Friday, 27 November; Crossing the border

So much for being at the border at 8:00 AM, we didn't get rolling until 7:45. We had both slept in!

There is a direct toll road but it does not accept cash or credit cards. In fact there are only transponders and  readers for  cameras. If your vehicle doesn't have a Toll Pass, a photo is taken of your license plate and a bill mailed to your home address. We didn't know what would happen with a Canadian Plate and we wouldn't get the mail until April so not wanting to take chance we went the long way.

We crossed the Rio Grande via the Columbia Toll Bridge, $7.00 US and we were at the border. We parked along the building (there is not a lot of room here for big rigs--the commercial trucks have their one route through.)

Inside we got our immigration forms and the import for the Jeep. No problems with doing that in Gillian's name, guess the new passport number made the difference.

Then the rig had to be X-Rayed. This involved everyone getting out while the machine rolled past. Then Art got back in and drove back to where Gillian was waiting. No room for the motorhome to turn down where the cars go so he swung out and around to the main exit lanes and headed back the the wrong way as directed.

There was no traffic coming out but he had to make another U turn at the end and swing in to pick Gillian up, so he was keeping close to the right hand edge while watching ahead and to the left deciding just where to turn to make that pick up and wait for our clearance after the officials had studied the X-Rays.

A loud BANG made him return his attention to the right hand side of the rig where he saw the side view mirror glass hanging by the heater wires. He had drifted just a touch too close to a lamp post. A rude word was spoken. Loudly and repeatedly.

He made his turn, the glass swinging, and parked. A close look showed that the mirror arm had take the brunt of the force and had moved aft, the mirror housing had turned on it's shaft. All these were adjustable, though the set screws didn't want to move.

The mirror glass had shattered in it's plastic frame but the retaining clips that fit the frame to the motor housing had not fortunately broken and when gently put back up and pressed they snapped into place. A mess of white 3M tape crisscrossing the mirror glass looked like it would keep the pieces from falling out. And the driver could still see somewhat. Also the convex mirror below was undamaged.

Getting the set screws to loosen took some careful judicious tapping and coaxing and finally began to move. The Mirror arm moved back into place with some fiddling and the set screw tightened down.

A test showed that the mirror adjustment motor was undamaged and everything worked OK.

It could have been a lot worse, and in fact the repair only took about 20 minutes.



Next stop about 50 Km down the road, a Pemex for Diesel and the next door OXXO to see if we could get time on the cell phones. Fuel was fine, the phones were not. The system was down.

Another 2 kilometers was the final customs check point where we were waved through after checking the vehicle permits and immigration forms. 11:15 and we were clear now of everything except the toll booths and lunch.

We were now 50 minutes behind where we were in 2013 and we hoped to go farther this time. We grabbed a very quick lunch a couple of hours later at one of the five toll stops we would have today.

A few kilometers before our stop for the night we pulled into a Pemex for more fuel and to try our luck with the phones. Gillian put 20 pesos on each of our phone numbers (2 from Zihuatanejo and one from Puerto Vallarta). Gillian's worked, neither of Art's did. That's why we just put 20 pesos on; we suspected that some or all might not work.We'll sort them out in Zihuatanejo.

We arrived at Las Palmas Midway Inn in Matehuala at 5:45 and parked for the night. Looking at the log book from 2013, it seems that taking the bypass around Saltillo cut an hour off the driving time.