Hola Mexico!
It’s about 30 degrees C in the sun, there are little lizard creatures and roadrunners a plenty and everyone seems relly friendly here.
La vida sueño!
Arizona was great fun, living the cowboy life in the desert and only touching with civilisation when I needed fuel and water was a blast, and the final stage of it (in and around the town of Rio Rico) was great – lovely people.
Riding across the border into Mexico at Nogales was like flicking a switch. Not in terms of people, but in terms of chaos. It was like being teleported to a different world in the space of just a few metres. If I hadn’t seen so many different sorts of places on this trip already then it would’ve been quite a culture shock, I think.
I was reminded of Turkey and immediately became excited at the prospect of Mexico proving to be as fulfilling as Turkey was. Mexicans are equally fond of the mustache, and there are just as few blond-haired Brits here as there were in the east. I wonder how long it will be before someone assumes me to be German or Swedish? It’s certainly a relief to not be assumed to be Australian anymore.
The border crossing itself was utterly painless and I didn’t even have to show a passport. Weird. However, 20Km south is where the ‘fun’ started. Tourist immigration and customs control was a real drag. Different offices wanted different monies for different things, and I had to leave a $300 (USD) security deposit against the bike. It’s refundable when I leave Mexico, but it was all a real faff. Mexico is only the second country where I’ve had to pay an entrance fee, the other being Russia – I had to pay for a visa beore arrival.
San Carlos is nice, although a little ex-pat touristy for my taste, but it does mean that WiFi access is easy and I can get by with my (still novice) Spanish. It’s actually a lot like southern Spain here, but instead of there being lots of Brits and Germans who don’t speak Spanish, there are lots of Americans and Canadians who don’t speak Spanish.
All throughout my time in the USA people were warning me about Mexico, but now that I’m here (and past the border towns) I think it will all be fine. The advice here is more specific than simply ‘be careful’, in that they recommend you don’t use the roads at night. Even that, though, they say is being overly cautious and there shouldn’t be any bother at all between here and Guatamala. I suspect the folk who were warning me about Mexico have been watching a little too much Fox News, or perhaps just repeating what they’ve heard others say. My experience is still that the world is full of genuinely nice people, with just a few rotten eggs here-and-there.
Tonight looks set to be my first experience of camping on a beach, so I’ve just popped back to town to stock up on water and munchies, and once I’ve set up camp I’ll spend the rest of this lazy afternoon choosing where I think I’d like to see next. I’m heading in the direction of the “Devil’s Backbone”, a fun-looking road starting at Mazatlan, but I’m in no particular hurry. I’ve got a 180 days tourist permit and the bike is insured for 60 days (I think – or it might be 180). I’m really looking forward to seeing the more rural parts of Mexico, now that I’ve had my dose of the more luxurious tourist environs.
Here’s the beach that I’m thinking of camping on this afternoon/evening. Raining in England, is it? 🙂