El Pato Muerto

OK, that’s the final name for the Tahoe. For those of you who don’t want to translate, it means “The Dead Duck”.

We entered Mexico on Friday, the 13^th in high spirits and ready for adventure. We both thought it a bit funny that there was no document or vehicle check as we entered at Agua Prieta but on we went. What I never saw in any of my research or heard anyone talk about on their blogs is that a special vehicle permit is required if you are going to drive to the interior of Mexico. Of course, I had driven inside Mexico many times without getting any permits. As it turns out, the 1^st 18 miles of the “Frontier”, all of Baja and most of Sonora are exempt from this requirement. Of course, that is precisely where I had driven my car in the past. A big mistake on my part.

Note to self: Never “ASSUME” you know enough about a subject. You don’t!

About 90 miles south of the border, we came upon a customs checkpoint where we were asked for our permits. Total confusion on our part. What permits? So, for the next 4+ hours we sat there while what seemed like reams of documents were filled out, witnessed, signed by everyone and copied. The customs agents spoke almost no English and, of course, our conversational Spanish was insufficient for good communication. Mary Lou had an inspiration and brought in the English/Spanish dictionary and that helped get us through. The bottom line is that we were handed a 24 page document and told that the Tahoe had to stay there but we were free to go but that we had to appear at what is called an “aduana” at Las Palomas on Monday. (Naturally, just like the government bureaucracy in any other country, they are closed on the weekends).

Note to self: Don’t plan border crossings on the weekends if permits are required.

Of course, we were out in the middle of the boonies with a bunch of luggage and no wheels. So, how to get to a town? One of the customs agents explained, with some difficulty, that we could take a bus south to Nuevo Casas Grandes and then catch a bus north to Las Palomas at the border. He was kind enough to flag a bus down for us and we took a 40 minute SRO ride to the next town. When we arrived at the bus station, we learned that the next bus to Las Palomas would not be until 2:00 AM. However, a young man pointed out that there was another bus company next door and we rushed over only to find that the next bus to Las Palomas was just pulling out of the lot and could not be stopped.

After consulting the schedule, we bought tickets for a bus at 7:20 PM and since we had a couple of hours to kill, we wandered off in search of a restaurant. A few blocks later, we found a sea food restaurant and Mary Lou had some kind of shrimp soup that she said was very good. True to form, of course, I had a delicious Indio beer.

So, our bus departed at 7:20 PM and off we went to Las Palomas. WRONG!  

Note to self: If you are going to book a bus ticket in any Spanish speaking country, have a map at the ready so there is no confusion about the destination!

As it turns out, the bus didn’t exactly go to Las Palomas. Rather it went to a point about 20 miles south of Las Palomas called Las Trios. If the bus driver had not forgotten about us, we would have been dumped off in the middle of nowhere at 10 at night. BUT, the driver forgot us and we wound up in Juarez at midnight! The driver was very apologetic about missing our stop but informed us that it was much safer to come to the murder capital of Mexico than to get off at Las Trios! So, what to do? Naturally, grab a taxi and make a run for the border! That’s just what we did! We walked right through customs and immigration and jumped right into another taxi on the US side and off to an airport hotel we went! Ah, a good night’s sleep after a tough day of travel!

Next morning: 2 plane tickets back to Phoenix.

Mary Lou was an absolute rock throughout all of this. She was calm, rational, helpful and had good ideas. Not only that, but she didn’t seem too mad at me for screwing up! I couldn’t resist snapping her picture below at the El Paso airport.

But wait! The fun’s not over. Sunday afternoon, we jump back in the car and drive to Deming New Mexico (a short 5 hour hop) because we have to appear in Las Palomas on Monday morning. On Monday morning, we dutifully trek to Las Palomas, cross the border yet again and proceed 20 feet to what is called an “aduana” still naively thinking that we would pay a penalty, get a permit and retrieve our vehicle. WRONG AGAIN!

Note to self: See that “ASSUME” thing further up. You must be a slow learner.

Now the catch 22 thing starts up again. The folks in the aduana speak almost no English but they tell us that we must get a backdated permit at the “banjercito” across the street. Off we go. Nope, the banjercito cannot issue a backdated permit. Back to the aduana office. At that point, we offer to pay any fines and “other fees” as required to get the backdated permit. To their credit and somewhat to my surprise, they didn’t bite on the other fees gambit nor did they provide any help. Their only suggestion was to get a lawyer. OK, so are there lawyers in Las Palomas? Of course not, the closest lawyers are in Juarez.

Back to Deming to see if we can find a lawyer there. Alas, no luck there either. Back to Phoenix-another easy 5 hour drive. Last resort: Off to the Mexican Consulate here in Phoenix. No help except to advise us that only the aduana can clear up this problem.

So what to do? First, we have decided that the Tahoe is gone for good. It just is not worth the time and money to go through the Mexican legal system where we might lose the car anyway. The Tahoe was old and not worth much of anything anyway.

We have contacted a lawyer here in Phoenix who is licensed to practice law in Mexico. We will meet with him in a day or two to make sure there will be no further problems if we don’t pay the fines and/or penalties.

Needless to say, this (mis)adventure has radically altered our plans. Our South America trip will not start in September as planned but is not canceled. I just need some time to find another suitable vehicle. Also, after some discussion, we have decided to ship the vehicle directly to Ecuador and skip all of Central America except for Panama and Costa Rica. We’ll fly there and then hop over to Ecuador from there.

Some lessons learned and some observations:

We need to be much more fluent in Spanish. Toward that end, I will continue to take course work to improve.

Neither of us ever felt that we were in any danger while in Mexico. The authorities that we dealt with were very polite, and some of them were even helpful. There was absolutely no solicitation of any kind of a bribe anywhere.

All the non-government people that we dealt with were very polite and went out of their way to be helpful. One lady even walked us to the taxi stand in Juarez. This reconfirms my prior experiences of travel inside Mexico. The people are, by and large, great.

Travel by bus turned out to be a pretty good experience. The busses were clean, comfortable and even had in-transit movies. It looks to be a pretty good way to get around the country. Just be sure of your destination!

This was not the adventure that we had in mind when we planned it but it was, nevertheless, an adventure. We survived it quite nicely and walked away wiser for it. So now, instead of spending two more weeks in Mexico, we’ve decided to go to Costa Rica for a week.

More from Costa Rica later,

Ken