Week #9: Bienvenidos a Mexico!

Before getting into this week's post, I thought I'd provide both Ginny and my new Mexican phone numbers as we won't be reachable via our US numbers for the next few months. My number is 631 248 8844 and Ginny's is 631 316 5102.  Mexico's country code is 52 if you're calling from outside of the country. You can also email or chat us - we're both on WhatsApp (with our US numbers) which they use extensively here in Mexico. 

From our trip out to Joshua Tree last week, we learned that our newly installed rear windows leaked. Once again, thankful for the rain to help suss out some issues. From our internet research, this appears to be a fairly common problem with these windows and many people have fixed the leaks with some silicon sealant. After a couple of YouTube videos and armed with silicon, we have tested the leaks with a hose and they appear to be airtight now! Of course, the real test with be our next big rain so stay tuned for that report.   

After a great couple week visit with my aunt in Santa Monica (thanks so much for the lovely hospitality, Nina and Mark!), it was time to hit the road again - more like roll out of town given the amount of amazing food in the house at all times. See photo of Mark's unbelievably tasty ramen below. We paid a final visit to our storage unit in LA to offload final unnecessary items before heading south down I-5 to San Diego. We wanted to visit a few friends in San Diego before making our way to Mexico. One of our friends also just got a campervan and immediately experienced leaking so sent it back to the manufacturer. We felt bad for them but were also a little jealous of their ability to 'send something back' as most of the problems in our campervan are ours and ours alone to solve. Added bonus was all of the great tips they gave us on mainland Mexico that has helped shape our loose travel plans. Before leaving San Diego, we were planning to spend the night at a friend's house but thought twice of it as his son got a positive COVID test result just as we pulled up in our van. Instead, we enjoyed a nice visit in their backyard and then pushed on to spend the night at the Golden Acorn Casino parking lot up in the Cuyamaca mountains east of San Diego. No gambling but a good night of sleep was had by all!

Ginny had done considerable research on the border crossing so we felt well-prepared with all of our documents in order. US vehicle insurance isn't valid in Mexico so we had purchased Mexican vehicle insurance and gotten traveler's health insurance to cover any mishaps south of the border. After driving all day from San Diego County to just south of Tucson, AZ, we filled up our water tank and spent the night less than 30 minutes from the border crossing at Nogales. The next morning we woke up early with much anticipation of our first day in Mexico in the van!  

Once we hit the Mexican border, we rolled through the toll-booth style gate and the weight of our vehicle triggered the dreaded red light for secondary inspection. One of the Mexican officials flagged us to pull out of the line and had a quick look in our van and sent us on our way. Easy peasy! After a short drive down a toll road, we stopped at the immigration office to get our six month tourist visas and a 10 year vehicle permit (TIP) for our van. With the 10 year TIP, we can return in the van as much as we want to Mexico and not have to deal with the paperwork again. Muchas gracias, Mexico!

After clearing all of those bureaucratic hurdles, we got ourselves SIM cards at the OXXO (Mexico's version of 7-11) and headed south for Hermosillo. The nearly 3 hour drive to Hermosillo was all on a well-paved toll road and we had no issues with banditos or corrupt Mexican police - let's hope our good luck continues for the next three months! Once we got into Hermosillo, we arranged to get the keys to our friend's place in Bahia de Kino which is a fairly small beach/fishing community a little over an hour west of Hermosillo. Our friend's place is a modest cinder block house one block from the beach and we only had the keys to the gate to get into their property. So we've been staying in our van in their driveway but have access to their courtyard and palapa which has been really nice. I even got to rig up the hammock between a couple of palm trees!

Bahia de Kino is very sleepy this time of year with miles and miles of beautiful sandy beach to explore. Apparently it gets very crowded here in the summer with residents of Hermosillo looking to beat the heat. We've had a nice couple days exploring the town, walking the beach and enjoying some warm weather for a change! We did a questionable trek out to this beautiful church that sits up on a hill (see pic below) as Ginny was convinced we were trespassing on cartel land. We're still not sure what's going on with the church as it seemed fairly inaccessible. Again, Ginny thinks it's a drug lord's private church.  She has assured me that this paranoia will subside at some point! Tonight we'll check out the seemingly only open restaurant in town for some seafood and then tomorrow we will carry on to Alamos which is an old silver mining town and a pueblo magico - tune into next week's blog for details on this and more of our Mexican van adventures.