price was by placing one´s money in that box which had a slot on the top. My French brother in law cracked up to the point of tears. He told us he would never understand the United States.

His comment:

"In France, if you sold orchard fruit by an honor system with no one standing by in charge, displaying a table, scale and sign requesting you to pay for any apricots you took on your honor, passersby would not only take whatever apricots they desired to take but they would steal the table and the scale and all the money left by others who came along before them."

My brother in law and my wife´s sister are deeply honorable people but in France or Spain one simply does not do this. I don´t think we are in Kansas anymore.

(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Oct 8, 2009, 5:13 AM)

wendy devlin

Oct 7, 2009, 4:31 PM

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Re: [belgique] There May be Hope

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In Reply To

A serious question: how do emergency vehicles deal with topes? Gotta be a rough ride in an ambulance...or maybe they just don't rush and you'd better hang on if you're sick/hurt/house on fire.

(This post was edited by wendy devlin on Oct 7, 2009, 4:38 PM)

Hound Dog

Oct 7, 2009, 4:54 PM

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Re: [Hound Dog] There May be Hope

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About 1995, my wife´s sister and her husband from Paris and we were driving through an apricot orchard in Capitol Reef National Park in Utah from our home in San Francisco when we came upon an apricot orchard in the park in which they were selling beautifully ripe apricots on an honor system with no one in charge at that point which featured a table with a coin box and scale and a written admonition that, while one could take all the then ripe apricots one desired, one should weigh the apricots taken and pay whatever the posted price was by placing one´s money in that box which had a slot on the top. My French brother in law cracked up to the point of tears. He told us he would never understand the United States.

His comment:

"In France, if you sold orchard fruit by an honor system with no one standing by in charge, displaying a table, scale and sign admonisioning you to pay for any apricots you took, passersby would not only take whatever apricots they desired to take but they would steal the table and the scale and all the money left by others who came along before them."

My brother in law and my wife´s sister are deeply honorable people but in France or Spain one simply does not do this. I don´t think we are in Kansas anymore.

Wait; the story is not over:

I was driving on this Utah touring trip from San Francisco and I and my wife and her sister and brother-in-law, all of whom except Dawg are Parisians by upbringing, approached the California border from Nevada from Truckee near the conclusion of our roadtrip and, as is typical of California at all state border crossings, there was an agricultural inspection station as makes sense since it is such an important agricultural state which had just had a terrible fruit fly plague - a fact unknown to my French relatives. We were pulled over by the agricultural border inspection official and the following dialogue ensued:

INSPECTOR: Do you have any fruit aboard?
FRENCH PASSENGERS IN UNISON: nooooo!!!
MORONIC ALABAMA REDNECK NATIVE DRIVER: Why, yes officer, we have some apricots.
OFFICER: Where were the fruits grown?
REDNECK MORON: Utah.
OFFICER: Well that´s too bad. Had the apricots been grown in Nevada (adjacent to Utah) there would have been no problem but since you have, by your own admission, brought these apricots from Utah, we must confiscate them.
FRENCH PASSENGERS: (Anticipating French apricot tart they had planned to cook up upon our return to San Francisco and now gone with the wind): Idiot! Why did Brigitte marry this moron in the first place?
REDNECK DRIVER: Well thank you officer for doing your duty.

Further dialogue inconsequential as silence reigns all the way from Truckee to San Francisco, a much longer distance than you might imagine under normal circumstances.

THE END

Now, while it may appear that this story has nothing to do with Mexico, that is incorrect and the reason I am telling that story on this thread is because it is critical for readers to know the attitudes of certain latin cultures toward the law. Once you get that you will understand topes in Mexico.

(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Oct 7, 2009, 9:06 PM)