I thought I had better date all these entries since they are way behind the posting date!
Art dragged himself out of bed at 6:30, Gillian following soon after. A "quick" breakfast, feed and walk the dogs and we were good to go at 8:00 AM. I should point out that feeding Trekker involves re-hydrating his dried special liver problem diet.
The Garmin RV GPS didn't seem to think that there was a crossing here suitable to large rigs. It wanted us head northwest to Eagle Pass! A BIG detour! We had made this crossing so knew which way to go and what to expect along the way. We thought.
Our Exit was, according to the sign, 8B, to the Columbia Bridge. There was no 8 A, B etc, just exit 8, signed World Trade Bridge to Mexico. We can't use that one, it's too narrow and congested. However we took the exit to see what we could see as we got higher on the overpass. Then ahead we saw the sign for Solidarity Bridge, which is at the Columbia crossing. Whew! Soon we were back on familiar territory, the Bridge approaches having been changed--and much improved except for the lack of signage.
Over the next 30 kilometers or so Mr Garmin directed us at every opportunity to turn around and proceed to Eagle Pass. Fortunately we long ago realised that voice directions could become very annoying and a real distraction, we had long since muted the voice function.
At 8:30 we arrived at the Solidarity bridge for the Columbia Crossing of the Rio Grande, paid our toll of $7.00 US dollars and at 8:35 we had arrived at Immigration and Vehicle Import.
Even though there was no one in front of us (one couple were leaving as we arrived) it still took 40 minutes to get our 180 day tourist permits, copies of them, pay for them and get and pay for the temporary import permit for the Jeep. The motorhome doesn't need a permit, it has a 10 year permit good until November 2018.
A few minutes after ten we stopped at an OXXO (a chain corner store like the 7-ll) to purchase time on our Mexican sim cards and to fill up Art's travel mug with fresh hot coffee. He had to wait for a fresh pot to be brewed. Not a bad thing!
10:20 we are on the road and 2 kilometers later we had to stop at the final check point where customs pulled us aside for a look see. Painless. No questions about what we were bringing in, our basil, thyme and rosemary plants growing in pots on the dashboard getting only a passing glance. The official, a pleasant young lady, opened a few cupboard doors which of course caused a few thing to fall out to her embarrassment, and we were on the road at 10:35. Next stop Saltillo.
The highway was in pretty good shape, nice driving weather under mostly high cloud, the temperature rising though the morning to the low 20's. Very pleasant.
An hour later we came to the first toll booth when we joined the 85 D to Monterrey; 270 pesos for the motorhome and 205 for the car. Approaching the city we could see the cloud layer dropping. Not looking too good!
Then the periferico around the city; another toll booth at 253 and 130 pesos. As we climbed, the clouds became fog and we had to slowdown, not so much for the grade as for the lack of visibility. Happily all the vehicles had lights on and the 4 way flashers going and were well spaced. NOT the usual tailgating that is so common. Last year the day after we came though here there was a bad multi vehicle accident due to heave fog.
One last toll-- a cheap one, 80 pesos for both vehicles-- put us onto the 40D into Saltillo. Almost there. We knew that there was a main street that would cut a large corner off and much of the heavy traffic an left turn coming up, but of course we missed it! As it turned out it was a good thing because it joined up with the ring road from the right very close where we had to make a left. It would have meant trying to cross 4 lanes of heavy traffic in about a block!
The GPS seemed to know were we were and we were going but having been to this hotel last year we were not worried. We saw our left exit in lots of time and were able to end up in the right lane after our turn just in time to take the exit to the lateral a few blocks from Hotel La Fuente. Last year we saw the hotel and took the next exit which joins the lateral just past the hotel and we had to make a couple of 'retornos". The GPS wanted us to take that exit (#3) but we knew better and got off at #2.
Art parked on the street for about 5 minutes while Gillian booked us in and made arrangements for someone to open the gate to the vacant lot we were parking on for the night.
This is a very busy and fortunately wide (three lane) lateral as we had to make a wide turn to clear the high curb and to line up for the narrow entrance. When Gillian and a hotel employee showed up a head of him Art got ready to go. He had to wait for a break in the traffic--there was a traffic light a block back--before moving into the middle lane to make his turn.
As he started his turn from the middle lane two cars came up behind quickly, having just turned onto the road from an alley. One, sensibly moved to the left lane while the other ignored Art's right turn signal and Gillain's frantic waving, began to pass in the right lane. Too bad the motorhome air horns has stopped working but as Art slammed on the brakes the car braked too, swung to the left and passed as he should have and all was well.
We were parked and level by 2:45 Time for lunch! Hotel La Fuente is very nice, well groomed gardens, pool, tennis court etc. RV parking is on a large empty fenced lot often used for truck parking. There are no services, although we believe that there may be low power electric available at one of the lamp standards. Between our solar panels, the generator and the inverter we had no need for electric and our holding tanks were full or empty as appropriate.
We called Jesus and Marta only to find that Jesus was in Torreon some 260 kilometers to the west. Marta however was happy to meet us for dinner later that evening. we went to a small but well known hole-n-the-wall restaurant that specialised in enchiladas. Mmmmmmm good! Marta said that frequently people are lined up into the street waiting for tables.
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