I've posted a lot about our trip to Oaxaca: 24 posts in 18 days. Yet the trip only took eight. I followed in Clint's wake at a pace I hadn't kept since Silicon Valley days. His energy, contacts and experience made possible a tour that I hardly could have done on my own.

Exhausted (well, at least I was), we started for home, Clint driving but feeling poorly. He thought he might be coming down with a cold. Turned out to be food poisoning. All the usual nasty symptoms plus fever, chills and sweating. We were worried for awhile, but we stopped for the night in Puebla. Clint showed up in the morning a little weak but ready to go.

Our main objective at this point was simply to get home. No more tourist stops.

Near the Oaxaca-Puebla border, we passed through some spectacular country. The sun was beginning to drop in the western sky and thunderheads were forming. I looked out the shotgun seat window as the scenery rolled by, wishing I had a day or two to explore.

Then Clint said, "John, we gotta stop and take pictures. It's just too much." He pulled over onto the inadequate shoulder of the carretera and I jumped out to capture a few frames.

Traffic whizzed by. I was nervous because the truck was half sticking out into the slow lane. No time to find good vantage points. No time to compose, set exposure, wait for the sun. It was just "f8 and be there." Point, shoot and jump back in the truck.

We stopped twice. We could have stopped a dozen times and not run out of worthy subjects.

Unusual yuccas and barrel cacti jumped out at me.

A forest of cacti shaped like telephone poles spread up a hillside. I love the patterns they make.

This is a region empty of settlements but full of beauty. It's about a day's drive from San Miguel de Allende. I'll come back some day.

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The periférico, the ring road around Mexico City, isn't actually a ring. It's more of a C. If you want to stay on carreteras all the way around the city, you have to detour to the northeast, extending your trip to Puebla by an hour and a half.

Or, you can do what we did: Take the ring road and close the loop by driving for a couple of miles on one of Mexico City's surface streets. But we knew we would be gambling when we did that, exposing ourselves to Mexico City's hopelessly corrupt traffic cops.

On our outbound leg, we hit the notorious surface streets at the same time as a powerful downpour. Water ran in the streets as high as our door sills. The upside was the rain drove the cops off the street, and we continued on to Puebla without being stopped.

On our return, the weather wasn't as cooperative. Getting off the periférico, we came to a single block in which were parked three police cruisers with maybe 20 cops standing alongside. They were looking for one thing only: out-of-state or foreign license plates.

See, travelers passing through are not going to want to stick around Mexico City for an extra day to clear a traffic ticket, legitimate or not. So they're good prospects for extortion.

Two of the cops waved us over to the side. We had a nice pickup truck, a gringo driver, and Texas license plates, so we were a fat juicy mark. One of the cops swaggered over to the passenger door: Mirrored wraparound sunglasses, bushy mustache, no ID tag on his chest. He asked for Clint's license.

On Clint's advice I kept the window open just enough to talk through, not enough to reach through. I held Clint's Texas Driver's license against the glass so the cop could read it.

That was all it took. The cop realized we were not afraid of him, that we were going to resist extortion. He had too many easier fish to catch, so he walked off without another word. We took his exit as permission to leave.

The extortion is so blatant, surely Mayor Marcelo Ebrard knows about it. Why doesn't he do anything? A simple drive down the street in an unmarked car, and he couldn't miss it. He might even suffer a shakedown attempt of his own before the cops realized who they had.

I wonder if he cares. I wonder if he benefits from what's going on.

If any of you are stopped by a cop for no good reason, know this: You don't have to get out of your car. You can refuse to hand over your license. Let him read your papers through the window. You can refuse to discuss anything. You can demand to see his ID. You can demand your infracción (ticket). You can ask to be taken to the nearest judge. If he's angling for a bribe, he'll give up. Just stick to your guns.

The single biggest single cause of Mexico's poverty is corruption (See note). If you pay a bribe, you're contributing to it. Please don't.

—§—

Finally, I thought you'd like to see how Chiapas travels.

He rides on his perch for miles. Then he climbs on one of our shoulders to gnaw our ears or crawls into the back seat and chews bag straps (until Marne or I catch him). Outside of that, he's the best traveler I've ever met.

—§—

Note about corruption:

The World bank ranks Mexico as the world's 14th largest economy. It ranks ahead of nations like Australia, the Netherlands, or Sweden. But these are rich countries; Mexico is poor. Income per person ranks only 79th. among nations. Given its population and resources, Mexico should be something like the world's #3 economy: maybe between Japan's and Germany's.

Investment in Mexico is the only way it'll get there. But investors, even Mexican investors, are wary because there's so much corruption that they are afraid their returns, or even their principal will be stolen by crooked government officials. So they divert their investments to safer countries, which is why Mexico's economy remains anemic and the people remain poor.