Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Driving out of Mexico 3.17.09

We left Marina Mazatlan on Tuesday morning, bright and early and headed up the road. We are going to drive up through Nogales, and into Tucson, and hope to miss any trouble. If you remember, last year when we were headed down this way, we were stopped by a 'bad' cop and had to bribe our way out of him impounding the vehicle. We don't want to deal with that again.

We made it to Guaymas, just outside of San Carlos, about 1/2 way up on Tuesday. The best day to cross the border is Wednesday morning and that's what we're planning on doing. The drive was spectacular - lots of different scenery. There was not a lot of vehicles on the roads, and we stuck to the 'cuota' (Toll roads) as often as possible. We didn't even run out of gas like last time! haha... Live and learn... The typical things stuck out - cows & horses grazing on the side of the highway, cowboys herding cattle on the shoulder (and almost bucked him off as the garbage truck was a noisy thing!), funny signs (Piggy Back - the name of an off ramp), lots of cool vegetation, only a few military checkpoints where everyone was incredibly nice to us, and our trusty GPS made no mistakes. It was a success!

We made it to Guaymas and upon a recommendation by a fellow cruiser, stayed at a hotel called the "Flamingo". This was no Vegas hotel...but it served it's purpose! And a steal at 360 pesos. We asked the gal at the front desk to recommend a restaurant and went for a little walk. Found a restaurant just a few blocks away and sat down & ordered. No sooner than we had our drinks, we observed that there were a lot of workers that seemed to be taking arm loads of equipment out of the kitchen, into the back of two awaiting trucks. We watched as load after load went until we finally asked, what's going on? The restaurant was moving to a new location, this was their final evening, and they were packing up the restaurant around us! haha... We had a spectacular meal, along with another couple that came in just after we did, while the restaurant was being packed up around us....literally! By the time we left, most of the tables & chairs were gone, most of the kitchen equipment and everything from the refrigerators & freezers were loaded up & taken to the new location, just down the street! The waiters were incredibly nice and offered us whatever we wanted, with no problems.

Back at the hotel, they had some wonderful rocking chairs outside on the patio and I enjoyed just sitting back & rocking the night away. Tomorrow will be another early morning so it's off to bed!

More to follow...
Rene

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home