Mexico RV Caravan Travel Day - Tepic to Etzatlan

On Tuesday, we did the drive from Tepic to Etzatlan.

We planned to leave Los Pinos RV Park in Tepic right at 9:00am, but before we could do that we had to pay the bill. Normally, we pay when we arrive. But at that time, there was only a cleaning lady there and she said she had called the manager. But he never arrived, only the maintenance caretaker guy. He had come over and gave us the wifi password, but he never asked us to pay, and I didn't think he was the guy we were supposed to pay.

Ruth and I had stayed here at Los Pinos RV Park in Tepic way back in 2011, so of course we didn't expect the price to be the same. But now, they have this ridiculous pricing structure. I had read the recent reviews on iOverlander that stated people had paid 285 pesos each. And to a certain extent, that was accurate and I would have been happy with that.

Prices at Los Pinos RV Park in Tepic.

Well it turned out that the maintenance guy is also the manager. Nice friendly people (he and his wife), but there was no negotiating despite the fact that many of our group hadn't even plugged in to the somewhat sketchy electricity. 

418 pesos each for the three class A motorhomes in our group is pretty pricey by Mexico standards. And normally, we get a group discount. In fact most parks do not charge the group leaders at all. But as I said, they were non negotiable. I expect that the manager is not the owner, and he could not have given us a fair price even if he wanted to. Anyhow, we paid the 4,875 peso ($337 CAD, $257 USD) bill for our 2 night stay and said I told him we would not be back next year.

If I had known the prices ahead of time, we would not have stayed for two nights. My fault for not asking.

Anyhow, we got on the road at 9:00am. 

We had three choices of which route to take to Etzatlan. We could have taken the highway 15 cuota, or the highway 15 free road, or a twisty curvy back route that went through a few small villages. I checked the price of the cuota (toll road) on the Mexico Government toll fee website and it seemed pretty reasonable, so I chose that route. The website has always been fairly accurate when I've checked it in the past.

It should have been 191 pesos for the whole route.

But the first toll booth we went through was 155 pesos and the second was 208 pesos for a total of 363 pesos ($25.20 CAD, $19.20 USD)... almost double what we expected. Maybe this is an anomaly, but it seems you can't trust that website for accurate info any longer.

Still, it was a fast drive and the roads were in good condition.

Sugar cane harvest.

Lots of police and military presence on the toll road.

Scenery along the way.

Lava field rock.

Nice sky. 

We came back through another time zone change so we lost an hour entering the state of Jalisco. We are now on central time, one hour behind eastern.

We got off the cuota at the town of Magdalena and we had to double back through the town itself in order to get on the road to Etzatlan.

Going through Magdalena.

Pretty tight through here with some truck traffic doing the same thing.

We were happy to be back at Delia's RV Park in Etzatlan. We've stayed here quite a few times over the year and Bonnie and her daughter Sam always look after us well. We are here for a five night stay.

Pretty sunset at Delia's RV Park in Etzatlan.

We had a nice campfire last night.

Today, we are taking the group to a local tequila distillery. 

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