Our third day on the road went according to plan. The sun rises later as we traveled west so we didn’t leave until 6:30 AM as it was just getting light. MX 180 from Cerro Azul to Naranjos is nothing but topes and chuckholes. It was a little drizzly and foggy and heavy truck and bus traffic. As we got closer to Tampico the road got better and faster. We went through town and did not get stopped by any police, but traffic was really heavy and slow. Finally when we got to Altamira, traffic lightened up and chuck holes reappeared. Once on MX 80, 81 & 83 traffic was light and fast. MX101 was very fast and we had a short stop at the big MX military stop on MX180, one guy came in looked in a few cupboards and we were on our way. The light rain and dirty roads caused our nice clean RV to be covered with black dirt.
We got to the border at 4 PM, then the fun started. When I went to turn in my MX FMM he saw it was not from driving but from an airline. He wanted to charge me. I explained the airline provides it fully paid as part of fare. He looked all over in the passport until he could match up the dates and said OK. Then I gave him Peggy’s, she was in the RV. He didn’t even look at it and stamped it. But that was nothing. Now USA crossing. Absolutely no line, that’s why we like the Los Indios crossing. But they have a policy, all RV’s get a secondary inspection.
Mine got a tertiary inspection. First they did a walk though and found one potato but everything else was fine but we needed to have the rig x-rayed at the truck area. That’s not too bad but then the 2 bonehead inspectors tore into every cupboard, refrigerator, leaving things out and in disarray. Tossed the beds, went into every outside compartment including sewer, propane, batteries. They left some open to flap in the breeze, if I hadn’t checked them. Why in the world x-ray if you can’t figure it out. It took an hour to get through and they were rude besides. I guess Peggy and I look like drug smugglers, or maybe our dirty RV bothered them.
So was this route safe? We saw no accidents, dozens of police and military on all of these roads. Plenty of truck and bus traffic, not a lot of people in vehicles. I still think this is better than going all the way to over 9000’ in the mountains and paying $100 more in tolls while driving 100 miles out of our way.
If we didn’t have to go through USA customs it would have been perfect but I expect there are stupid rude USA border agents across all of our borders.
After a nice Bar-B-Que dinner at our favorite restaurant we stayed overnight at the Harlingen, TX Wal-Mart.
These are the plans for all 3 days of Driving out of Mexico in case you missed the others.
We have never had a green light with U.S. border agents when we take our rv to the U.S. It's always inspected and then x-rayed. Always an issue. But to go through what you did over a potato is way overboard.
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