We got an early start from Oaxaca, heading north. The road was marked as a highway, and it was by Mexican standards. It started just above 5000 feet, and we crossed three ranges that were over 9000 feet. By the time the road started climbing, it deteriorated into rough pavement, sort of like a paved forest service road, and was as twisty as any road labeled “Old Highway $N” would be in the US.

It took us almost 5 hours to go the first 100 miles. We only stopped at the roadside a couple of times to give Tamara a motion sickness break- so it was basically 5 solid hours of riding.

At one point, the highway was closed down. Up ahead as a dark brown cloud of smoke. We were escorted off the highway, but couldn't figure out any alternatives. We finally took a town road parallel, which eventually petered out into a country road- first gravel, then dirt and silt. We took this until we intersected the highway, then roamed to find an opening through the barb wire fence so we could get back up onto the highway.

We didn't have any luck finding an opening, so we kept going down the country road. It ended in about a half mile. There were a couple of locals just standing there- thankfully, Tamara was able to communicate enough that they helped us by hopping on bicycles and taking us back to the highway approach.

We still couldn't figure it out, since it was gated, so another local walked us to the highway, then down into a sandy wash, and onto the other side. It was open! We got up on the highway and started heading back towards the main highway.

About a mile down the road, we ran across a fence and guard post. Basically, it was the end of the highway. We attempted to speak with the fellow, but ended up turning around because all we could figure was that we were at the end of the highway (yeah). We turned around and followed the little highway the other way, since we didn't have a choice.

Eventually it led us back to the main highway. We jumped back onto it and got going again. Amazingly, when we reached the next toll plaza, the highway was closed in the oncoming direction. There was at least two miles of backed-up traffic- and we were definitely the only vehicle going in our direction. We lucked out, since the little highway was just a stub road to the PEMEX farm (I'm guessing).