We started our day the earliest we have done so far - at 6:30. Leaving Ixtapa was easy. We left around eight and headed towards Acapulco. Acapulco was a great middle point - about three hours away - between Ixtapa and Taxco (our final destination of the day). Unfortunately, the road to Acapulco is not a toll road and as such is filled with many unexpected topes (speed bumps) that could rip your car apart, so as you can imagine our drive to Acapulco was not the fastest.
We thought it would be nice to have a lunch in Acapulco, stretch a little and head up to Taxco. Yep.. that was not the case. We got stuck in a huge traffic jam on a road that resembled coastal highway 1 (very curvy) before we even entered Acapulco city limits. We sat in it for a while before we finally came to a realization that Acapulco was not worth it and that we would rather back track 15 miles to get to another road that would avoid Acapulco all together. That was a life saver! I think Chris would have never made it out of that town sane.
Little did we know what awaited us!! When we were planning our vacation, Taxco sounded like a really neat historical town (first public records date back to 1529) built on a side of a mountain (5900 ft), with very steep narrow cobblestone streets lined by whitewashed houses with red-tiled roofs. Doesn't that sound really cool? Yeah... sure did... until we were stuck on the curviest road of our lives (curva
peligrosa signs everywhere) hugging the cliff heading up the mountain trying cover the 6K feet elevation gain... while dodging crazy trucks and buses. Oh my... three plus hours of this.We were very relieved once we finally got closer to the town itself. After all, our hotel was right downtown on the main square... how hard could that be!? Once again… yeah right!! Upon the approach of the city limits we started to see many, many, many Volkswagen Beetles, Lucka counted 100 within first 4 minutes, and then she just gave up. We had no idea why this car was so popular around here. It did not take too long to find out.
Driving into the city was crazy - one little 2 lane road with 4-6 rows of cars on it depending how many idiots decided to join us in our lane... directed by policemen that offered to help us and directed us towards downtown. We thought he was nuts, no way could this road be big enough for two cars?! Nor could we drive up such a crazy steep cobblestone street… wrong on both counts. This is where the beetles came into play. They were everywhere! And they could fit in areas where no other car would. It was insane. Our car died several times as it tried to make it up the hill (oh did I mention it was a stick…no automats around here). Chris finally broke down (poor guy – I thought he was lost to us) pulled over and I ran out to find our hotel and get the help to help us out. The bellboy end up driving our car to the park garage and we went to our room where Chris collapsed on the couch and I didn’t think he would get up again. Luckily lil relax and
some food in his stomach – we have not had any food since breakfast and it was 5 at this point – did wonder and he was able to get up and walk around town a bit.
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