Friday the 19th - A Friendly Encounter

We are on our way to UNINTER (Universidad Internacional) in Cuernavaca, a city one-hour southwest of Mexico City. The highway was packed again, not moving an inch. I decided not to film traffic this time.

Much to our surprise the police pulled us over, and we were all expecting the worst again. I got out of the car, prepared to try and talk us out of this one (though I wasn’t sure what we had done). The police told me that our vehicle had a restriction on it for the day. That means if your car’s license plate ends in 6 like ours you cannot use your car on Friday. In Mexico they do this to reduce air pollution and congestion. After living in Santiago, Chile I know all about smog and restriction, but as you already know we are traveling on veggie oil. It pollutes about 50% less than normal diesel, and its recycled oil so we are not using raw material.



I quickly opened Laura’s back door where we have our tank of veggie oil and showed the cops how our car works. I wanted to convince them that we should not have any kind of restriction, as we weren’t contributing as much pollution as the other cars. One of the cops got excited as he had seen a similar technology on the Discovery Channel.

After they signed our car, we knew these cops were cool. They were nothing like the one we paid off a few days earlier.

Thirty minutes with the cops and our early start was not so early anymore. At about noon we make it to Cuernavaca, and at about 2pm we make it to UNINTER. We were told that we should come back on Tuesday, when we could park the car inside the university and set up a promotions booth.

Cuernavaca is a city with a bloody colonial history. This is the city were General Cortez had his way. He was a Spanish general who wouldn’t “kill” because the bible said it was a sin: he decided to burn people instead. Cortez built a church in Cuernavaca that represents nothing but death and evil. After all my traveling, the Catholic Church and the oppressors that represent them have yet to impress me with their “good deeds”.

We met up with Angy and her sister, so they could guide us to the Papagayo River. Finally we were going to be on the water.



In Mexico there is nothing like street food, don’t be afraid of eating from street vendors , you are going to get sick anyways. Might as well enjoy the good cheap food, even in highway restaurants you are going to encounter unpleasant sites like bugs in a salt container.

After driving four hours on the free highway and getting lost, we arrived at the river around midnight.