Why A Guidebook Is Worth It
You know, when I first went shopping for a guidebook in the bookstore, I was appalled at the prices; up to $50 for a single country. I, being a budget traveler and a cheapskate by nature, had determined never to buy one; however, before embarking on this most recent journey a friend insisted that I buy Lonely Planet: Mexico, promising it would be well worth it. Reluctantly I agreed, still unconvinced.
The first few days of the trip it didn’t save us a dime - although that may have been because we weren’t in Mexico yet, so maybe the guidebook wasn’t to blame for that… Anyway, as we crossed into Mexico at Laredo, Texas, I was mildly annoyed that the map of the town was so inadequate - it barely covered the downtown area and seemed to pay little attention to the needs of someone using Nuevo Laredo as a point of entry. But (having already spent the money anyway, and determined to get some use out of it now) I began perusing it’s pages during the rather desolate 2.5 hour drive to Monterrey from Nuevo Laredo (And no, I wasn’t the one driving), and then and there I became sold on the idea of a guidebook forever when I saw…
ROCK CLIMBING! YES! I had ALWAYS wanted to rock climb, and there was a small caption in my Lonely Planet guidebook on a place called “El Potrero Chico”, which described it as one of the world’s ten best places to learn rockclimbing, and referred me to a local website (www.elpotrerochico.com.mx), which showed some awesome pictures like this one…
(Actually, this is a picture I took from the front door of our room later, but… anyway… and so I decided then and there that I simply had to do this. They advertised rooms at only $25 a night (although since we had three people we paid $32), and so we determined to spend the night there. Of course, we still had to get past the 25 mile checkpoint….
Which proved to be… not only easy… but nonexistent. There wasn’t anyone to stop us! We just drove right past into Mexico, without let or hindrance, to paraphrase my passport. There was one we could see on the other lane (it was a divided highway), northbound, but nothing at all southbound. So finally we relaxed feeling that we were in Mexico for good and any problems wouldn’t show up until we left.
After a 2.5 hour drive through bleak and desolate, although at the same time stately and open range to Monterrey, we pulled out our guidebook and our Map of Mexico to find my rock-climbing destination of Hidalgo, a small town 30 minutes north of Monterrey, but on a different road than ours. To get to it we had to go almost all the way to Monterrey.
Incidentally, if you do go to Mexico and plan to drive around bring a map with you! Last fall I naively made the mistake of assuming that Mexicans had maps of their own roads - and perhaps they do, but I failed to find any decent ones. The ones I did finally find at great pains were inaccurate, and had roads on them that didn’t exist - which doesn’t help when navigating the already strange streets of Mexico! So I repeat - buy an American (or preferably, Swiss) map before you go. I did, it was expensive, but it was worth it!
Although, while the map I bought did a nice job on roads, it had no magnified maps of any cities, so there is still room for improvement; I’m saying all this now because it is my excuse for getting lost north of Monterrey 
Lost, as I said, but more than lost; we happened to arrive there in the rain. You wouldn’t think this to be a problem, but Monterrey has extremely poor drainage. And so the streets were flooded. We got there *just* at the evening rush hour (just lucky I guess), and so here we were - going down the highway into Monterrey when three lanes merge into two.
In front of us is a huge tractor trailer. Behind us a huge tractor trailer. On each side of us… that’s right… huge tractor trailer. We were literally boxed in on every side and with only a few inches clearance, had the truck in front slammed on his brakes at all, we would have been crumpled like a tin can. Needless to say, the more fainthearted among us preferred to close their eyes (luckily that didn’t include the driver).
And that, coupled with poor maps of the area, rain, and heavy traffic wasn’t enough - no, I have an even better excuse for not finding the right road to Hidalgo! Guess what it is. No, never mind, you can’t possibly guess. Pay close attention to this picture:
Notice anything … missing? Anything… important? Like, I don’t know, ROAD NUMBERS??? And so, suffice it to say that we took a wrong turn, wound up north of Monterrey on a different (but wrong) road, passed the prison (which was a cheerful place), the military post (another cheerful place) and after thirty minutes turned around and took a different (but still wrong) road back to Monterrey, where thanks to some surprisingly accurate directions I found the right road and made it to Hidalgo. Which was a relief, since it was getting dark.
El potrero chico was well marked from the main road, and we had no problems finding it. We arrived at the hotel, a charming little place…
I found the proprietor, a nice young man in his twenties, and after struggling for 15 minutes in spanish viewing the rooms, asking prices, talking about hiring a climbing guide, I discovered he spoke nearly perfect english. I can only imagine what he was thinking for the first fifteen minutes In any case, we found an amazing place for a great price, and it was so amazing we actually spent the next week there. If you want a nice, quiet place to stay in the north of Mexico, I highly recommend La Posada El Potrero Chico. Finding it alone was worth all the guidebooks I’ll ever buy.
My next entry will be about Rock Climbing, and my life hanging by a Mexican thread. Literally.
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Posted on June 24th, 2007 by Natnee and filed under Mexico |
