| The New Road to Uruapan |
by Catherine Krantz
Everyone’s been talking, for years now it seems, about this fabulous new toll road to Michoacan. It’s the fabled road of roads, as huge and earth shattering as the Hwy 200 connection from Acapulco to Zihuatanejo must’ve been back in the day. This Autopista #37 is supposed to change our lives! Connecting Morelia to the coast and giving Zihuatanejans a direct route across the center of Mexico.
Turnoff from Highway 200If anyone’s ever driven the coast road, Hwy 200, from Colima or Puerto Vallarta just to get to Zihua from the states (and if you haven’t please read October 2001’s driving article aptly titled “The Road from Hell to Paradise”) you can understand very well the enthusiasm and impatient buzz surrounding this new toll road. YES, it’s finally here! I know many of you have been driving this road for some time now, way before it was officially opened, with all sorts of adventurous tales about fording rivers around unfinished bridges, bribing construction workers to let you on, and heinous detours… And although, I well understand the impatience I do tend toward the conservative when it comes to mountain driving, so I wanted to wait until it was “really really open”! Now it is really, really open, not totally complete but officially and totally open! All this excitement stems from the fact that, before now, to get to Uruapan, Patzcuaro or Morelia or anywhere north of there you needed to cross a particularly dense portion of the Sierra Madre del Sur mountain range on a road not so figuratively named, “The Devils Spine”. 5-7-9 hours (depending on your fearlessness or tendencies toward car sickness) of wide eyed winding, twisting, turning, cliff hanging, bus dodging breathtaking scenery. But no more, the new toll road is finally open and it just brought Zihua a little closer to the rest of the world.
Until now the only reasonable weekend trips from here were a few close coastal towns, north to Nexpa or south to Acapulco and for the beautiful mountain towns of Michoacan you’d need almost a week to justify the drive. I had been hearing fabulous (and fabulously exaggerated) reports about this road for months now and just had to try it for myself. And I can honestly say, I just went to Patzcuaro and back in 2 days and have every intention of making it a regular weekend jaunt. If you are one of those people who can make it to Acapulco in 2.5 hours, you might want to adjust the drive time. But for the conservative, white knuckle drivers, like me…let me be your conservative guide. Here’s the real deal, 4-4.5 hours to Patzcuaro or Uruapan, 5 hours to Morelia and well worth every peso. Time includes the 45 minute detour around Lago Infiernillo, the last unfinished bit where you have to get back on the old road to bypass a huge unfinished bridge.
To try it for yourself, and I highly recommend it! Just head north along Hwy 200 on the way to Lazaro Cardenas for about 45 minutes. (Be looking for the sign to La Union, about 10-15 minutes after the La Union turn off you will come upon a sign to Uruapan rising out of the scrub brush like a mirage, get ready to turn right - it comes up quick). Follow the sign, You’re on the road! You will immediately come to the first toll booth. At this writing it was not open you just passed on through to the road! Beautiful! Wide! Brand New! For 20 minutes…then it abruptly ends. This is the one and only remaining detour, around an unfinished bridge across Lake Infiernillo. You will pass a little hut selling something on the right and come to a bridge with barrels across the entrance, some cars will go around the barrels and go on across, don’t you do it. Rest assured they’re just going to some small town or construction site just past the bridge cause the road doesn’t go much further than that. You follow the detour arrows and take a left at the barrels.
You will think at some points you aren’t even on a real road as it is sometimes loose gravel, other times pock marked and worn and it doesn’t get too much better for 45 minutes. But the views of Lago Infiernillo and the surrounding mountains almost make it a pleasurable mountain hell drive. But it only lasts for 45 minutes. So just follow the road and you will come out at a fork with a clearly marked sign pointing you to the right to Uruapan, and after just a few minutes there will be a less clearly marked sign again to the right, this puts you back on the new road.
Driving this road without ever having taken the old road you won’t even be able to imagine why they would’ve ever built a road through the mountains to begin with. This road seems to carve straight through the valleys never having more than just the occasional rise. Graceful, beautiful, scenic, a true monument to toll roads everywhere! If you’ve ever driven the mountain road, you too will jump for joy. But ecstatic joy aside, it is only two lanes, but two wide lanes. And be aware it is actually carved out of the mountains and it is almost completely in rock slide country. There was actually one big slide covering the whole left lane, that hadn’t been cleared off the road when we drove it. So just remember that as you come around curves, there might be a car coming into your lane to go around a pile of rocks. (And really, if you’ve driven in Mexico for any time at all, you should already always be anticipating a car in your lane as you come around a curve!) And really that’s pretty much it, it’s fabulous! About 15 minutes from Uruapan Infiernillothere is a exit for Hwy 14, which takes you direct to Patzcuaro or on to Morelia, (14 being the already existing toll road, the direct Uruapan-Patzcuaro-Morelia route). Half an hour later on 14, you are at the Patzcuaro exit, 1 hour later, its Morelia. At this time (February 2002) there were no open toll booths before the lake detour, so it was all free until the lake. After the lake there were 4 toll booths pretty closely spaced with tolls of 15-27 pesos each so 86 pesos total (to Patzcuaro). **And no Pemex stations are on the road yet, there was one gas sign on the new road that involved a 10 minute (but easy and well marked) detour over to the old road to the Pemex station. So be forewarned and fill up before you get on the road, cause there’s no gas (or coffee or food, but there are a few rest stops with bathrooms). **And at this time buses are stil taking the old road. So if you want to head for the hills take Autopista 37, it was well worth the wait and will only get better once they finish the last big bridge over Lake Infiernillo, check back sometime next year!
Buen Viaje!
February 2002
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