We spent the night in Guyamas, camping at the Totonaka RV Park. The park was completely empty – so we each had 2 showers and 2 toilets to ourselves. The park is located just by the ocean, but there was no cool breeze all night and the temperature stayed above 31°C. We slept for only 4 hours in total – after which our pillows were soaked in sweat. We got up at 6:00am to do some laundry, take a shower (pointless really) and then find a bank, a supermarket and a petrol station. We managed to do all of that and then headed out to ‘Basaseachi’ to see the waterfalls close to the ‘Copper Canyon’. As the laundry was not completely dry, we transformed the car to a dryer once more.
As it would be a long drive today (more than 600 kilometres), Patrick though it would be great to have a cup of coffee in the car as part of the morning drive. Marijke got out of the car and got a coffee from ‘Oxxo’, the Mexican equivalent of ‘Café Bonjour’ next to a Total petrol station. The coffee was terrible – too sweet and creamy. In order to make that point, Marijke dropped the coffee (in a moving car) and blessed our paperwork and her own purse with bad coffee. At least that took care of the coffee. At this point, we knew it would be a strange day!
Driving up to Hermosillo took us about an hour, after which we took highway 16 heading east to the ‘Copper Canyon’. After about 15 minutes, a police car pulled up next to us and told us to move to the side of the road. The police officer went on to explain in perfect Spanish that we were driving 80 miles per hour instead of 80 kilometres per hour. This is of course not true, as Rodrigo is only capable of those speeds downhill! Patrick gave the police officer a copy of his driving license – and Marijke began to call the officer’s bluff armed with her phrasebook! We were told to head down to the police station and pay the 1,000 pesos fine (about 60 euro)… or (after some time) to pay ‘something on the spot’. Now we were determined not to pay anything – and after we completely forgot how to speak any Spanish the officer got bored and let us go.
The rest of the drive was through beautiful green mountains – with sharp turns but not so many cars on the road. We crossed a military checkpoint where we had to get out of the car and a (very) young soldier searched the car for a few minutes. Everything was okay so we could continue. We started seeing some rain clouds as well at that point so we considered stopping in another town called ‘Yécora’. There was a security check at the town entrance, but no concern for us as we were waved through.
We looked for a campsite but did not find anything – and at the petrol station they did not know of any camping. So we found a hotel with a secluded parking and stopped for the night. Half an hour after we arrived, the rain started pouring down! Luckily it wasn’t raining inside the hotel room although we do have a water leak from the sink which put the toilet in the middle of a water pool. Marijke cleaned it up and we put a bucket under the leak to avoid waking up in a swimming pool. Oh well, at least we have a place to stay for the night.
Tomorrow we continue our way to Basaseachi!
Karma police, arrest this man,
He talks in mouth, he buzzes like a fridge
He’s like a detuned radio
Keep Calm and Drive South 
High five with the way you have dealt with the police officer, I can already see some corruptions in their police force, remember you can never be too careful
🙂 Indeed! Today we met a very friendly one (he also happens to run a taco bar on the side of the road). So it gives us confidence that there are also honest people in the police force.