A Long Drive North

There is plenty to see in the northern part of Mexico, in particular the undoubtedly impressive Copper Canyon, but for us the heat and humidity were becoming uncomfortable. After leaving San Blas we decided to abandon many of the waypoints that we had marked on our map, and the next few days were largely spent driving long distances in the direction of Nogales where we planned to cross back into the United States. Over the following five days we drove over 1000 miles, stopping only in Alamos for an afternoon of site seeing. For many travellers this is not a lot of driving, but for us it was undoubtedly the speediest travelling we had done since arriving in Georgia in December, and even at Jim’s speed limit of 55mph, drives of over 200 miles take up most of the day.

About 100 mile south of the Nogales crossing, we were subject to a 10 minute vehicle search by Mexican military. The search was cursory at best, and would only have found drugs or weapons (had we possessed any) if we’d forgotten to hide them. We surrendered our vehicle import hologram about five miles from the border, and we were soon out of Mexico and into no-man’s land. The queue of trucks at the Nogales crossing was huge, several days long I suspect; thankfully we drove straight passed the truck queue and joined the shorter private vehicles queue. The queue of cars seemed no more than an hour long in each lane, but we didn’t even have to endure this. We were ushered into the bus lane (which seems also to serve RVs) and spent about two minutes showing a US customs agent around our truck.

With the customs agent satisfied that the several thousand hiding places that he didn’t look in were not filled with cocaine, we were allowed into the adjacent building where we spent a further two minutes convincing the officer on duty to extend our stay in the US. The previous six month stay that we had been granted at Orlando airport in December had all but expired and we were nervous about whether our stay would be extended. We needn’t have worried as we were soon on our way with a further six months added to our B2 visas.

Enjoying the fine tarmac, clear road markings, and roadworthy vehicles, we rolled into Tucson, ready to slow our travelling pace down again.