Fantastic first day in Mexico

We were on the road at 7:00am just as the sun was coming up. We won't always start that early on driving days, but we always plan to be at our destination by 2:00pm at the latest. That gives us lots of daylight hours to fix any problems that might arise along the way.

And, we did have a bit of a long drive ahead of us, as well as crossing the border. And you never know how long it will take to cross a border. Yesterday's border crossing turned out to be very interesting!

(Last night, I deleted all of my photos by mistake. I feel like an idiot, and there were so many great photos to show you. Sorry. I borrowed some photos from the rest of the group! Thanks to them for sharing!)

We had over an hour and a half drive from Alpine, Texas to the border crossing between Presidio, Texas and Ojinaga, Chihuahua.

RV'ers don't use this crossing. For some reason, most of the RV'ing crowd seem to think that they need to stick to the toll roads in Mexico. We've proven time and again that this is not the case and that the best scenery is usually away from the toll roads.

So when eight RV's came rolling into the parking area on the Mexican side of the border, it was a sight they have probably never seen before.

When you cross in an RV, you need to get tourist permits for the people, and vehicle permits for the RV's. But some of us had our vehicle permits from last year (RV permits are valid for ten years) and others had done the process online. So we already had all of our vehicle permits but we still needed tourist permits.

You never quite know how things are going to work because every border crossing does things a little differently. This time, a guy wearing the proper INM (Mexico immigration) uniform came out and requested all of our passports. Then he asked us to follow him inside.

The immigration guy collecting our passports.

Waiting to process the paperwork.

While we all waited off to the side, the INM guy and a co-worker sat at a desk and they filled out all of our cards based on our passport info. They asked me to come up to the desk, and then each person had to come up individually to sign their forms.

Any other time we have done this we have filled out the forms ourselves, then taken them to the banjercito (payment desk) where we could use a credit card to make payment. The cost is currently 558 pesos ($38.30 CAD, $28.95 USD).

So I'm sitting at the desk with these two guys and one of them is inputting info from each tourist permit into a computer and the other is stamping the cards. I asked if I was supposed to go over to the banjercito (in the same building) so I could use a credit card to pay for the permits. He says with a smile "no, you can't pay by credit card, it has to be cash and you have to pay me here and right now".

I asked how much, and he says "500 pesos each".

Pretty sure that our payment for the tourist cards was not going directly to the government!

He then asked if we would be exiting the country at Ojinaga. I said no, that we would be exiting at Laredo. Now normally, you are supposed to hand in your tourist card when you exit the country. But he specifically told us not to.

I went and collected the 500 pesos per person from the group and handed the INM guy 7,000 pesos. He handed me the passports, each one with an official stamped tourist card. We shook hands and it was a done deal!

Back at the RV's, another inspector wanted to see each of our vehicle permits. With that done, we were on our way.

Heading into Mexico.

The town of Ojinaga is actually quite nice. We had no problems making our way through town and onto the free road through the mountains towards the city of Chihuahua.

The view from Jim's rig.

Just a rural country two lane road with no shoulder. A few small farms and the odd pickup truck hauling a bale of hay somewhere. No traffic to speak of. So glad that we choose the roads less traveled.

Scenery along the way.

Along the free road, there is a protected natural area called Cañón y Sierra del Pegüis. I had read of an overlook there with enough room to park all the rigs. We took a break there for half an hour and enjoyed the view.

Roy, enjoying the view.

Wow. I can't believe nobody ever sees this!

Wow again. That's a long way down.

We stopped for lunch along the way, and realized that we had crossed a time zone. We now had an extra hour!

Almost everybody we saw waved and smiled at us.

Chihuahua is a modern city of about 800,000 people. Ruth and I were here in April 2013 and we really enjoyed the city.

There are no RV Parks in Chihuahua. Which makes sense, because no RVers ever come here! However, I had read on iOverlander that there is a big city park by the baseball stadium where they have overnight security.

Being a Sunday, traffic was relatively light and we had no problem making our way to our destination. We arrived just before 2:00pm. But also being a Sunday... there was a baseball game on and the parking lot was quite busy! We found a spot to park temporarily and went to check with the security to make sure we were okay to stay. They said it was fine, but we needed to wait until about 5:00pm for the parking lot to clear out and then we could park the RVs in a better location.

There is a big Soriana grocery store 2 kms away so some of the group walked over and did some stocking up and took Uber back to the park. We managed a bit of a late happy hour, but it sure seems like everybody is happy!

Today, we will go to el centro (the historical downtown) and explore.

Yesterday's drive 372 kms (232 miles).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ultimate Memory Foam Dog Beds on sale today only.

And in Canada...

Check out the deals at Amazon.ca