Why Not to Drive in Mexico City
/We were warned not to drive in the city except to enter and exit the city. Thankfully we heeded this advice. There are three primary reasons for following this advice:
- You Can't! Literally, for environmental reasons you can't drive on some days and some hours without breaking the law. It's called "Hoy No Circula" and it can be pretty complicated. In short, if your car's license plates are not from the State of Mexico (there are 31 federated states in Mexico and one is called Mexico), then you can not drive between 5AM and 11AM, Monday-Friday. Additionally you can not drive on certain days depending on the last digit of your license plate. Our last digit is an 8 which meant we could not drive at all on Tuesday. For more check out this link.
- The streets are confusing even with an accurate GPS. When arriving into town we drove around the hotel 3 times trying to figure out how to pull onto the street in front of the hotel. We could only laugh and kept saying "Big Bend, Parliment". When leaving town we turned one block too early because the GPS was not detailed enough. This one block miss cost us 30 minutes due to the fact that we turned into a market district. Unfortunatly we made the same error again about 15 mintues later.
- It's just a big congested city. There are people and cars crammed everywhere and they all seem to be going to the same place. If you are in the city it's best just to take the subway.
