Zacatecas

The road to Zacatecas took us through some of the sparsest terrain that we’d encountered so far. The 200 mile journey was almost entirely through flat semi-desert, with gentle hills and mountains in the distance; the long straight sections could just as easily been in the American mid-west. It wasn’t until we were on the doorstep of Zacatecas that we encountered any serious grades again. We headed straight for the more central of the two Hotel de Bosque RV parks listed in the Church and Church book. Both of the hotels are well signposted from a long way out of town, but anyone else looking for them should note that they have changed their name to Hotel Baruk.

The site that we headed for is located on the high road that bounds the northern edge of the town centre; the hotel is in an extremely central location, and given how well presented it is, it is a miracle that they still have any space for RVs. When we arrived we immediately knew that there would be trouble. The entrance forks in two, with the left route passing under a structure which shades the entrance and concierge, and the right route leading directly into the parking area. The right route had been dug up to fix the paving, leaving only the left route which has less headroom than we need, and has an abrupt turn to avoid hitting a tree. The hotel staff did not want us to drive over the section being repaved and so we had no choice but to turn around and head to the other branch, three miles or so out of town. Unfortunately the drive down to the hotel is extremely steep, and not being able to access the car park to turn around, we were forced to reverse up the drive until a point at which we could turn around.

With only 6 forward gears, Jim is not the best geared truck in the world, but on the whole the ratios work well; Jim was originally designed as an urban and trunking truck and was not specified with options for heavy haulage or extreme grades. The problem I discovered on the access road down to Hotel Baruk, was that Mercedes had chosen to gear reverse higher than 1st. This wouldn’t have been a problem if I could have turned around, but without this option I was forced to reverse up the drive in the equivalent of 2nd gear. The only way I could make any progress was to rev the engine until the red line with the clutch down, and let the clutch out quickly, at which point I would jump backwards and start slowing immediately as Jim ran out of power to maintain the revs. I had to do this three times until I could turn around and crawl upwards in a more suitably ratioed first gear. Not a kind manoeuvre on the clutch but I had no alternative.

The Hacienda Baruk branch of the hotel, slightly further out of town, is a nice building and grounds, and is not a huge way out of town by RV park standards, but since it was built it has been penned in by a huge freeway and off ramp, and is now just an island in a sea of tarmac and railway. It’s a loud and ugly vista from the parking lot, and if it wasn’t for the swimming pool, and regular bus service into town we probably would only have stayed one night. The parking lot is less than 10 metres from a six lane road and is probably less than 20 metres from a well-used railway, light sleepers (a bracket which certainly doesn’t include me) will struggle at this site.

On our first day in Zacatecas we walked into town, and I honestly would not recommend any other travellers do the same. We walk pretty much everywhere that we can, and three miles is not a great distance, but the walk is completely miserable, along the hard shoulder of a six lane road, and then up a steep dusty road through an industrial area. The highlights of the walk were a cement works, several tyre repair yards, and a dead dog. The bus runs from just behind the hotel (under the bridge and on the other side of the railway), runs several times per hour, costs 6.5 Pesos, and takes ten minutes, I would suggest others staying at Hacienda Baruk use the bus rather than walk! We didn’t try with Boris, but we saw a passenger with a dog on the bus so I expect dogs are allowed at the drivers discretion.

Incidentally, taking the bus in Zacatecas is the perfect medicine for anyone worrying about annoying rattles or vibrations in their motorhome. We took several busses, and beyond 30mph all of them vibrated so badly that you’d swear that the wheels had been replaced with litter bins.

Zacatecas itself is a great place and it was a nice way to revitalise my interest in Mexican cities after seeing only Monterrey and Saltillo. The colonial centre remains almost completely untouched and it is full of interesting sites for enthusiastic tourists. The town centre itself is small enough to walk around with ease, but like all of Mexico’s mining cities the streets can be extremely steep. Zacatecas owes its great buildings to the lucrative silver mine under the city, and it is clear that some of the historic wealth remains in the city.

The city is overlooked by multiple hills, but the biggest and steepest of them, La Bufa, is worth a visit from anyone in town; there is a misplaced Swiss cable car for the lazy, but there is a beautiful pedestrian path to the top for anyone who want some exercise. I don’t want to start a competition but I’d swear the hill is steeper, if not as long, than that up to the Bastille in Grenoble. The chapel at the top is pretty, if not awe inspiring, but the view from the top is worth the slog on its own.

At the base of La Bufa, is the entrance to the silver mine which kick started Zacatecas’ development; One of the original levels is open to the public and it is worth the visit to see the way in which mineral seams were exploited in the 16th century. Another site that we visited was the Museo Rafael Coronel, The art and artefacts are interesting, but the star attraction is the huge collection of Mexican masks; they range from disturbing to hilarious and even after seeing more than 3000 of them I could still have carried on. The Rafael Coronel museum is located in the refurbished ruin of a former church and convent and the building and grounds are superb.

We spent four days in Zacatecas and we could certainly have spent longer there had we not been keen to make up for some of our earlier dawdling through Texas. On the day that we left I had decided to get one of Jim’s tyres looked at as it had been leaking air for some time. Jim’s tires are usually set at about 100 psi, and while five of the six tyres hold pressure well, one has been slowly dropping to 40 psi. We had been stopping to inflate the tyre every few days, but after enduring a couple of painfully slow Pemex air compressors I had decided to get the problem looked at.

Normally I would have gone to one of the multitude of vulcanizadores (tyre repair/patching places), but the problem tyre was the one nearest the brake disc on the side that I had had trouble with, and I suspected that the problem was with the valve and not with the tyre. I took Jim to a well-equipped tyre shop, largely dealing in Michelin and Goodyear tyres for heavy trucks and mining equipment. They quickly removed the wheel from the truck, and the tyre from the wheel, and established that the heat from the brake had melted the O-ring which seals the valve stem to the wheel rim. Unfortunately the commercial vehicle wheels common in Mexico are slightly different from their European counterparts and the replacement valve stem which the technicians tried to use did not fit properly. I watched several guys huddled around Jim’s wheel scratching their heads before somebody came over to explain the problem. The old valve stem had been butchered getting it out of the wheel due to 11 years of dirt and rust, and so the only option was to grind a tiny section of the wheel out to allow the new valve stem to fit properly. The tyre shop did a tidy job, and the cost was negligible, but the problems had  turned a 20 minute job, into a two hour fiasco, and when the tyre was refitted and the wheels bolted back on, we were keen to get going.

With only a quarter of a tank of diesel left, I drove into a Pemex station before getting back on the freeway. Sadly this turned out to be another occasion where a 20 minute job turned out to take far longer than it should have. In America you pay for your fuel before dispensing it, in Mexico, as in Europe, you pay after the fuel has been pumped. At the first Pemex I had visited I had had no problem paying using my credit card, sadly this wasn’t the case this time around; after trying to pay the bill using 5 different credit/debit cards, I had to resort to getting a taxi into town so that I could get cash out using an ATM. I’m still confused as to why the cards worked at the ATM, but not at the Pemex, but I took it as a lesson learnt; the same could easily have happened at a remote filling station in the mountains, and the 60 pesos taxi fare could have been a lot higher. By the time we finally got onto the 45D heading south towards Guanajuato, it was 1:30pm and our aspirations for an early start had been thwarted.