Highway to Oaxaca 5/23
The 104 km toll road will connect highway 200 at Ventanilla, Colotepec to highway 175 at Barranca Larga, Ejutla, cutting the travel time from Puerto Escondido to Oaxaca to under three hours. Construction began in 2007, but there were years in which no work was done at all, as the first contractor went bankrupt with the international financial crisis, and the second also faced insolvency for reasons unrelated to the highway. Now the project is in the hands of Banobras, the federal infrastructure development bank, which has contracted out the construction to various builders. Throughout the years the project has suffered many delays because of conflicts between the communities along the route.
THE GEOLOGY OF THE SOUTHERN Sierra is very challenging with its variety of rock formations, but still we were very surprised to discover in May that no real progress seems to have been made since ourlast trip in January (¡Viva Puerto! 36). This was really sad since so much work had been done between September and January.
No, there were no community disputes affecting construction during this time. We only went as far as the San Vicente detour because we were told pipes were being laid further down the road. But we did meet with people on our return trip who had come from Oaxaca in around three hours. We met them when there was a onehour stop in Colotepec between the Santa Martha tunnel and the Colotepec River bridge while construction was going on.
