Greetings from Merida, Yucatan, Mexico
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From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
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Autodromo de Yucatan Emerson Fittipaldi
Paved road course
Lifetime Track #2,609
THE EVENT I AM A TRACKCHASER. My name is Randy Lewis (above with Carol and J.J. during one of our earliest trackchasing adventures to Mexico). I hail from the sleepy little village by the sea, San Clemente, California. I am a “trackchaser”. I trackchase. Have you ever in your life heard of “trackchasing”? I didn’t think so. Well, you made it this far. You might as well pour yourself a cold one and take your Trackchasing 101 class. When you finish you’ll have your trackchasing diploma and can then teach your own friends about the hobby. Let’s get started. Trackchasing is a three-pronged hobby. I’m a racing fan. I love to travel. I love to analyze opportunities to get the most out of everything while saving time and money. Let’s do this by the numbers. I live in southern California. That’s probably the most inconvenient location in the country for seeing tracks in the U.S. Most of the racetracks in the U.S. are located well over 1,000 miles from where I live. As a matter of fact, my average trip covers 5,000 miles and more. I take 35-40 of those trips each season. In any given year I will travel well over 200,000 miles, rent more than 50 cars, and stay in more than 150 hotel rooms. I get the chance to meet people from all over the world. With trackchasing trips to 85 countries and counting just getting the chance to experience so many unique cultures, spend time in the homes of my friends and meet so many people is a huge reward for being in this hobby. I am indebted to several of these folks for their help and friendship. Once you begin researching my trip itineraries from my website, yes you will want to do that, you will be surprised. One day I’ll be in Tucson, the next in maybe Tuscaloosa and the following day in Syracuse. I do that kind of thing all the time. Figuring out the logistics of a trip like that is as much fun for me as watching a figure 8 race. Now you know a little bit about my trackchasing addiction. When you receive one of my Trackchaser Reports or find one on my website at www.randylewis.org you’ll get three pieces of entertainment. First, my Trackchaser Report will be an in-depth essay of how the trip went from A-Z. Yes, I’ll cover the racing aspect of things. But you will also hear about what it took to pull off the trip, the special stops that made the trip fun and the obstacles that needed to be overcome. Secondly, you’ll get a YouTube video of the racing action I saw. These are normally short 3-6 minutes highlights of the racing. My YouTube channel is named, “RANLAY”. I have nearly 2,000 subscribers to my channel. Currently, I have posted more than 1,300 videos and my channel has more than 1.2 million views! Finally, I’ll share a captioned photo album using a photo-sharing program called SmugMug. Normally, there will be anywhere from 50-200 photos from each trip I take. Sometimes more! My website is linked to literally hundreds of thousands of photos from all of the trips I have taken. There you have it. That’s trackchasing…the way I do it. Do others trackchase? Absolutely. Do they share their experiences? Sorry. They don’t. If you want to see the true “essence” of trackchasing you’ve come to the right place. A common question I get about my hobby is, “Why?”. I’m a curious fellow. I’m an adventuresome fellow. My hobby is about seeing and experiencing the things that most folks walk right past. Below is a link to a special video. It shows a small town in Missouri that I visited on one of my trips. In this video, I’ll share with you exactly what I mean. This video might just make your day. Trackchasing….this is exactly why I do it Today’s adventure was one more of the 2,000 trips that have taken me up, down and around the proverbial long and dusty trackchasing trail. If you would like to see where I’ve been and experience those adventures here’s the link: If you’ve got a question, comment or whatever please leave it at the bottom of this report. It’s very easy to do. Or you can visit me on Facebook. Thanks! FOREWORD Saturday, February 29, 2020 Happy Leap Year Day! Carol and I will be trackchasing in Mexico this weekend. We’ve done that quite a bit over the years. This weekend I will be seeing my 11 track south of the border. Carol will be visiting her 8thMexican race venue. One of my primary trackchasing goals for the year is to take more, “big” trips to the races. Big trips often come at the expense of the number of tracks I will visit. I would classify five hours of flying to get to Eastern Mexico, and not all that far from places like Nicaragua for a single road course visit as a big trip. We only live 74 miles from the Mexican border. That’s right. Our modest seaside cottage is located about a mile from Interstate 5. Then if we were to drive 74 more miles south on I-5 we would hit the U.S./Mexican border and be ready to enter into Tijuana. During our previous 10 visits to Mexico, we have driven into Mexico, we have flown into Mexico and I have flown into Mexico and then ridden the Mexican bus system to some tracks. Of course, we have been to Mexico many more times for vacations not related to racing. When our kids were small we frequently took our camper south of the border to Ensenada. I have also flown into Mexico and rented cars to trackchase. That’s exactly what we would be doing on this trip. However, there was a first with this trip for Carol from a Mexican transportation point of view. She would be flying with me from the airport in Tijuana, Mexico first to Mexico City and then connecting for a flight on Volaris Airlines to Merida, Mexico. There’s something that is very unique about departing from a place like Tijuana. In late 2015 something called the “Cross Border Express” has been built. Here’s how the “CBX” works. United States passengers drive their cars down to San Diego, California. This allows people to park their cars on the U.S. side of the border. Travelers then enter a very modern complex and essentially walk across an indoor bridge from the U.S. side of the border to the Mexican side. When they get to the opposite end of the bridge they clear Mexican border control without ever leaving the CBX building. At that point, passengers somewhat magically appear inside the brand new Tijuana airport! Pretty slick huh? I made this trip by myself just a few weeks ago. When I did it the Cross Border Express and the Tijuana airport were not very crowded at all. However, now we are at the beginning of spring break. That’s when all of the kids are traveling with the benefit of mommy and daddy’s credit cards. Travel gets much busier during the 6-8 week spring break time frame. Everything worked like a charm getting us to our final destination of Marita, Mexico. Our two flights totaled nearly 5 hours in duration. We were able to use our Priority Pass sponsored VIP clubs first in the Tijuana airport and then in Mexico City. That provided most of our food and drink for the day. As I’ve told you in the past I have seven distinct expense categories that need to be handled in order for me to successfully Trackchasers. Those seven groups are airfare, airport parking, rental cars, hotels, gasoline, food and race tickets. Sometimes I fly standby in order to reduce my airfare expense. However, on virtually every international trip I purchase my tickets. For this trip, we were flying on Volaris Airlines. Flying on Volaris from the Tijuana airport is very inexpensive. Volaris is a discount airline. They charge for everything but if you manage your travel properly you can pretty much pay the base airfare without any upcharges. I must say the job of being a flight attendant for Volaris Airlines has to be about the softest job anywhere. All food and drink must be paid for. Most of the passengers are Mexican. Mexican passengers don’t buy much food and drink. For the two-hour flight today from Mexico City to Merida the flight attendants didn’t come through the plane a SINGLE time. In Asia, you’ll get a snack or a meal on a 50-minute flight! I have a fantastic airport parking sponsorship at the Los Angeles International Airport. That’s why I use LAX for almost all of my trips. The airline service from LAX to around the world is outstanding. The Tijuana airport as you might expect specializes in inter-Mexico travel. Airport parking is a little expensive. It’s $15 a day for the first five days and if you stay longer than that it’s five dollars per day. There are two main lots. Lots 1 and 2 are modern parking lots. However, today signs told me those two lots were full. I would need to use the gravel surface parking lot. I will need a car wash when I get back from this trip! By the way, this will be the first time I have driven my new Tesla Model X to the CBX parking lot. My Tesla is an all-electric car. It is rated at 334 miles on a full charge. I’ve now used the car to get to an airport on three or four trips. I have noticed it loses about 1-1/2 miles each day in its charging capacity just sitting at the airport. Overall, that’s not a big deal. In Mexico, we will be using Hertz Rental Car. I have found that a company called, “Auto Europe”, is excellent for international rentals. Auto Europe is essentially a car rental travel agent. They aren’t limited to just Europe. They also helped me secure my car with Hertz in Merida, Mexico for today’s trip. Many aspects of Mexican travel are super cheap. I was able to reserve a Hertz full-sized car for just $12 a day for the three days we would need it. Normally I pay closer to $50 for a full-sized car per day. For this trip, I would use my Chase Sapphire Reserve card for insurance on the car. At the rental car counter, I had to hold firm to make sure I was allowed to decline ALL insurances offered. The folks at Hertz didn’t really want to let me avoid all of the insurance charges but in the end, I was successful. We wouldn’t be driving very far on this trip. I didn’t think we would cover as much as 200 miles. That will make the fuel charges a negligible trip expense. At the end of the trip, I paid 19.7 Mexican pesos/liter for 12.7 liters of fuel. The exchange rate made 19.7 pesos about $1.07 U.S. Since 3.8 liters are in a single U.S. gallon that meant the Mexican gas was about $4.07 U.S. per gallon. That’s expensive. Right now fuel in the United States is averaging $2.50-$2.75 per gallon. When Carol comes along on the trip I like to stay in nice hotels. During my last two trips to Mexico, without Carol, I’ve stayed in beautiful upgraded Marriott properties. Those didn’t really exist the way I needed them in Marita and the surrounding area. That being the case we stayed in the small town of Progreso, Mexico at the Playa Linda Hotel. The Playa Linda is located right on the beach and the beach fronts the Gulf of Mexico. Cruise ships make a stop in Progreso. I’ll tell you more about the town as we go along. I bought the most expensive room in the hotel, the junior suite. What would the best room for a hotel right on the beach cost in a place like Progreso, Mexico? The charge was right around $50 per day. I told you that Mexico is inexpensive. The highlight of the hotel was its location. We didn’t arrive into Progreso until 10:30 p.m. on Saturday night. That was actually cutting it close for a race so far from our home that was beginning at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. The desk clerk was a young man who didn’t speak much English. He could handle our check-in but that was about it. All during the trip, we found very little English being spoken. Our hotel room was clean enough. It had a full kitchen including a refrigerator, stove and microwave. We even had a large bright blue fake leather sofa. The air conditioning was a little spotty. The surrounding area was reasonably undeveloped. It was about what we might expect from Mexico, a third world country but a country that is improving rapidly. The biggest drawback to our room was the shower. The hot water barely trickled out of the overhead faucet. At one point I considered going to the desk clerk to ask if I could take a shower in an unoccupied room. I’ve actually done that before. However, getting that point across to the non-English speaking desk clerk would have been a problem. From time to time the water came out just a bit stronger but overall the shower was terrible. Would I stay in the Playa Linda Hotel again? NO! I wouldn’t. But in the travel game, you live and learn. I must admit that the Marriott hotel properties spoil me. Food everywhere we went was inexpensive. When we arrived do late on Saturday night we ended up getting a bunch of snack food at a convenience store called OXXO. OXXO stores are on almost every street corner! We would have liked to have eaten at a normal restaurant but we couldn’t find anything that was open at that time of night. My final expense category is race tickets. We didn’t have any yet. That’s been a minor problem in the past south of the border. I’ve shown up to racetracks for the NASCAR Mexico racing series with large crowds numbering in the thousands. The tracks don’t seem to have traditional ticket booths. Fans either get their tickets in advance or just buy the tickets from people standing outside the track with a fist full of ducats. For an American trackchaser that’s most unusual. Sunday, March 1, 2020 We are headed to the Autodromo de Yucatan Emerson Fittipaldi racecourse today. Until this winter I had never heard of the track. It seemed unusual to me that the track’s official name would include the name of a Brazilian race car driver since we were in Mexico. I have so many friends across the world who help me out with racetrack locations. Sometimes it’s hard to thank them all. These folks know what I do and want to provide that “unknown” track opportunity for me. I am lucky to have such a network of friends and information sources. So how DID I find out about the Autodromo de Yucatan? I could give you 5 million guesses and you never figure it out. Here’s the story. I was at a most uniquely named racetrack up in Ontario, Canada called the Mosquito Speedway during late summer last year. They race just one time a year there. The track is located in Nolalu, Ontario, Canada. The Mosquito Speedway (above) will forever be known as my lifetime track #2,590. That was only nineteen tracks before seeing #2,609, the Autodromo de Yucatan Emerson Fittipaldi facility. It just turned out that I had a friend who was racing at the Mosquito Speedway the day I visited. His name was Mark Stewart. Mark and I first became known to each other at the Mission Bay Ice Track (lifetime track #1,735) up in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. That track visit was back in 2012. The Thunder Bay trip was part of the fateful weekend where fellow competitor and trackchaser Ed Esser joined me for his first-ever international trackchasing trip. Most sadly, Ed passed away from a heart attack just four days later. At the Mosquito Speedway, I had the first opportunity to actually meet my friend Mark Stewart. Mark had stayed in contact from all the way back in 2012. He frequently kept me posted on the once a year upcoming race date at the Mosquito Speedway. Then just a few months ago I had a chance to meet up with Mark personally for the very first time. Even though he was busy racing in the hornet division we have several minutes to talk. Mark told me that he and his family vacationed during the wintertime down in the Mexican state of Yucatán. You probably knew that Mexico has 31 states plus their equivalent of our District of Columbia, which is Mexico City. After this weekend I will have trackchased in seven of those 32 “states”. Mark mentioned there was a racetrack that he had seen during his vacations in Mexico in the Yucatán. He hadn’t seen any actual wheel to wheel racing but had seen some dragstrip action. He gave me a few more details. I did the research from there. Yes, my new track information comes from the most unusual places at times. How likely is a visit to an ice track in rural Canada from eight years ago going to lead to a new track visit to a location in Mexico that was a 55-hour drive from our home in San Clemente? Then when you consider I hadn’t even met Mark Stewart when Ed Esser and I made that trip to Canada in 2012. How likely is it that a person I had never met who only knew of my visit to his hometown ice track, would continue to stay in touch? How likely is it that I would finally come to meet Mr. Mark Stewart at a rural Canadian track that races just one weekend each year? Then how likely would it be that Mark vacations near a Mexican track that not a single trackchaser had ever visited or likely even knew about or likely will never attend? Well folks all of that stuff was pretty unlikely! But….it happened and I have Mark Stewart to thank. Thanks, Mark! It was nice that our beachfront hotel was located less than 30 minutes from today’s autodromo. The roads were decent. The traffic was light on this Sunday morning with the exception of the last mile getting us to the track. That road was unpaved, very dusty and filled with potholes. THE RACING Autodromo de Yucatan Emerson Fittipaldi – Merida, Yucatan, Mexico We have always had a very unusual ticket buying experience with these Mexican trackchasing visits. I am used to simply walking up to the ticket booth at a race track in the United States and laying down some cash for my ticket. It doesn’t really happen that way in Mexico. At most of the Mexican tracks I’ve seen up to now, there is no ticket booth! In order to get a ticket, I need to find someone individually selling tickets. Today’s ticket buying process was only marginally better. By the way, I should tell you there is very little English spoken by anyone in Mexico. We can get by and feed ourselves. But it’s difficult to find a conversation that you can have with a local that seems to make sense to both you and them. Today I had an advance contact who worked at the track. Her name was Karla. She was very friendly and prompt in answering the questions I had about this trip. She recommended that I get the VIP hospitality package for full enjoyment of today’s race. Since Carol was with me that sounded like a good idea. When we pulled into the track we were charged 50 Mexican pesos to park. That was reasonable enough. Fifty pesos is only $2.50 in U.S. currency. We were able to get ourselves directed over to a shaded area where three or four people appeared to be selling tickets to the races today. I mentioned Karla’s name but that didn’t give us much pull with the ticket-selling people. Our 10-minute conversation with these folks was right out of a Laurel and Hardy comedy routine. If you don’t understand that reference you can Google it. I inquired about the VIP hospitality tickets. Even though I wasn’t sure the ticket sellers were understanding me and I was pretty sure I wasn’t understanding them it sounded as if these tickets were going to cost us $150 each. The VIP hospitality would include admission to the paddock area as well as unlimited food and drink. Carol is a little girl. She don’t eat that much. She don’t swear that much. I wasn’t going to spend $150 on her for the VIP package and watch her eat a salad. There were no signs posted identifying the ticket options or what the prices might be. They had one guy looking up the ticket prices on a laptop computer. It took him a long time to search on his computer what the price of a ticket was and he was the ticket seller! Welcome to the world of foreign countries. Later I was told that a general admission ticket at the lowest price sold for about five or six dollars. We ended up buying tickets that would allow us to go into the paddock area and watch the races from the track’s infield. We could move from the general admission area of the track into the pit area at four or five designated times during today’s program. We paid $34 each for these tickets. Since Mexico is such an inexpensive place for food and hotels and lots of other things $34 for a race ticket seemed really high. Nevertheless, because we couldn’t truly understand what the other options were this seemed like our best choice. From there we entered the grandstand side of the track. Today’s weather was going to be warm, windy and sun-drenched. The temperature would be in the low 90s. The wind made things feel better but we were not prepared for this much sun for the amount of time we were at the track today. As we were standing around getting our bearings Karla my track contact came up to say hello. I guess with my height and skin color she knew I wasn’t from around here. Karla was very pleasant and welcomed us in a fine fashion. I thanked her for the help she had provided. Then Carol and I sat down in the shade for an early lunch of Mexican tacos. During our time at the track, we would have our share of ice-cold bottled drinking water and even a Heineken to fend off the heat and sun. My original Canadian contact, Mark Stewart, had mentioned that he had friends from Canada who vacationed down in this part of Mexico every winter. Mark told me his friends were racing fans. He would give them a heads up about possibly meeting us at the track today. It wasn’t long before Carol and I were meeting up with Mark’s friends, Dave and Sue. They have a home down in this area and come to Mexico for four months each winter. It was nice meeting such friendly people and being able to speak English with someone! Throughout the day we watched quite a bit of the racing together and agreed to meet again tonight for dinner. The Autodromo de Yucatan Emerson Fittipaldi racecourse doesn’t even appear on the Wikipedia list of Mexican racing facilities. That’s how “underground” my race information was from Canada. I like it that way. It keeps my fellow trackchasing competitors several steps behind. Dave told me the track has been here for about three years. He mentioned that originally the racing wasn’t that great because the car counts were small and they were still building up the track infrastructure. Today all of the track announcing and signage was in Spanish. Of course, that’s to be expected. However, as a non-Spanish-speaking person that was inconvenient for Carol and me. Welcome to trackchasing in foreign countries. The lack of communication sources is one of the items that makes international trackchasing so challenging and fun. We would come to find out there was a class or two of motorcycle racing. I guess the featured division of the day was the Mexican Formula 4 group. They were supplemented by a Nissan four-cylinder class. The racing class that Carol and I enjoyed the most was the big rig trucks. We were able to see big rig trucks race in Brazil with our friends Jerry and Katia Fisher. I’ve also seen the big rig trucks on the outside road course at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Being able to watch from the track’s infield was an absolute must. Dave and Sue had told us that. That was absolutely true. If we had only been watching from the grandstand the infield structures would have prevented us from seeing most of the racing. Despite paying a relatively high price for our paddock tickets it was worth it. As I almost always say at this point in my Trackchaser Reports I ask that you check out my YouTube video of the racing action and my photo albums. I think they will entertain you and answer any questions you might have about today’s racing. However, it is the touring of these foreign countries that make the trip for me. That being the case I recommend you stay with me to read and understand what we did “after the races”. AFTER THE RACES We left the track with the full intention of having dinner with Dave and Sue later on tonight. Leaving the Autodromo de Yucatan Emerson Fittipaldi we made our way back to our hotel located right across the street from a beautiful white sand beach on the Gulf of Mexico. I was told that cruise ships stop here. I’m not sure we saw all that Progreso, Mexico had to offer but overall it seemed a little bit underdeveloped for a cruise port. But, like I say we might not have seen it all. We had not eaten since about 10 a.m. and even then we only had a couple of tacos. It was now about 3 p.m. We decided to have a little bit of lunch even though we were expecting to have dinner later on tonight with our new friends. We found a restaurant within yards of our hotel. It had a great beach view and three dollar piña coladas. If you can get a great beach view and three-dollar piña coladas you should try to spend the rest of the afternoon there. We dined on a huge octopus. The octopus looked as if it might’ve been swimming in the Gulf of Mexico about an hour ago. It was served in some sort of a barbecue sauce. Some of the tentacles were nearly 2 inches in diameter. The octopus was soft and chewy and tasted a little bit like chicken. It definitely wasn’t like what I call squid or calamari that is served so frequently in the U.S. both fried and grilled. We enjoyed the octopus. After our daily dose of piña colada’s and octopus, we assessed our options for the rest of the evening. We had gotten so much more sun and wind than we had expected or were prepared for. That combined with a later than expected lunch gave us a new idea about tonight’s dinner. I texted Dave and Sue. Would they mind if we had dinner tomorrow night rather than tonight I asked? They were all for that idea as well. This made simply relaxing for the remainder of our Sunday an excellent idea. Another successful trackchasing adventure, from a racing point of view, was in the books. Tomorrow we would take on Merida, Mexico on a touring basis. Monday, March 2, 2020 Touring the local sounds, sites and attractions of the areas we visit is an important component of my trackchasing hobby. I have found in the past that when we had a local Mexican guide we saw and did so much more. We didn’t have that guide for this trip. Nevertheless, I did some Google searching. I found there was going to be a free walking tour of the city of Merida at 9:30 this morning. The somewhat major city of Merida has a population of around one million people. The town was located about 30 minutes from where we were staying. We parked our car in downtown Merida at a somewhat unusual underground parking garage. It was located right next to the National Palace where our tour was to begin at 9:30 a.m. I would say that this tour didn’t work out very well for us on many levels. First of all, I had to spend the first hour or so of the tour on the phone managing some travel difficulties with an upcoming cruise. That was a bummer on several counts. Then the Mexican tour guide spoke English so fast and with such a strong Spanish accent that it was difficult at times to understand if he was telling us what we wanted to hear in Spanish or English. There wasn’t all that much “walking” with today’s walking tour. I don’t think we ever got further from the Mexican Palace than about a block! Carol, who is usually most generous in her evaluation of other people’s performance (unless it’s the Democrats) told me that the tour guide had a lot of interesting information to share. She agreed it was difficult to understand him. When the tour was finished we went to option number two on our touring checklist. This would be a trip through the Lucas de Galves market. Think foreign food and clothing market on steroids. I figured we would have lunch here. There were several Mexican food stalls selling primarily tortas. I was up for eating here but Carol was not. Normally she is a pretty adventurous eater. However, her judgment of the cleanliness of this place made her turn thumbs down. I couldn’t disagree with her much on this count. We didn’t have lunch there. Today was going to be another scorcher with temperatures in the mid-90s. With the city of Merida being a 30-minute drive from the beach it was warmer here than where we were staying in Progreso. We saw a double-decker hop-on, hop-off bus drive past us once. We thought that might be a good way to see the city but we had time against us. We were scheduled for dinner with Dave and Sue tonight at 6 p.m. With the conclusion of our farmer’s market visit our touring of Merida had ended. I was a little disappointed for Carol. The hotel I picked up for this trip was not up to our standards. Now the touring had been pretty much a bust. It always seems like for the trips that she doesn’t come along on I do so much better in these areas. As darkness began to fall we met up with our new friends Dave and Sue at a place just down the street from our hotel called Crabsters. We had tried to eat here earlier in the trip but they were too busy. Having dinner with Dave and Sue reminded me of meeting new friends on cruise ships. We were dining in an upscale restaurant. With these folks being from Canada we had just enough differences and just enough similarities to really enjoy each other‘s company throughout the night. When we finished eating and talking, just like it often happens on cruise ships, I looked around the dining room. During dinner the place had been packed. Now we had pretty much closed up the place. We said our goodnights to our Canadian friends and walked a short distance back to the hotel. Tomorrow is going to be our getaway day from Mexico. Tuesday, March 3, 2020. Today was going to be a tough travel day. The air-conditioning in our room was super strong at times and then weak at other times. I had a couple of nights where the air conditioning blew Arctic cold air directly onto where I was sleeping. As might be expected I got cold out of that. The time zone where we were staying in Mexico was the same as the central time zone in the United States. That meant Merida’s time was two hours ahead of where we live in Los Angeles. Today’s flight was leaving on a nonstop basis from the Merida airport to Los Angeles at 6 a.m. Merida time (4 a.m. Los Angeles time). I am not a big fan of early flights. I am not a big fan of early golf. Nevertheless, I have experienced a lot of both. In order to make that work, we would set our alarm for 2:30 a.m. local time. Folks that was a wake-up call at 30 minutes past midnight, California time. When we landed at Tijuana we would be competing with folks who in most cases did not wake up (like we did!) this morning at 12:30 a.m. Pacific time. Returning a rental car to Hertz was no big deal. I paid only $42 in total for three days of renting a full-sized car. That was a couple of dollars more than the initial quote but I didn’t argue with them since the overall price was so low. Flight time from Merida to Los Angeles was five hours. Luckily those five hours went by pretty fast. We landed in the Tijuana airport at about 9 a.m. We even had time to stop in the VIP Lounge for a quick breakfast before grabbing our bag off the baggage carousel. That’s efficiency! Our car had been safely parked on the San Diego side of the border even though we flew from Tijuana, Mexico. Carol was pretty impressed with the entire Cross-Border Express operation which I described earlier in this report. I like to expose Carol to such things so that she sees that some of the people in places (Mexico!) that are being criticized in the media sources that she listens to aren’t all that bad. I must admit that I was dragging just a bit from our early morning wake-up call and my new dose of the flu. However, there was no rest for the weary. We had landed in Tijuana, Mexico at 9 a.m. on Wednesday. At 6 p.m., 33 hours later, on Thursday I would be leaving the Los Angeles International Airport bound for Stockholm, Sweden. Don’t worry. It’s what I do. I am a volunteer. I enjoy doing this or I wouldn’t be doing it. Major thanks to my Canadian friend Mark Stewart for telling me about this new trackchasing venue. It was also nice to meet his friends, Dave and Sue, who were as nice as he had described them. Good afternoon from the Autodromo de Yucatan Emerson Fittipaldi in Merida, Mexico. Randy Lewis – 85 countries – 2,609 tracks. Mexico The Yucatan State This afternoon I saw racing at my very first racetrack in the Yucatan State, yes, the Yucatan State. I hold the #1 trackchasing ranking in Yucatan. That didn’t take much. Trackchasers don’t make a habit of coming to Mexico. Thanks for reading about my trackchasing, Randy Lewis World’s #1 Trackchaser Peoria Old Timers Racing Club (P.O.R.C.) Hall of Fame Member Yucatan sayings: Chichi This one is very famous all around Mexico, and it designs our always beloved Granny! JUST THE FACTS LIFETIME TRACKCHASER COMPARISONS The three most important trackchasing comparisons to me are: Total lifetime tracks seen Total “trackchasing countries” seen Lifetime National Geographic Diversity results Total Lifetime Tracks There are no trackchasers currently within 735 tracks of my lifetime total. Don’t blame me. Total Trackchasing Countries My nearest trackchasing competitor, a native of Belgium, has seen racing in more than 30 fewer countries compared to my lifetime total. Current lifetime National Geographic Diversity results That’s all folks! Official end of the RLR – Randy Lewis Racing Trackchaser Report Click on the link below to see the video production from the racing action today. Click on the link below for a photo album from today’s trackchasing day. You can view the album slide by slide or click on the “slide show” icon for a self-guided tour of today’s trackchasing adventure. A quick trip to Yucatan, Mexico…lots of interesting photos from this trip 
