DRIVING TO LA CRUZ

My friend, Karen, had offered to drive to Mexico with me, but she was not available until the 25^th of September. I drove the first leg to Southern California by myself. I took Highway 101 in order to avoid driving over the grapevine with my load. It was very hot and my truck did not have air conditioning. Mercifully, the coastal clouds kicked in after Paso Robles and it cooled considerably. I drove to Van Nuys where I could stay with my friend, Tom, and park my things behind his locked gate.

I had one task remaining before I could cross the border. My 1165 line list of items needed to be valued and translated into Spanish. I spent the entire time I was with Tom working on that list with the aid of Google Translate and various shopping websites. I finished just in time to drive to the Ontario airport to collect Karen.

We loaded Karen's suitcase into its allocated space, secured the tarp, and set off for Joshua Tree, where we spent the first night with my college friend, Larry, who had recently bought a house there and was eager to show me his new place. Larry lived at the end of a maze of dirt roads. His directions to me had consisted of GPS coordinates. Somehow, we found the place. The truck and all my earthly goods survived the off-pavement adventure admirably. It was a beautiful evening in the desert and we passed a pleasant evening visiting with Larry, who seemed very content in his new abode.

My Truck in Larry's Driveway

When morning came, we went for a short walk around the property and Larry made us a fine breakfast before we departed. Our goal, that day, was Green Valley, AZ, where I had booked us an AirBnB for the night. Green Valley is south of Tucson and offered a good staging ground for crossing the border in Nogales the following day. The drive from Joshua Tree to Green Valley was all desert but it was the rainy season and we saw plenty of rain. My tarp was getting tattered, but I didn't want to change it until we had passed through customs because I anticipated having to remove it, there, anyway.

The Truck at Our AirBnB in Green Valley

We arrived in Green Valley at dinnertime. Our hostess, Bev, was incredibly hospitable. I had only reserved (and paid) for one room, but she gave us two. She also invited us to join her family for dinner. They were lovely people who were keen to hear of my sailing adventures and we spent an enjoyable evening with them. I got online and arranged for Mexican car insurance, that night.

Bev also served us breakfast, which allowed us to get a nice, early start. We left for the border at first light. Nogales is reputed to be the best place to bring goods across the border into Mexico. We arrived at customs early in the morning. I was very concerned because my load was packed so tightly and everything wrapped so securely that, if I had had to disassemble it, I could never have gotten it back into the truck. I had brought extra plastic and tape, but was halfway ready to just call a shipper and ship a good portion of it if I had to take it apart. The customs agents removed the tarp and started poking at the contents. They were stymied by all the packaging and dithered about what to do. I handed them the 29 page list of items in English and Spanish and they were ultimately relieved to just accept me at my word. I had exceeded my one time allowance of household goods to be imported into Mexico, so they charged me $571 in duty and let me go. I was quite happy to pay them and be done with it.

My now shredded tarp wasn't going to handle freeway speeds, so we soon pulled into a gas station and spent the next couple of hours removing the old tarp and trying to secure the new one. It was too large and we had to spread it out on the pavement and fold it in half, which was quite a spectacle. It just didn't want to be secured in such a way that it wouldn't flap while driving. It was afternoon before we proceeded.

The Truck at Kilometer 21

Customs was just the first step in the process of entering Mexico. I knew that immigration and the place to get a temporary import permit for my vehicle were 21 kilometers south of the border. We drove through the no-man's land between Nogales and kilometer 21, keeping an eye out for the government offices. I was expecting a modern building with a big sign, so overshot the unmarked, drab, concrete block cluster of buildings by a couple of hundred yards. Fortunately, I was able to backtrack through parking lots to the proper location. I had recognized the place only by the collection of cars in the parking lot.

We waited in line at immigration and then I proceeded to Banjercito to get my temporary import permit. Of course, after waiting in line for half an hour, I had to go back to a small shop to make a copy of my passport. I finally succeeded in paying the deposit of $263 in order to bring my truck into Mexico. Because my temporary resident visa was only good for 30 days until I registered with immigration in my new home state, I was only allowed 30 days on my TIP. I would have to extend it once I obtained my temporary resident card.

Relieved that all the paperwork was out of the way, we continued south to Santa Ana. The route to the Cuota (toll road) was somewhat confusing through Santa Ana. We were looking for signs that said, “Cuota,” not realizing that Santa Ana sat at the intersection of Highways 2 and 15. We wanted to go south to Hermosillo, hoping to spend the night in Guaymas or Mazatlan. After a while, I noticed that the signs no longer said, “Hermosillo.” It seemed to me that we should have reached Hermosillo by then. The signs all seemed to say, “Sonoyta.” I was unfamiliar with the location of that city, so pulled a map out of my glove box and asked Karen to locate Sonoyta on the map. It was getting late in the afternoon and I noticed that the sun was on the wrong side of the truck. There was a big mountain ahead and, at first, I figured we were just detouring around the mountain and the sun would end up on the right side once we passed it. It didn't.

Karen couldn't find Sonoyta on the map. Getting concerned, I finally pulled over and looked at the map, myself. It turned out that we had somehow gotten onto Highway 2 and Sonoyta was all the way back at the border with AZ. Unfortunately, we were in the middle of nowhere with no gas stations. We didn't have enough gas to go back the way we had come, so were forced to continue all the way to Sonoyta to buy gas. On the way into Sonoyta, I had noticed what looked like an agricultural inspection station on the other side of the highway. We turned around after buying gas and headed back south. When we got to the large, covered structure, it turned out to be another customs station. I tried not to panic. Fortunately, Mexican officials are nearly always impressed by a good story and my Spanish was adequate to explain how we had managed to take a 400 kilometer detour. I produced the receipt for the duty I had paid and the agent laughed and waved us through. Just another couple of crazy old gringas!

It was already dark when we made it back to Santa Ana. We didn't want to drive at night, so decided to stay there. Karen had driven into Mexico many times before and knew that the safest place to stay with a loaded truck was in a No-Tell Motel. Nearly every city in Mexico boasts at least one of these establishments designed to offer adulterers complete privacy. They are identified by encircling walls and a gate with a security arm. Once you have paid for your room (you can pay by the hour, if you like,) you are directed to a garage where you can shut your vehicle inside. The rooms open off of the garages and you are discouraged from emerging from your room once inside. Most motels offer food and alcohol for sale. The motel in Santa Ana also featured a complete menu of sex toys and televisions showing nothing but porn. It was, however, a large, comfortable room with a spacious bathroom. We dined on peanut butter and rice cakes that I had brought along and retired early, wanting to get an early start.

The hotel maids were waiting by the side of the driveway when we rolled out of the garage in the morning. They inspected the room to be sure we hadn't stolen the towels before opening the gate and letting us leave. It was barely light, so we drove on to Los Mochis before we stopped for breakfast. Having failed to make much progress, the day before, we had a lot of ground to cover. In Sonora, the citizens were protesting the road tolls and most of the toll stations were closed. Protestors were collecting donations in some places, but we got off easy on tolls in Sonora. Once we entered Sinaloa, toll stations were operating normally. Road tolls appeared to be random. They did not correlate to the distance between stations or the condition of the road. During our tour of Northen Mexico on our first day, we had paid only a couple of hundred pesos to the protestors and 124 pesos to the goverment. Between Santa Ana and Guasave, where we stopped for the night, we paid 468 pesos.

Driving through Sinaloa

Guasave was a grubby little town on the Sinaloa River. We stopped there only because it was getting dark. We drove around, looking for a place to eat, but couldn't find a restaurant where we could park the truck. We decided to find a hotel and eat there. We bought gas and had an amusing conversation with the attendants, trying to explain a No-Tell Motel to them in Spanish. Finally, I got vague directions, involving continuing south on the lateral, going up a hill, and then down into a valley. We drove around the city and back and forth across the river, not finding the motel. Finally, we got back on the highway (that was where we went up the hill) and miraculously spotted the motel in time to get off again and dip down a steep road into the property.

Our Room in Guasave

Truck Locked In

The motel was a pretty shabby place, but it did have a garage. The first room they offered us didn't have a door high enough to accommodate my load, but they found us another with a sliding door that just barely cleared my tailgate. Business was slow because of Covid, so the kitchen was closed, but they gave us the number of a place that delivered tacos. Unfortunately, that place was closed, too. The motel brought us a couple of beers and we finished the rest of the snacks I had brought along. The room was dated, but had interesting features. There were mirrors on the ceiling and a sort of chaise designed, no doubt, for X-rated activity.

Once again, we hit the road early the next day, hoping to make it to La Cruz before nightfall. We spent 1,217 pesos on tolls between Guasave and the end of the toll road near Compostela. Tolls per section ranged from 35 pesos to 285 pesos and had to be paid in cash. Once we left the toll road, the scenery got more interesting. It was my first time driving through Tepic. The last section took us down Highway 200 through the jungle. It was very green. The road construction as we neared La Cruz was very shocking. Towering overpasses crossed the highway where the toll road would one day carry traffic all the way into Bucerias. Large swathes of the jungle had been cleared to make way for the road. The construction brought good paying jobs to the men of La Cruz, but the sheer devastation to the jungle was sad to see. Much of the area would be reclaimed by trees, eventually, but it looked very barren as we passed. I was used to that highway passing through a green tunnel of huanacaxtle trees.

We arrived in La Cruz about 18:00 on the third day after crossing the border. My truck fit into the garage without unpacking it, so I could leave that for the following day. After spending four months preparing for that moment, it was good to be home.

Dawn in My New Home