border – Messy Suitcase Travel Blog

February 23, 2020September 4, 2022

Drive to Mexico 2020

Our second time driving across the Mexican border was a bit different from the first, even though we used the same crossing – Colombia Solidarity Bridge in Laredo, Texas.

Our travel buddies on the road. Minzy and Sealy

Getting Us Into Mexico

The first time we crossed, in January 2019, we had Mexican Visas, the first step in attaining Temporary Residency in Mexico, because we expected to stay long-term. This time, our Temporary Residencies had accidentally expired because of the extra time we spent in the States taking care of my sick mother, and we knew we are going to stay less than three months, so we entered with Tourist Visas.

The difference was that this time, we each had to pay a Tourist Visa fee at a cost of $575 MXN, about $39 US. (Note that this fee is included in your airline ticket fee when you fly into Mexico). This entailed the initial stop at Immigration office, a stop to pay at the Banjercito window, and then another stop at Immigration to finalize our paperwork.

Getting our Truck Into Mexico

Next, we had to get the Temporary Import Permit for our car. This cost $400 USD, which is supposed to be reimbursed when you leave Mexico, plus a processing fee of approximately $51 USD. I wasn’t as prepared this time as I was previously and I had left copies of my driver’s license and passport buried in a folder in the back of the truck, so we chose to stand in the copy line at the border facility and get those copied.

Next, we had to drive through Customs. It seemed as if every car was chosen for inspection, and ours was no exception.

Inspecting the Cats

This time was that they asked for documentation for the cats. We were traveling with only two because Ellie, the third, was now living at Champlain College in Vermont with Gavin, our youngest. Effective January 1, 2020, you no longer need a Certified Health Certificate to bring a cat into Mexico, but they can physically inspect the cats for open sores, health problems, etc., and you need to prove they have rabies vaccines. The Inspector made us pull out the paperwork, which unfortunately was stored in the far reaches of the truck, entailed a near-total unpacking. He very thoroughly reviewed the paperwork.

Noxy and Kaylee patiently waited during the truck inspection

X-Raying the Truck

Next, Lisa and the cats had to get out of the truck while I, once again, drove it through the x-ray machine. Once they reviewed the x-rays, we were free to go.

The truck x-ray machine — Our truck is inside this x-ray machine

In the end, it took us about 1.5 hours at Mexican Immigration and Customs. Fortunately, there weren’t lines (which is why we like Colombia), or this could have been much longer.

Welcome to Mexico!

And then we were in Mexico! We didn’t take time to celebrate, but pressed forward to get to our first night’s lodging before dark.

We drove about 6 hours to Matehuala, where we had a reservation at the same cat-friendly motel we stayed at last time, Las Palmas Midway Inn in Matehuala.

Our new Garmin GPS seemed to under-estimate our travel time, by about an hour both days. We didn’t run into traffic either day, so that wasn’t the issue. Maybe it was the fact that many of the Mexican roads we drove on incessantly changed speed limits, going anywhere from 110 kph to 60 kph and back. It may be difficult for the GPS to deal with that along with the fact that there may be few people driving those routes and providing route time feedback. It could also be that we drive the speed limit while many Mexican drivers don’t necessarily do that. I don’t really know how the GPS time estimation works, so this is all just a guess.

Another thing that may impact the time estimation is the number of toll booths. Overall, we passed through 10 of these booths at a total cost of $924 MXN, or about $50 USD.

Stopped by the Mexican Cops (the Federales)

Finally, the last thing that was different on this trip was we were stopped by the Federal Police on two occasions. The first of these seemed to be more friendly. The second one was at an organized Federal Police checkpoint. Here they pulled over several people and performed inspections. They asked me 3 times if I had weapons or drugs (armas, pistolas, drogas) and then had me open the back of the truck and open selected suitcases, even going to the point of asking me where my shoes were in one of them, which I had to subsequently dig out. They also frisked me. Asking me to empty my pockets, patting me down and having me lift up my pant legs. So, that was a different experience than last time as we weren’t selected for the inspections as we drove through several of those checkpoints before.

Nonetheless, we arrived in Mexico City with enough time to unload, park the car and find an extremely nice restaurant to have a couple of beers, dinner and watch the Super Bowl (in Spanish).

La Provoleta in Roma Norte – amazing food, great Super Bowl watching (in Spanish)

October 28, 2019November 12, 2019

Why was Bob Fretting?

Check out our latest video on the Messy Suitcase YouTube channel — Crossing The Border (a.k.a. Why was Bob fretting?)

April 28, 2019

Driving Our Car in Mexico, Part 2

Because it took us a few weeks to start our Visa processing,
the first thing we did after our first trip to Immigration in Guadalajara was
to go to the tax office to get our TIP expiration date extended. Unfortunately,
no one at the Immigration office seemed to know what we were talking about, so
we showed them the paper they gave us at the border. They directed us to a SAT
(Servicio de Administracion Tributaria, or Tax) office in Guadalajara.

SAT #1: Guadalajara

We Ubered there an eventually found someone who spoke enough
English, who told us we were at the wrong SAT office and that we needed to go
to another one even farther away, in the far northeast neighborhood of Zapopan.

SAT #2: Zapopan

We went there, once again found someone who spoke English,
who told us we were at the wrong office and that instead of SAT, we needed to
go the Customs Office at the Guadalajara airport, south of the city. It was
getting late so we decided that I would do that another day.

SAT #3: Guadalajara Airport

Two days later I made the trip to the Guadalajara Airport,
not knowing exactly where I needed to go. As I Ubered into the airport I saw a
big gate with a SAT sign, but continued on to a Customs Office address I had
found online. No one there seemed to know what I was trying to do. I proceeded
to walk to the SAT sign, and was shown to an office where they seemed to only
be mildly confused as to what I was trying to do. There was no English spoken.
Eventually, I filled out some forms I didn’t understand, gave them copies of my
TIP and passport, and received a date-stamped form. I was expecting another
official looking TIP, but I didn’t get that, so now we have the expired TIP and
a stamped form with no expiration date.

I was told online that I needed to go back to the same office
once we finally got our Residente Temporal cards, so I returned with the green
card, expecting to get a more official document. The people at the office
looked at me like I was crazy. They initially told me that I didn’t need
anything new, but eventually had me fill out the same forms and gave me a new
stamped form. Again, no expiration.

Crossed Fingers!

We can only hope that we’ll get our $400 deposit back when we
cross back over the border into the United States with the truck this summer.

April 27, 2019

Driving Our Car in Mexico, Part 1

Since we were moving to Mexico with three people, three cats
and three musical instruments, we wanted to take our Toyota Tacoma with us.
Many people just hop on a plane with a couple of suitcases, but we needed more
space. So before we left Colorado, we ordered a topper for the back of our 2012
Toyota Tacoma. When an accident totaled the truck, we replaced it with a newer
model that still fit the topper.

The car and all the stuff.

Car Rules in Mexico

There are strict rules surrounding the importation of
vehicles into Mexico. You’re OK if you only plan to take a vehicle within
Mexico’s Free Zone (Baja peninsula, large parts of Sonora and up to 20-26
kilometers from the border). However, if you want to go further than that, you
need to get a Temporary Import Permit(TIP). You can get this online or at the
Banjercito at the border crossing.

Unfortunately, due to a long delay in getting a title from
Colorado for the new truck, we didn’t have the title or registration when we
left. We eventually got the title, but we needed to have some physical presence
back in CO to get the registration document. So we changed plans. Since we were
going to be spending time at one of our vacation homes in Ludlow, VT, before
heading to Mexico, we decided to register the truck in Vermont, expecting to get
the plates and registration on the spot. It didn’t happen that way. Vermont
took our Colorado title away and told us that they would mail the new
registration and title. Unfortunately for us, they entered an incorrect address
into their system and these two documents ended up floating around the Postal
System for a long time. So we were forced to drive to the Mexican border with a
handwritten registration application from Vermont and hope for the best.

Turned Away at the Border

Alas, Mexican authorities wouldn’t let us enter with the
truck without a permanent Vermont registration. We turned around and
frantically called the Vermont DMV, trying to get a copy of the registration
that had never arrived. After getting a couple of robotic bureaucrats who
offered no assistance and told us they could not help, we were fortunate to
reach a helpful woman who told us that our registration had been returned. She
offered to FedEx a replacement to us that day. We therefore spent an additional
two days in Laredo, Texas, navigating this paperwork before heading back to the
Banjercito.

Trying Again

At the Banjercito, they remembered us and quickly processed
our paperwork. The cost ended up being about $1,150 MX pesos (about $40 US) for
the permit processing and another $7,800 MX pesos (about $400 US) for a
deposit, which we should get back when we return the Temporary Import Permit (TIP)
sticker upon crossing the border back into the U.S. We were told that our TIP
was tied to our Immigration permit, so it expired in 30 days. This meant that
we would have to get our TIP renewed when we got our Visas processed.

Bob putting the temporary sticker on the truck

We also had to get Mexican insurance for the truck, as American
insurers don’t insure vehicles in Mexico. We got ours through Sanborn’s, and canceled
our US car insurance.

To be continued …

January 21, 2019

Crossing the Mexican Border

(A look back at the border crossing experience, or Why We Were Stuck in Laredo for Two Days)

I was a little concerned about crossing the Mexican border. I knew there were several things that needed to be done in order to successfully enter Mexico, and I wasn’t exactly sure how, or where, to do them. I was particularly worried that we didn’t have the documentation we would need for our relatively new car. Finally, I was concerned about how long the lines at the border, because we had nearly a 7-hour drive to our first stop, and we had been cautioned not to drive in Mexico after dark.

I had read that most Americans heading to the Guadalajara area from the eastern US used one of the Laredo, Texas, border crossings. Many used the somewhat out-of-the-way Colombia Bridge crossing, which doesn’t have as much traffic as some of the others. It is not a 24-hour crossing, so our plan was to get there when it opened at 8AM.

The First Attempt

We arrived at the border at 8:15 AM, paid $3.50 USD to cross the bridge and we were in Mexico – almost. I had found very little information on the layout of the border crossing, but I knew we needed to visit Immigration and the Banerjcito (the import office) so we could temporarily import our car, which is a requirement if you want to take your car past the “free zone” the first 20 km or so inside Mexico. Therefore, I was ecstatic when I immediately saw the Banerjcito and an empty parking lot.

Empty parking lot

We took our paperwork and went directly to the window inside. I knew they needed the car registration and/or car title. What I was concerned about, though, was that we only had a temporary vehicle registration paper from Vermont.

Getting rejected at the window

Here’s why: Our car was totaled in August and we had to get a new (used) vehicle less than a month before leaving Colorado. Our Colorado paperwork had not yet been processed by the time we left in September. In fact, the processing was so slow that we had to get the car dealership to send it to Lisa’s brother in Virginia, where we parked our car during our European trip, and it took so long that we needed an extension. We needed that paperwork so we could either fly back to Colorado to process it at DMV, or ask someone to perform the unenviable task of going to DMV for us.

Our second option was to register the car in Vermont, where we own a couple of vacation rental properties and where we were staying for a month.

We decided to go the Vermont route for convenience sake, in early December. Unfortunately, only after they took my Colorado title did I find out that it would take them 4-6 weeks to process the paperwork and issue our car registration document. We had over 5 weeks, so I thought we were still in good shape. When it didn’t arrive, I was concerned but was still hopeful that Mexico would accept our temporary registration.

They didn’t!

Rejected at the Border: Now What?

We turned around, crossed the bridge back into the US and cleared US customs. We had been in Mexico, but not really. We left thinking we were at the mercy of the Vermont DMV, something you don’t want to be. We decided to take a chance and call, and learned that our registration had been sent to our Colorado mailing address, but the address they used didn’t include our box number, so it was returned, where it was just sitting in our file. It would have to be resent. Could it be emailed? We don’t do that, said the man in the DMV office. FedExed? We don’t do that, droned the man in the DMV office.

So what could we do for the next week while we waited for the registration to be snail mailed to our Colorado address, processed by our traveling mailbox, and then mailed to us? And where would it be mailed to, anyway? We had checked out of our hotel and our truck doesn’t have a mailbox.

Regrouping at McDonald’s

We went back to Laredo and regrouped at a McDonald’s, sitting in a corner booth with coffee and a computer. connected to the free Wifi. Looking out the window, we noticed a UPS Store across the parking lot. We dashed over, had a chat with the counter worker, and found out we could use their address to accept a Fed Ex. Newly energized, we returned to McD’s. While Lisa went online looking for a pet-friendly place to stay for a couple nights, I pulled out a cellphone and called Vermont DMV again, this time determined to talk with a supervisor.

Working in McD’s on lodging and getting that registration

However, a kind woman named Diane Hedding answered and immediately offered to help us. All we needed to do was to send her a prepaid shipping label and she would personally take our registration to the mail center and Fed-Ex it to us. She gave us her personal email address, and then sent us a note when she dropped off the package. We found a Laredo Airbnb for the next couple nights and waited for our package to arrive.

The Second Attempt

At 10:30 AM on Saturday, Jan. 11, we had our registration in hand!

Registration!

We moved out of the apartment, packed up cats and luggage, and headed to the border. After paying another $3.50 to cross the Colombia Bridge, we confidently walked up to the Banjercito window. Just one person was in front of us, and the woman at the counter remembered us! This time they told us we needed to go to Immigration first, as they needed our immigration form to process the import.

Bob filling out the paperwork

Lisa filling forms

Lexie, too

We went over to Immigration, again no line, filled out the forms, showed them our Mexican Temporary Resident visas in our passports, and were processed. The immigration form was the same one was had always gotten when flying into Mexico, but there were several boxes that needed to be properly checked. This was done and we were now on a 30-day clock to get into Mexico, get to an in-country immigration office and finish up our Temporary Resident visa requirements.

Back to the Banjercito, still no line, they processed our paperwork, took a $400 deposit, (which will be returned when we take the car out of the country), gave us a sticker for our car and allowed us to proceed.

Getting Through Customs

Next up was Customs. We knew, with our luck, we would get selected for a complete car search. And, true to form we were selected. They didn’t want to see the International Health Certificates we had for the cats, but they did question me several times regarding firearms, alcohol and cigarettes. Next, they looked at what we had in the car and decided to X-ray it, which was probably better than taking everything out. This required humans and cats to get out of the car. I drove the car over to the X-ray area, where I was escorted behind a barrier and a movable X-ray device transited the length of our car, scanning it thoroughly.

I drove back to where Lisa, Lexie and the cats were waiting, and in a couple of minutes, they told us we were good to go. After strapping the cats back in and getting our bearings, we crossed the border! Then we were officially off and driving in Mexico toward Tlaquepaque. It had taken us one and a half hours at the border crossing. That process would have taken much, much longer during busy season, so I felt extremely lucky that we were finally on our way!

WELCOME TO MEXICO!

January 10, 2019

Crisis at the Border

Today we were supposed to enter Mexico. We didn’t.

Blame the U-Haul Driver

It all goes back to a U-Haul truck that caused a horrendous car accident for Bob and Lexie last August. It merged into their car on a highway when they were going 65 MPH, Lexie took evasive action to prevent impact but hit a car beside her, and in a blink of the eye, our 2013 Toyota Tacoma truck was totaled. We got a replacement (2015) truck as quickly as we could but couldn’t get it officially registered in Colorado before we left for our cross country trip in September. With a flight to Europe scheduled for Sept. 30, we had no wiggle room.

The border building

We actually got into Mexico but had to turn around and go back out

Bob before the denial, still hopeful

So when we got to Vermont after the Europe trip, we registered the truck there (since we own property in the state), but had limited time to receive the permanent registration and tag stickers, and they hadn’t arrived by the time we had to set off for Mexico.

So we arrived at the Mexican border this morning hoping they would let us cross with the temporary paperwork, but despite our best efforts, and speaking with every single Mexican who worked there, it was a no go.

So what to do? We had a hotel and a house booked in Mexico and no way to get there.

Working on Plan B

We left the border dispirited, found a McDonald’s with Wifi back in Laredo, bought an order of hash browns for Lexie to rent a corner booth, and called Vermont DMV, only to discover they had screwed up our mailing address (omitting the box number to save space) and the paperwork we desperately needed had been returned to their office. The automobile title was still in the mail to our mailbox in Colorado, but also going to an incomplete address.

Working out PLan B logistics in Mickey D’s

We appealed to the young man on the phone to email a copy of the registration, but he said they “don’t do that.” We asked him to FedEx the registration to us in Laredo, but he said they “don’t do that.”

We started working on changing hotel dates (supposedly non-refundable) and trying to figure out where to sleep tonight. We saw a UPS Store across the parking lot and went in, asking if we could receive a Fed Ex there. The answer was yes! Bob got on the phone to DMV again, this time reaching a wonderful woman named Diane who was sympathetic to our plight and willing to go the extra miles to FedEx our paperwork from Montpelier to Texas, to arrive by 10 AM Thursday morning.

Finding Lodging

We thought about crossing the border on a temporary visa for a couple days and staying in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico — where AirBnB rates are one-third the cost of the U.S. side — but we were afraid we had too much stuff in our truck to clear customs successfully. We found an AirBnB two-bedroom rental in Laredo that allows pets and quickly booked it, then hung out over a long lunch killing time till we could get in.

Our rental for two nights

So that’s where we are tonight — hoping our paperwork truly arrives tomorrow, and then hoping the registration will be sufficient to get our vehicle into Mexico, since it could be a couple weeks before we get the title sorted. The other consideration is that we only have ten days since getting the cats’ international health certificates to enter Mexico, and we only have three days left or we will have to find a new vet and pay for the process again!

Try, Try Again

If all goes well, we plan to try again on Friday to drive our vehicle into Mexico.

We’ll keep you posted!