Travel with Kevin and Ruth: Camping with armed guards

Tuesday, January 13, 2026

Camping with armed guards

We headed out yesterday morning at around 10:30am. A little bit of a plate start, but we knew we were only going to be driving about three hours.

First stop was for gasoline, at 23.98 pesos ($1.86 CAD) per liter. That's the equivalent of $5.07 USD per gallon.

Then we drove to highway MEX 80 to take us down to the coast. Overall, the two lane road was not in bad shape, with a couple of rough sections, but it was busier than we expected it to be.

Camping with armed guards!

Scenery along the way.

We went straight through the center of one town.

Highway MEX 80 heading south.

Pretty scenery.

We made it to the town of Autlan where we had a few choices of where to overnight. I had found a balneario (swimming park) that was close to town and looked like a good possibility. But when we stopped in there, the girl said they close the gates at night and it's not possible to overnight there. The next possibility was a small airport further down the same road as the balneario.

We've overnighted at a lot of small airports in both Canada and the U.S., but never in Mexico.

Well we got there, and it turns out this tiny airport (that was probably used for cropdusting in the past) has been taken over by the military. But I pulled up to the gate, and went up to talk to the young heavily armed guard. I explained what I was looking for, and he got on the radio to his superior. The superior ended up coming outside, and said that he couldn't let us park inside the gate, but suggested a spot just down the road. So we drove down there, but it wasn't suitable.

On the way back past them, he said we could park just outside the gate, so we did.

Definitely one of our more odd overnight parking spots!