Wohoo, the local Hertz agency actually rented us a car (despite us not speaking Mexican/Spanish and never having driven in Mexico) for which we opted to take out full coverage just in case. No worries, having grown up driving in Germany and France and having specifically purchased a Garmin Nuvi 260 GPS and a Garmin Mexico GPS Map for this trip, we felt confident to fit right in to the local traffic routine and not getting lost!

This day we had planned for Tula and Teotihuacan, two sites that should be doable in one day considering Teotihuacan is only 30 miles Northeast of Mexico City . The distance between Tula and Teotihuacan is about 70 miles. (That is the math anyhow looking at a map, seemed logic)

We set off first to Tula as a starting point.  To our surprise we found that the Garmin didn’t have Tula in its directory.  Guess Garmin figures that nobody cares to see the Toltec Warrior sculptures North of Mexico City. Neither did the Garmin find some of the smaller cities/villages near the ruins we were going to visit. That’s like going to Paris and the Eiffel Tour doesn’t exist according to the GPS.  Good thing I had purchased a regular old fashioned map at the bookstore! The Garmin worked fine as long as we drove on the highway. Once we left the highway the Garmin still showed us on a road, but that was about what we got out of it. Not being able to plot your destination renders a GPS pretty much useless.  After several wrong turns, a cow field, a new construction zone, four cars sharing a two lane road, and asking for directions, we finally made it.  

Sitting atop in Tula between Toltec Warrior statues

Temple walls are adorned with skulls and snakes

Tula was the capital of the Toltecs built around 980 BC and destroyed about 200 years later. (Garmin please take note – this is a cultural site and would be worth adding to your map!)

After visiting Tula, we figured we could take a cross-country shot at Teotihuacan, about 70 miles and not take the highway which would have been more than twice the distance. After all, we had the Garmin and a Map! Needless to say the Garmin didn’t have Teotihuacan listed in its directory either, or any city name that was listed on our map around it. Teotihuacan only has like the largest pyramidal structures built in pre-Columbian times and its base is the same size as the pyramids in Egypt and did I forgot to mention it is a Unesco World Heritage site? Why would Garmin bother to add that to their maps?

Leaving Tula we were still on the road according to the Garmin, up to a point, and then according to the GPS we were driving in cornfields or maybe outer space, to the GPS it didn’t make a difference. We ended up having to shut off the voice command and look for good old fashioned street signs, which that can be a quest in Mexico.  The map below shows our planned route (red) and the actual route (blue) that we ended up driving.

Needless to say we finally capitulated (the only directional signs we could find would only point to the next city and our roadmap covered all of Mexico, but not the smaller areas in detail), and turned our way back until we finally found the highway and took the long route around. We got to Teotihuacan de Arista (a small town near the pyramids) around 10 p.m. at night and rented a room in the Hotel de la Sol. Then we walked to the downtown part to the zocalo, around 11 p.m. at night and found that there were still a lot of activities going on. We found a great Italian restaurant and finished the day with a nice dinner and some cervezas.

The next morning as we were looking out the window watching the Emus in the backyard, we noticed the big hill in the background wasn’t a hill, it was the Pyramid of the Sun. Good, that meant we didn’t need the Garmin to find it!

Rick in front of the Pyramid of the Sun

Going up the steps of the Pyramid of the Moon, this shot really shows how steep it goes up!

Buying stuff "Almost Free Today!" on the Calle de los Muertos

After spending half a day walking the Avenue of the Dead, climbing up the pyramids and getting great deals on jewelry and stone death masks “Almost free today” from the local vendors, we decided that it was time to head up to El Tajin, another pre-columbian archaeological site in the northern part of the state of Veracruz. We consulted the Garmin which knew about Poza Rica, a large city near the site for the about 190km drive. All went well until we got to the highway and the Garmin told us to get back on the road? Well, turns out that the Garmin was unaware of the new state highway that has been build and wanted to take us on the back roads through the villages. No thank you, we had enough scenic driving and Topes (speed bumps) the day before!  Therefore we shut off the voice command and followed the old fashioned map, which incidentally had the highway printed on it!

The moral of today’s lesson: Don’t bother with Garmin’s $99 USD Mexico Map if you are heading for the countryside, it SUCKS!

A local bridge - right out of an Indiana Jones movie