Oaxaca • Our home for 3 days during La Carrera Panamericana

In the morning, we met up with our guide (and soon to be good friend) Bruno Cerrillo and drove four hours to Oaxaca city, in the state of Oaxaca.

Here is our pre-run crew. From left to right: Kevin Ward, Paul Humble, Bret Haller and Bruno Cerrillo.

At this point, the blog here will become partially our notes of pre-running the La Carrera Panamericana route, and partially an impartial travel guide letting our drivers know what to expect where they are going.

Oaxaca has all of the amenities of a major city. If you have forgotten something at home, like we did, you should be able to find it at Office Depot or Sam’s Club. We drove past Audi, VW, Ford, Mercedes, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Dodge, and Peugeot dealers. Ferrari, Lambo, and other exotic vehicle parts can be sourced from Mexico City.

Our Hotel, The Hotel Mision de los Angeles is a four-star luxury resort with extensive grounds. For La Carrera, we have requested the northern section of the hotel for the Unlimited Class. We will all be here for at least three nights, which is a great opportunity to get to know one another. (The night before qualifying stage, the night of the qualifying stage and the night of day 1.) There will be plenty of time to cut loose and have some fun with your new driving friends here.

Oaxaca is also very close to the home of mescal tequila, and we are planning a tequila sampling bus trip for two nights before the qualifying stage for those who are interested and have arrived in time for it. (You will see many miles of agave fields during the velocity and travel sections near Oaxaca.)

We stopped in to a few of the roadside tequila stands (there are 50-100 of them!) and sampled some of their wares. We bought a few bottles that we brought home with us and are still enjoying! GOOD stuff, but we will have to tell those tales in person!

- Bret Haller