Driving the New Macro Libramiento Sur

A friend and I decided to take a leisurely drive along the right of way of the south section of the new road yesterday - between Lopez Mateos Sur and the Chapala Highway - and made it all the way through. Being Christmas, not much construction activity and the various job sites and areas are all accessible with very few people around.

Most of the road bed is in place and in great shape and can be easily driven - some sections are fully completed even with guard rails in place. The most fascinating area for me is the section high up on the side of the mountain along the south side where it passes San Miguel Cuyutlan. There is a section where there is a very deep arroyo coming down out of the San Juan Cosala mountains where they are constructing a couple of large bridges. The bridge girders are being constructed near the bridge from scratch with massive amounts of rebar, stressed cabling and cement forming equipment. There is a temporary railway that they use to bring the girders up into place with a 100 mtr. long overhead crane that lifts them and places them on the bridge pylons. Wish I had my camera.

The view of the valley below is incredible from up there. You can see the whole of Lake Cajititlan and all of the towns around it. Wish I had remembered to take my camera along.

We actually entered off of Lopez Mateos Sur at the far west end. There is a Pemex at the top of the hill near the 80 & 15 split and had to go up one of the off ramps but there are no barricades so you can drive along and pass through gaps in the median barriers to go along either side. The roadway stops at the bridge construction site but you can take the dirt construction access roads to go down into the arroyo to look at the massive concrete pillars - they are a little over 100' tall from my estimation. The size of the concrete headwalls are massive and some real engineering here if you are into that sort of thing. From San Miguel Cuyutlan you can also take Calle Hidalgo (I think) and head up the mountain on the access road that was originally for the cell tower up there. The new road is accessible on the east side of the arroyo from there. There are also several other construction access roads leading up to it from places like San Juan Evangelista and of course the Chapala Highway end at the far east. You can take the little side road leading out of the barrio behind Los Milagros de Dalila (the burrito place) and get on it there as well.

This week is a good time because there is not much construction traffic up in there.