Tope!

Everyone who knows us is aware that we don’t spend much time at all yelling at each other, but during our Baja travels we’ve agreed that yelling “Tope!” is an authorized behavior. What’s a “tope”, you ask (pronounced “toe-pay”)? Well ,think of the Mother-of-All (do you remember when that was the world’s most overused phrase?) speed bumps. The Mexicans seem to love their topes, in towns, in the middle of nowhere, on the highway, on dirt roads even. San Bartolo, a small town nearby which we drive through regularly, has 8 of them in less than one kilometer. There are 12 of them between our house and Mex 1 via the through-town route, and each one is teeth rattling, and worse when we’re hauling the trailer. There are many “mosts” associated with topes. Most topes have warning signs 150 to 300 meters in advance, most are painted yellow, most are in the vicinity of schools, most are in towns, etc But . . . . for every “most”, there are lots of exceptions, so calling out “Tope!” is an authorized activity that is “mostly” successful in helping us slow down and avoid rattling our brains out by flying over them going 80 kilometers per hour.