...The barely visible path - which they call the road - is completely dark in this late evening and we drive with 15km/h. Suddenly we enter a small village. People are fixing cars, strolling and enjoying a boisterous "fiesta" smack in the middle of the street, in front of colorful and dirty buildings, which have no glass windows. Google indicates that our hotel is on the [...] street but they are no street names. Anywhere. Our blue Impreza and our Quebec plates seem to be flashing like a neon sign in this fantastic landscape. And we are lost... Terrified and bewildered, we finally decide to stop and ask for directions, expecting to be immediately stabbed and mugged. We stop the car and create a complete roadblock in the tiny one-car-street but no one honks or curses us... Instead, a friendly and smily bespectacled face appears in the car's window: " Hola Amigo"...

We are in San Juan de Teotihuacan, Mexico...

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We spend the next day visiting the Ruins at Teotihuacan, declared a Unesco World heritage site. The site is vast and peppered with resident trinket sellers and sedate stray dogs. You need good walking shoes, a hat for the sun and the phrase "no, gracias". If you get there in the morning right when they open (9am) you get spared the compact groups of noisy tourists that busses begin to haul in around 11am. We take loads of pictures and vow to come back again. We get introduced to the divinely spicy "sopa azteca" at our hotel restaurant and discover an excellent chef and very reasonable prices.

Next day we head for Veracruz. We stay at a hotel in the "centro historico" while some sort of carnival parades the main street in front of it. The hotel room is small and ancient, albeit clean.

Next stop: Palenque; a spellbinding archeological complex and park, still widely undiscovered and spread out in a luxuriant jungle. Falling under its charm, we spend two days there instead of the planned one. When we leave we know we took a little piece of magic with us.

Finally we breeze into Playa del Carmen, 12 days after having left chilly Montreal. In the time we spend here, we also branch out and explore nearby Maya and Aztec ruins, such as Ek'Balam, Tulum, Muyil , Coba and Chichenitza. And the beach, of course.

Some time (much) later, (time flies when you're having fun), we set on our return trip back to Montreal.

This time there are more driving hours in the day. We do Playa del Carmen-Villahermosa in one shot. The GPS takes us for a frustrating ride, since it only sees one street in a city of over 2 million inhabitants. We spend the night in a decadent 6 star hotel with 4 star prices.

From there we go straight to San Luis Potosi a quiet and civilized city, not far away from the border. Next day we are crossing back into the U.S.

As we are approaching the border we cannot help but think of all the unrest that seems to be multiplying in the area. We lock the car doors and try not to make any stops. Nothing happens. We regret only not being able to safely stop the car and snap more pictures. The queue is long and the border agents are calm and friendly. We get into San Antonio after nightfall again. Next stop, Dallas, right before we veer off towards the west coast, to visit the National Parks in the area.

First stop up is Albuquerque where we stay one night and in the morning we continue along the road and stop in Grand Canyon Village. We first visit in the afternoon as we arrive, and see the colours of the canyon explode at sunset. Grand Canyon at dawn is pure silence and timeless mist rising from the steep cliffs.

Next on is Page, Arizona, where we visit the breathtaking Antelope Canyon with a Navajo guide. The walls of the Canyon look like petrified silk which changes colours from fiery reds to dusky purples as light filtrates through to the narrow crevice.

Final stops on our National Parks route are Monument Valley and, further down the road, Arches National Park near Moab, Utah. The red earth and the martian landscapes are unlike anything else on this earth.

The beauty of the scenery makes us forget the passing of time. It is now dark and we are on the road to Denver, Colorado, on high-speed, poorly lit, elevated highways cut directly through the mountains. Then it stars to snow. Somehow we make it to Denver in one piece.

Next day we drive to Des Moines, Iowa. This is our last stop before we enter Canada one day later through London, Ontario and finally get home in Montreal the next afternoon.

Our Trip

We start our fantastic voyage from Montreal, Canada, on a cold February morning, early enough to beat the traffic out of town. We cross an eerily silent border one hour later and set on the road trip of a lifetime, spanning over 20,000 kilometres.

First pit stop: Richmond, Virginia. We get caught in the middle of a monster traffic jam near Washington; it is already early evening, it is dark and sleeting outside, and monster trucks whizz by at incomprehensible speeds. Right about now the GPS is really working for its money. We find our hotel. It is modern, cozy and clean. Ten hours on the road is the best. Sleeping pill. Ever.

Onward towards Savannah. One of the highlights - we get to drive on a very long and superbly maintained highway suspended over the Louisiana swamps. We arrive at a quaint hotel in the historic district with some time to spare. We grab our cameras and get snap-happy in the unique charm of Savannah's town squares, historic houses and moss-draped trees.

Next stop - Pensacola. No particular reason other then needing to get the oil changed for the car. We walk on the beach. It is windy and cold and we photograph the rickety pier and admire the menacing cavalry of the impetuous waves.

We continue our journey to the south, enjoying yet another ridiculous traffic jam, a completely blocked highway for more than 100 km, just as we try to enter Houston. We find a way to go around it and doggedly put the pedal to the metal and finally make it to San Antonio.

The next day is an important one because we cross the border into Mexico through Nuevo Laredo.

We get to the border in about 3 hours. We pick International Bridge One and cross into Mexico without much fuss. We pay the toll (about $3) and enter the Nothing to Declare lane; we get a green light and we continue forward. We drive following the signs for the Tourist Visa and Vehicle permits building. We follow the procedures and get our tourist visa (valid for 180 days) and the sticker for the vehicle temporary importation permit, which we stick to the inside of the windshield. Back to the car. We remember to exhale. Next stop, Monterrey.

In hindsight, that proves to be a bad idea. This is a city with over 6 million inhabitants, totally chaotic and busy in a sort of post-apocalyptic way, almost absurdly nestled in between the towering Sierra Madre mountains. We have a close call on one of the highways that snake around each other so intensely the GPS gets lost, and the drivers appear to have no time, no patience and a marked taste for adrenaline.

On the other hand, the road to Monterrey is absolutely breathtaking. The tall Sierra Mountains are gradually rising up blue and green to snow-capped peaks while the car almost drives itself on an elegant, new highway cut directly into their heart of stone. We are almost alone on the road and looking around at the mountains we can feel the quiet, deep energy of the earth enveloping us. In a time where Northern Mexico only makes in into the public eye with bad news, we regret that not enough people get to experience this majestic beauty.

After we leave Monterrey, the next stop is the ruins at Teotihuacan. The road we have to take is towards Queretaro, and then follow on the toll road (quota) called Arco Norte, which bypasses Mexico City. The drive to Queretaro is uneventful, however, just a few kilometres before the toll road we hit another monster traffic jam.

Two hours later, the sun is slowly going down, we are still in traffic and we have not yet found the toll road. Because it is very recent, our GPS does not see it so we are left on our own. When we escape the traffic, we stop to gas up and a kindly gas attendant confirms to us that we are on the right road to join the Arco Norte. We make it, we pay at the toll booth and we remember to exhale again.

It is now dark outside and we only know which exit to take. We keep our eyes peeled. We get off the toll road and, by the light of the headlights only try to find and follow the signs towards the small city where our hotel is. The barely visible path - which they call the road - is completely dark in this late evening and we drive with 15km/h. Suddenly we enter a small village. People are fixing cars, strolling and enjoying a boisterous "fiesta" smack in the middle of the street, in front of colorful and dirty buildings, which have no glass windows. Google indicates that our hotel is on the [...] street but they are no street names. Anywhere. Our blue Impreza and our Quebec plates seem to be flashing like a neon sign in this fantastic landscape. And we are lost... Terrified and bewildered, we finally decide to stop and ask for directions, expecting to be immediately stabbed and mugged. We stop the car and create a complete roadblock in the tiny one-car-street but no one honks or curses us... Instead, a friendly and smily bespectacled face appears in the car's window: " Hola Amigo"...

We are in San Juan de Teotihuacan, Mexico...