Leaving Mexico

March 13:  We were still on Stone Island recovering from our fish bowls of regret.  We had a lazy beach day.

Since we didn't have the energy to chase Cleo up and down the beach for two hours, she was tied to Dave.

View of the RV park from the beach.

Happy hour with Jody & Brent.

Zela is relaxing while we wait for the sunset.

A Volkswagen Beetle driving down the beach.

The end of another wonderful day.

March 14:  Beautiful flowers in the RV park.

Dave & I went for a walk to the botanical gardens. 

The entrance.

We started in the cactus garden.

It was a perfect day for soaking up the sun.

It's a very nice park.

There are a couple of buildings on the property and we were standing and looking at them when a Mexican gardener came along and said something in Spanish which we were pretty sure was "Go in and have a look".  So we did.  There is a nice outdoor seating area & a hot tub.

They have a main floor kitchen, then a nice bedroom & bathroom upstairs.

A great view from the balcony.

About this time a security guard came & told us to get out.  We were not allowed to be in there.  Oops.  From what he told us we think there is an office in town where you can make arrangements to rent them. 

That was enjoyable.

In the afternoon we went to the beach and Dave invented a way to keep Cleo from running away.

It worked great!

We were able to relax.

March 15:  We left Stone Island and headed for Durango.

The Durango highway was all new to us.  We had entered Mexico in Arizona and driven along the coast.  This time we were going inland to see different scenery and save some kilometres.

This sign with the fox on it was the third sign we saw.  I didn't have my camera ready for the first two which were an armadillo and a pig.  We didn't see any of them. 

What a great highway................

.................except for the construction.

Lots of tunnels............

................and construction.

Why pay a person to hold a flag, when a dummy can do it?

Great scenery and.........

.........more construction.

This was a long tunnel.

Don't look down.

Wow!  What a view!

Pretty impressive bridge.

It seems to go forever.

Mountains everywhere.

We stopped for a short break and found that our cupboards had opened again.  Oh joy.  We like to learn things the hard way.

Pick a lane buddy.

The red lines are for the run off lane.  I'm not sure why they put them on the left side because they eventually cross over the right lane.

It was a much longer day than it should have been due to all the construction.

When we finally got to Durango we discovered that the hotel we were going to park at wouldn't let us stay in our trailer.  They insist that you take a room.  Luckily, I had a back-up plan.  The second hotel I wanted to try wasn't too far away however, our GPS took us in circles to get there so we were probably in Durango for an hour before we got parked for the night.  

We parked behind the City Express Hotel.  They didn't charge us anything and had security patrolling all night.  We had wifi which worked from our trailer and they said we should go in for breakfast in the morning.  Breakfast is included with a room.  We wanted to pay for breakfast and they said no.  The manager said to tell all our friends to go there.  We highly recommend it!

It was probably the quietest place we have ever slept.  

March 16:  After breakfast in the hotel....

.......we were on our way to Saltillo.

We saw a very busy market as we were leaving Durango.

A really nice looking hospital.

You can see all the water tanks on top of the buildings.

Heading for the hills.

These emergency phone boxes are all along the highways.

The right lane was getting pretty rough.

No tunnels or construction today.

Lots of toll booths.

We arrived in Saltillo.

We stayed at La Fuentes hotel which has RV parking for a fee.  We're pretty sure this is where we picked up two screw nails in one of our trailer tires.

Happy hour with Kathy & Charlie.

March 17:  We were up bright and early and on our way to the border.

We were getting close to the very large city of Monterrey and I'm pretty sure that's smog.  I don't think they have any emission control.

It looks a lot like fog.

Just after bypassing Monterrey we stopped for fuel at Pemex #6540.  We have heard rumours that you should be on guard when getting fuel in Mexico because the attendant may try to rip you off.  After spending the last two winters in Mexico and getting fuel many, many times we had never had any problems.  This time we did.  The attendant tried to tell me that I gave him a 50 peso note instead of a 500.  I knew that I was correct and he didn't pursue it.  He knew I was correct too.  While we were stopped there we noticed that one of our tires on the trailer looked low.  It took a really long time to fill it, first with the service station air, then with our portable pump.  After about a 45 minute stop, we were back on the road.

This is not the first time we've seen a truck that burned.

There sure seems to be a lot of semis on the road.

Whew!  That's better.

I spoke too soon.

We got into this traffic jam of semis which just kept building & building.  More semis kept coming and they made a lane on the shoulder of each side of the highway so that eventually we had semis 4 across as far as you could see in front and behind us.  We barely moved for over an hour.  More semis started using one of the lanes for the oncoming traffic so that they could get ahead and cut in farther up the road.  It was insane!  We were 11 kilometres from the border crossing that the trucks use.

We heard a rumour that it might have been a truckers protest but we're not sure.  

We were just barely able to see a sign where we thought we were supposed to turn off to get to our border crossing.  We had to get over 3 lanes to make our turn and we had no idea if we were actually going the right way.

We were so happy to get out of that mess but still really stressed that we may have made a mistake and might have to go back to the end of the line, wherever that was.  Our GPS did not want us to turn. I really wish I'd thought to take a picture of all the semis once we were on the overpass.  After we'd seen a couple of landmarks that were indicated in our instructions, we were doing the happy dance!  

We are arriving at the border of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and Laredo, Texas.

Well there was good news & bad news.  Good news, they didn't look inside our trailer or ask us about anything that we had.  Bad news, we had to take our trailer through an X-ray machine which had a          

1 1/2 hour long line-up.  We finally got out of there and headed for Lake Casablanca State Park. 

We got settled into our campsite and had soup & a grilled cheese for supper since we didn't have anything else.  Boy were we ticked off that we'd given away some food and even thrown some out so that we wouldn't have any hassles at the border.  What a long day!