February 13, 2018 - Nogales, AZ to Navajoa, Mexico

We were up early – 6am – and on our way to Mexico by 6:15 this morning. It was still dark, but we managed to cross the border and get to the Mexican immigration station at KM21 with no problems. It was beautiful looking up and seeing the crescent moon as we drove.

We took the Mariposa truck crossing into Mexico which put us on the toll road which we had planned. We didn’t have any pesos, but the first toll booth did take US dollars, thank goodness, and they gave us a good conversion rate!

After filling out our paperwork for our tourist visas we proceeded to get our permits for the RV and motorcycle. I forgot to make copies of our RV and motorcycle registrations, so that slowed us down a couple minutes and cost $2 USD for the four copies. Then, with all the copies we needed in hand, we got everything taken care of and paid for with a credit card. 45 minutes later, we were on our way. Next stop, the ATM to get pesos. The machine at the OXXO store next to immigration declined my card. Yikes! A phone call back to the US to check on my account and it turns out that the ATM was out of money and no problems with my card. The next little town was the same story! Four stops later, success! With pesos in hand, we could continue on the toll road.

The toll road from Nogales south (15D) has lots of construction. Sometimes we were on 4-lane divided road, other times it was 2-lanes and was not in great shape. I only drove about an hour today, but that gave Tobey a small break. I was lucky, most of my driving was on 4-lane roads! He estimates that we probably drove at least 250 miles of road construction out of the 378 we went today!We passed several greenhouses in the northern part of Sonora, then miles of vineyards. Our neighbor, Dante, would be jealous of the miles of grapes! I just want to try the wine!This statue was just outside the city of Obregon, by what looked like will be a park or rest area.  We could see it for a long way off.When we got into town, we both thought their city sign was pretty cool.When we travel, it is always interesting when we spot trucks from companies based in the US. It is even more interesting when we saw this xpedx truck because it is the company from which Tobey retired!We made it to Navajoa around 4pm and filled up with gas. Yikes! We are spoiled at home. - gas is over $3.60 USD/gallon here. Next stop was the Tel-Cel office to get a “banda ancha” which is a laptop modem that we will use for internet. Between my poor Spanish, I-translate on my phone, and the little English they spoke, we got our purchase completed in about an hour! It was $469 pesos (about $25USD) for a new chip and 2 gigs of data for one month. A pretty good bargain.

After dinner we went into the Sam’s Club to look around and comparison shop. We bought a horchata concentrate. It sounded good so we will mix some up and have it tomorrow. Hopefully, it will be delicious! With the help of our young clerk, Carlos, we received permission from the manager to park in their lot overnight since the RV park here has closed down. Carlos spoke excellent English and was patient with my Spanish!   He told us his grandfather was an English teacher, so he learned from him. We had fun chatting with him for a while before leaving the store.

Today we drove 378 miles and paid $33.67 USD in tolls. Tomorrow we will get an early start and hope to make it to Mazatlán.