This is just an anecdote to put some meat on my (mild) criticism of Otto.

Back in the mid 80's my girlfriend and I took a road trip from Mexico City to Ixtapa via a new highway that had opened a few months before. Day 2, departing Taxco, and allowing what I felt was plenty of time to arrive at Ixtapa in daylight, I made extra sure and asked everyone along the way what the condition of the road was up ahead. I was assured several times that it was in the best of conditions, being new and all.

When I got to the final stretch that crosses the mountains, I found exactly the opposite. The road had been heavily damaged by a hurricane that passed through 2 weeks prior. In some areas half the road was missing, in other areas rockslides had covered the entire road and the only way through was a bulldozed path through the debris. Rocks covered great portions of the way, including some bigger than our car, so what I thought would be an average drive of 60-80 km/hr became a hellish 20 km/hr ordeal in total darkness that didn't see us in Ixtapa till well after midnight. At one point I was sure I'd have to turn back, as I could barely make out the bulldozer trail, and actually had to walk it through to convince myself it could be done. Only the fear of going back the way we came kept us going.

All this goes to say that just because you have local knowledge, doesn't mean you have all the facts. Clearly the people I spoke to "thought" the road was open, but just as clearly, they hadn't been that way recently, and no one had bothered to tell them that it wasn't.

This illustrates a common fact of Latin America: you can be badly mislead by people on the ground who are sure they have all the facts. Information travels slowly in that part of the world, and tends to get distorted as a function of how many hands it passes through before it reaches you. Sources can be a good guide, but sometimes your own instincts will serve you better.

ebear