We had a long sort of drive today through Acapulco. We drove only 110 miles, but it took us about 8 hours. The landscape is changing here and there is more tropical plants and a bit more water. It is still dry and there are tons of fires everywhere burning the underbrush.
Acapulco is a hilly city, but traffic moved at a pretty good 15-20 mph pace throughout. We drove through the big high-rise hotel region and of course could not find a place to park to see about some stickers. I had routed us to a Sam’s Club, Walmart, and Autozone on the other side so we could pick up some needed supplies. DEF is ridiculously expensive here, and it cannot seem to be found in Sam’s or Walmart, so Autozone sells the cheap stuff for $499 Pesos ($29 USD). I haven’t checked at the PEMEX stations, but I doubt it will be any cheaper. The DPF (Diesel Particulate Filter) has been giving me issues again and although it has not given me the “see the dealer” warning, it burns off every couple of hours of driving. I have had enough of this stupid emissions junk and have started to look into methods to lighten the burden on the engine. I am at about 81K on the engine and the engine/powertrain warranty ends at 100K, but I may not have the patience to wait. I am averaging about 12 mpg with this load on the truck, which is a bit better than a gasser, but the extra EPA/California BS on this thing really makes maintenance a pain. I have an engine light on for “excessive DPF cycles” and for a DEF sensor low (which it is not) and I cannot get the thing to clear itself, especially with the massive speeds we are working with down here.
We really enjoyed the drive through the Acapulco region, especially the southern portion where the higher end resorts and houses were perched up on the hills. It was not as nicely landscaped as Cabo San Lucas, but it was nice to see. The last several hours wound through the acres and acres of mango, papaya, and citrus groves. All of this is picked by had and loaded by hand in baskets into very overloaded small trucks, and then moved by hand to larger shipping trucks. Nothing is automated down here. Even produce fields are hand planted in many areas.
We stayed in a campground to the north of Acapulco on a beach. We camped about 6 feet away from their pool, which was a nice way to cool off in the heat. On our beach walk at night we noticed some turtle shell remnants on the beach and then the following morning I found three or four places turtles had come ashore in the night to lay more eggs. We even found one squished one that momma must have stepped on. For some reason I did not take any pictures of the campsite or the beach…. Who knows why.
Here is a picture of our travels today.
