Searching for La Posada en El Potrero Chico.....

Happy to be legally in Mexico, but with not a cent to our name and our cards weren't working, we had a few more things to work out. 

Still at the permit place, we went back to the less than helpful information guy and asked him where a bank was. He got out a map and directed us a few streets over. We drove around for 10minutes and it turns out he doesn't know where banks are either!  We ended up finding a bank in a supermarket and wifi at the near by McDonalds and got our bearings. We were ready for phase 2, driving to our first stop 2h south, La Posada en El Potrero Chico, in a small town called Hidalgo. 

                               

You can drive your US car close to the border without a car permit, but if you go further than about 20km, there is a car permit check. We got to the car permit check with all our documents ready, and...after everything...It was closed. We just drove on through!

Turns out the roads on this route were ok, although we only occasionally had painted lanes, so you just has to guess!

        

We drove the tolled roads to Hidalgo, we arrived an hour or so before sunset which was a close call due to our no driving at night rule. We got to the address we had found on the Internet for the camping site, this is what we saw!  Really?! 

        

We panicked and asked a few locals for directions and still couldn't find it!  Most of their directions, included a tope count. 3 topes, then right then 4 topes, then...... 'What are topes?' You ask? Well, in our car they are usually premised by an expletive as the sole purpose of a tope seems to be to remove the under carriage of your car. Topes are speed bumps, but not council sanctioned entities, they are made of anything from rocks, wire, cement, old ripped up tires, rebar, anything the locals can find. They are then placed in front of stores, houses where kids play or anywhere else they want you to slow down. They are often not marked and quickly blend in to the backdrop of the road. Our discovery of this danger has since enforced our no driving at night rule. Assisting in looking out for these is now the passengers job in our car. They are not always in 'logical' places. We have come across them on highways marked for a speed of 90km/h forcing a screeching halt to save Rosa's tires and undercarriage. It is often helpful to be following a car on the road to see when they are coming up, often people will put on hazard lights to help others behind them or simply not see it and crash into it. Either way, we like to be behind people when driving when we can!

The sun was getting lower in the sky and we still had had no joy from the help of the friendly locals. When suddenly, we had the petrol light in the car go on!  Aghhhhhhhh!  We went down the hill and got some gas, we asked the petrol guy as he was filling our tank (yes! Service stations here are still full service) about the place and despite his little to no English and our crap Spanish, he directed us and we found it successfully! We arrived just as the sun set behind the mountains. Phew!

This is where we ended up. ( Needless to say, we stayed two nights! )