Heading for Mexico

Hello to All

We are still in the Brownsville TX area, 3 days later than we wanted to be, but we ran across a problem at the Mexican Border. They are tightening up the procedure on their Tourist Visa’s.
In 2006 we had tried to turn in our Tourist Visa’s, at Nogales, at the same time we turned in our Vehicle Permit. This department would not take the Visa’s as they were only concerned with Vehicle Importation.

We had run into this in years gone by, but it had never been a problem, we just threw them away. Now according to the Mexican Customs Clerk, they are now keeping track of them in their computers, and they must be turned in when returning from Mexico.
The penalty is you have to wait 3 days before you can apply for a new Tourist Visa.
“Warning” if anyone has an old “Mexican Tourist Visa,” do not leave it in your Passport.
As they say in Church & Church’s Mexican Camping” book, things never stay the same at the Mexican Border, rules can change day to day, and crossing to crossing!!

So we have to turn around, go through American Custom, who were very good about it, I guess it is happening more & more. The US computers really work, they knew when and where we had entered the US. We had crossed at “Frontier”, south of Rossland, on Dec 19th.

Our stay in this area, has been enjoyable, we stayed 4 nights at the Rio RV Park in Brownsville, and are now in the Morningside RV Park in Alamo TX for 3 nights. The weather has been good Temps up to 82F, cools down at night to as low as 40F for a couple of nights. Had 3 days of windy & cloudy weather. We like the Alamo, McAllen area much better than Brownsville area.
Did some maintenance on the truck, oil & filter, and signal lights on Suzi, setup the Star Choice Satellite Dish.

We have done some touring, went to South Padre Island, was very windy with lots of sand blowing around. The beach is nice, but we were not really impressed, lots of hotels and condo’s. There were 2 new 25 story towers being built right at the end of the causeway to the island. No wonder that at Christmas & Spring Break it can take you up to 4 hours to get on and off the island.

Hopefully we get into Mexico tomorrow, our destination will be La Pesca, about a 6 hour dive, then we will head for the Emerald Coast south of Tampico about a 7 hour drive, staying there for a few days if we like it.

At the Rio RV Park, we had Wi-Fi, but it was very poor, and we could not post any photo,s, and here in Alamo we do not have any, so we are heading for Burger King today to post this in our blog. No photos yet.

Herb & Lil