Matehuala - Tonala

We got up, walked the dogs and headed towards Tonala, a suburb of Guadalajara, 333 miles away. Based on advice we got, we took a cuota (toll) loop around San Luis Potosi. North of San Luis, it was well marked for the bypass to Guadalajara and Mexico City. The part leading to the Mexico City highway is pretty heavily traveled but the part past that highway to where it meets back up with the highway to Guadalajara is pretty desolate. That part is one lane each direction. Almost all the rest of the trip was 4-lane highway. Once we got back to the highway to Guadalajara, it was still 2 lanes until near Lagos de Moreno. As we approached Lagos de Moreno, we noticed people bicycling along the highway. They were in small groups at first and had signs indicating they were part of peregrinations to San Juan de los Lagos. Pretty soon, we were passing large groups of bicyclists and large groups of marchers. Altogether we passed thousands of people heading to San Juan.
Off the trip topic here – the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos is one of the 3 Jalisco virgins. The others are Talpa and Zapopan. The Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos restored a dead child to life. Each of these three Virgins has a basilica built in her honor and attracts millions of faithful to their festival days. If the car hadn’t been packed to the gills and the dogs with us, we would have stopped to see more.
The hubbub on the highway slowed us down some, but we still arrived in Tonala in mid-afternoon. We stayed at the Hotel Hacienda del Sol. It has a big parking garage and they were tolerant of our two dogs. A room with king size bed was 340 pesos. We ate dinner nearby at Jalapenos restaurant, looked around the square a little, and called it a day.