Mexico GPS Software Review

[markgoodrich]

I just returned from a circuit of parts of Mexico, using my gps unit as the primary guidance system. I'd heard Garmin's Mexico maps leave a lot to be desired, and tried a set of maps from Bicimapas, a Mexican company which makes an atlas for Mexico, and has expanded into Central and South America. The maps are compatible with Mapsource, which is what I used for route planning.

 

By and large, I have to say the maps are accurate, with plenty of detail, especially compared to City Navigator North America [i have since learned Garmin has a separate set of maps just for Mexico, but I cannot comment on them]. Mexico is quite a challenge for any mapping system, as there are myriad one-way streets, unnamed roads, on and on and on. Given the difficulties, Bicimapas did an admirable job, with several important caveats.

 

1. It is extremely difficult to force the software to create a route around, rather than through the center, of towns and cities, even when one can see a loop or shortcut. Changing routing preferences didn't seem to alleviate this issue. The result was slow progress through towns, and frequent stops to study analog maps to try to figure out how to escape the city/town mazes.

 

2. Due to the aforementioned one-way systems, on more than one occasion the system tried to route us off an autopista via an on-ramp. Not good, and caused us to get lost as we passed the wrong-turn instruction and tried to get back to where we needed to be.

 

In more than one instance these issues drastically extended our travel days, into the night [i will say driving at night in Mexico is not much different from driving at night anywhere else, although instead of deer, one must watch for topes and the occasional cow; we encountered no issues on either secondary roads or autopistas].

 

I think the atlas we used is second-generation, and as I said at the beginning, is generally useful. I'd like to compare it to the Garmin maps for Mexico, but right I'm a little too tired to run another 2400 miles down there and back. There was a lot of stopping to compare the routes to the Guia Roji Atlas, which was only marginally more (and less) useful than the Bicimapas software. I found this frequent stop/check to be frustrating, but also realize that the smoother passages through Mexico I've made in the past were in cars, where someone could sit and study and read maps, rather than follow a magenta line on a gps unit.

 

I guess I'll give it a grade of "B".

 

 

 

[johnlt]

Thanks for review Mark. I've got the first generation of bicimappas and agree. As long as you know the limitations, I found them very useful.