DESCENT FROM 8000 FEET TO SEA LEVEL

Puebla was the last major destination for us in this trip. However, it would not be the most exciting. We knew we were on a high plateau, and that we would have to descend with our 16,000 pound home 8000 feet to sea level. What we did not know this morning was just how exciting (sweat!!) it was to be.
Here is the overall GPS track of the 167 mile drive. It would take us 11 hours to complete.

If you magnify it you will see that around Oriental we had to backtrack, and that as we approach the border between the states of Puebla and Veracruz in the high and rugged Sierra Madre Oriental, we really find out just how we will descend to Sea Level.

Details below. We start the descent from Puebla on an excellent highway. Here we are following the Wagon Master's motor home. We are descending here, but we will have to climb again.
At some point the Wagon Master invited a number of us to go ahead of him. The official caravan company trip journal indicated that there were few PEMEX gas stations in the route.

Alan Buie's 5th wheel and ours formed a small vanguard, with Buie leading, following the trip log directions. By the town of Oriental we were supposed to pick up a highway, but the trip log was in error, specifying that we take a right turn. At some point Buie in the lead begins to wonder when will we find the right turn. We look at our GPS and realize we are off-course.

At this point we turn our rigs around using a dirt road and we lead. The first order of business is to ask which way to the CUOTA (the toll road). I stop to ask (in Spanish of course) three different pedestrians. The last one was a taxi driver who told us to take a right at the next light and go 4 kilometers.

Then we see a few other RVs including Jim and Susan's Class C and Warner and Phoebe's Class B coming in the opposite direction, also lost, and we tell them to turn around and the instructions to the toll road. Our friends the Ahlgrens are in a small rig and agree to stay behind at the key corner to warn the rest of the caravan.

Once we take the turn we drive carefully looking for a big enough space for the entire caravan to park and fortunately find it in front of the Oriental town fair. Alan and we stop our rigs and monitor the CB to wait for the rest.

Once the Wagon Master arrives he gets ahead of all our rigs and sends his wife ahead to scout. She confirms that the CUOTA is ahead and we depart.

The trip is uneventful until we leave the CUOTA at the small town of Teziutlan.

The town streets are narrow and congested with traffic. Here is Buie's 5th wheel ahead.

The Wagon Master sends his wife scouting ahead, and we are still stuck in traffic when we hear on the CB that she is hopelessly lost in town. I hear a request from her to me to try to hire a cab to get us out. Of course our rig is locked in traffic following behind the Wagon Master, who by now is not responding to CB calls! I happen to see a taxi several vehicles ahead and get out of our truck to talk to him. The cab was full of passengers - not a surprise - and could not help us, but tells me that we just need to turn left at the T ahead and follow signs for Nautla.

I then find a traffic cop and ask him for help stopping traffic to help us negotiate the left turn at the T intersection ahead. He agrees. We all start making the very tight turn. I later learned that a number of the large motor homes picked up rashes from that passage.

But that was not all. Once we turned towards Nautla the street was being completely resurfaced and we had to drive our heavy rigs on soft dirt right next to the earth moving equipment. Look at the picture above to see it.

OK we breathed a sigh of relief when we finally left the town of Teziutlan. However, we now began to descend in earnest. The detailed GPS track above shows the many tight turns we took on the way down.
At first it was not too bad. Here we pass a small picturesque mountain town.
But soon we had our exhaust brake steady on, swooshing loudly, the engine RPM at 3000 near the red line of our turbo diesel to generate maximum braking from the exhaust brake, and the rig speed around the tight turns a little faster than we would have liked.
Here Warner and Phoebe in their small Class B were not sweating it as much as us behind them.

The turns continued steadily for at least the next 20 to 30 miles. By then we were in flatter and straighter roads in the lush tropical state of Veracruz.