2012 Mexican Roadtrip Torreón to Zacatecas, Zac., Mexico

We left Torréon at around 10 am and had a little trouble getting out of town. Garmin's directions didn't agree with Google's. Zacatecas is 409 km from Torréon and we arrived at around 3 p.m. in the afternoon.

When we got to the Autopista 40 (to 49D), a toll road, it was excellent and there was practically no one on it. Out of town we saw sand mountains and some irrigated farming land with corn growing. The sand mountains around Torréon had light green vegetation on them. There was also the flat cactus that is called nopal. It is good to eat as a vegetable and Dimitri liked it because it gets gushy like okra.

Our total tolls to Zacatecas were M$220 or about US$16, reasonable for such great roads. We’ve noticed that the towns we’ve seen in Mexico look like third world but the infrastructure of roads is much higher than that. The roads have signs saying "Ruta Bicentenario" or "Ruta Independencia". Evidently before the 200th anniversary of the beginning of the war of independence against Spain the Mexican federal government began a massive public works program, building roads and so on. That would have alleviated, to some extent, the terrible effect of the US economic meltdown. How smart, why didn't the USA do that?

When we  got to hwy 40 (without the D) it was 2-lane and had more trucks. Our next road was Highway 45 and it was divided with 4 lanes and very good. We started seeing scrubby bushes, mesquite, maguey (agave or century plant), grasses, holm oaks and pines. It was in the 70’s most of the way to Zacatecas and we were at about 2175 m.

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