¡Hola Mexico!
- Hester van den Berg
- Sep 12, 2018
- 9 min read
Finally, it was time to cross the border, and we were ready for it! After being in the United States for 53 days, we looked forward to explore a new country and culture. Still, it also meant leaving behind a part of our lives. Our New York / US adventure is for now really coming to an end. Who knows where we'll end up..
Checking our sort of thought out route (based on things/sites we want to see), we decided last minute to change our border crossing location from Nogales to Agua Prieta. We kept in mind that it could take some time to cross the border. There probably would be a long, slow moving line and we needed to get a visa and to temporary import our car at the border. Actually, when we arrived at the border, there was no line at all, so we were on the Mexican side within a heartbeat. But, of course there is a but, we managed to get our visa and got in line for temporary importing our car. The lady behind the counter seemed friendly, although we immediately learned that English speaking people are rare in the north of Mexico. She glanced at our papers, figured out why we were there and told us she had an issue with her system. She couldn’t help us, and she gave us two options. Option 1: drive 1 hour to the west to the next border crossing (Naco). Option 2: drive 4 hours to the east to the next border crossing (Ciudad Juarez), which was across the border from El Paso – we already were there a few weeks ago and we were definitely not driving there again. The best option for us seemed driving to Naco, so we did. The guy at the desk in Naco was even friendlier, and he was able to help us further. Until our VIN-number gave him a notification that our car needed to be checked by an official, and the border crossing in Naco was so small, they didn’t have an official present there. He called his supervisor and send us back to where we came from. Assuring us that they must be able to help us, since they’re using the same system and they have officials on site. Thinking in the beginning that crossing the border might actually not cost us a lot of time, we already lost 2 hours! Arriving back at the same spot we entered Mexico, they were finally able to help us out. A quick check at our car and giving an explanation on the fact that we as Dutch people could own a New York registered car, and we were good to go. I guess the girl who helped us first just had a bad day.
Off to our first stop in Mexico, Janos. We decided beforehand that we didn’t want to stay in the border region too long, and Janos seemed to be at a reasonable distance. Even though we were delayed a little, we decided to still drive there. The road was unfortunately under construction and heavily filled with truckers. Just after dark we arrived at Janos, we checked in at the hotel and immediately went out to get some cash and food. Still being at close distance to the US, the most popular food there was apparently burgers. We had two good burgers at a food cart, where we were two interesting clients. The guy flipping the burgers spoke some English, so we had a small conversation with him. Another guy, an older man with a mustache and a cowboy hat on, was giving us a stare down. Then suddenly he said to us; "son Americanos?" So, we responded, “no, somos Holandesas!” As soon as we said that, the guy started smiling and wanted to start up a whole conversation with us. Apparently, they like the Dutch better than Americans 😉
Next day we drove out of the border zone to Chihuahua, the first big city into Mexico. Driving south, you’ll see a lot of police checks for traffic going up north. And you’ll keep seeing them through the country, but only for traffic going up north towards the US border. It seems Mexico is trying to prevent all issues at the border with the US.
On the way to Chihuahua we wanted to visit Casas Grandes, an archeological site. But, downside of our sometimes a bit spontaneous way of traveling, the site was closed on Mondays – the exact day we drove by. So, we continued driving to Chihuahua. Chihuahua is a nice city, widely spread out between mountains. Our host Raul spoke good English and had some good tips. One of his tips was to walk to a hill from where you had a gorgeous view on the city and the sunset. In this city we saw the first Mariachi bands, we had good taco’s and we saw the first of many beautiful cathedrals.
Raul also gave us some very good tips for our travels in Mexico. We told him we were going to the Copper Canyon, we only hadn’t figured out where to stay yet. But, Raul knew a perfect place for us to stay in Creel, with a real Mexican cowboy. He stayed there himself and he arranged for us that we could stay there to. This cowboy, Jose-Luis, does tours on horses through the Copper Canyon, and as a side business he turned an extra room behind his mom’s house into a guest house. Perfect for us. Our plan was to stay there a night, take the El Chapo train from Creel (the train that travels through the Copper Canyon), stay a night in one of the places along the route and then return to Creel again to pick up our car. But, looking into the costs of the train and hotels or Airbnb’s, we had to come to the conclusion that this was maybe a bit too expensive. There was also the option to drive along the train route, and horseback riding was something that was still on our to do list. So, no train for us, but horseback riding through the canyon and then we would drive along the train route to Batopilas, and from there to El Fuerte, a town almost at the beginning of the train track through the canyon.
The horseback riding was an amazing experience. Jose-Luis lend us both a cowboy hat, so we looked like a real cowboy and cowgirl. We decided to do a 4 hour tour, but halfway Jose-Luis convinced us to make it a 5 hour tour so we could cross a river as well. Finally, I could really test my Spanish skills, since Jose-Luis really didn’t speak a word English (“a little” he said – but that was all that came out), and he had a lot of stories to tell. During the tour we saw some pretty views of the canyon, had our adrenaline raised with some steep and narrow paths, and got to know a bit more about Jose-Luis and the live he lives. He owns 8 horses, has tours almost every day, with people from all over the world, he is very proud of his family, and he loves to be photographed. He had some specific poses in mind, and I had to take the pictures of course. After the tour my knees were hurting, and my back was sore (and my ass too, but I will not get into details). Jose-Luis asked us about our plans for the next day and we showed him our planned route to Batopilas. He did not agree. First of all; the route we wanted to take was going from a very high to a very low altitude and back up again. Since it had rained, the road was very likely not passable. Second; the route we had planned, was going through a major narco area and he thought it was not safe for us to pass. He showed us an alternative, which was still not the best in his opinion (no pavement and still narco area) but it was better than our initial plan. So, change of plans, we would drive to Alamos, stay there for the night and then drive to El Fuerte from there. Also, Timon his dad wrote us that he traveled the canyon by train 35 years ago, and he strongly believed there was no road. But man, after 35 years some things must have changed right? Hmm well we found out..
Leaving Creel behind us, we drove to off to Alamos. The total route would approximately be 300 kilometers, and after the first 2 hours and 100 kilometers we switched to non-paved road. The 200 kilometers we had to drive from there, took us 10 hours! That tells you something about the road condition.. Not only was the road unpaved, but it had also rained a lot the last few days. Therefor the road was full of mud, potholes, water streams, rocks and huge puddles. We also didn’t drive on one altitude, we were going up to almost 2000m high, with a lot of very steep curves. But, even though it took us longer than expected, we had some beautiful views and we saw cute villages on the way. By the way, we don’t think a lot of tourists do this, since everyone we saw was staring at us with their mouths wide open. Arriving in Alamos, we booked an AirBnB lastminute and we went out for some well-deserved tacos. Cute town with lovely buildings, but also a paradise for American retirees. We told the host the route we had driven and although it was in his backyard, he had never heard of the places we passed through. We don't blame him. It was indeed in the middle of nowhere. It's also the first time since we own the car that we've really seen its 4x4 skills in action. (Note by Timon: Hester destroyed our cars bottom protection plate, but a couple screws do the trick of holding it together, I guess it wasn't really avoidable to be honest).
From Alamos, we went on to El Fuerte. Apparently, the birth town of El Zorro. One of my childhood heroes, I loved to watch the tv show! In El Fuerte we found a nice hotel on AirBnB for not too much money. They even had a jacuzzi, but with cold water. With the hot weather that was a very welcome addition. We happily made use of that, even with some cold beers to cool down some more. In El Fuerte we obviously had to see the El Zorro statue, we walked around the city square and the historic district and we had our first Mexican haircut for 3.50 USD each! We also tried walking to the river, but we were stopped by a police officer and some other guys. In his best English the police officer tried to explain to us that there were killer bees in that area and we couldn’t go there, for our own safety. Timon tried to make it more exciting by thinking there might have been a dead body and that they made up the story about the bees, but later we actually saw some beekeepers coming in.
Next stop was Culiacán, a 4 hour drive from El Fuerte. The route was quick over the toll road, which we typically try to avoid since it's unbelievably expensive. Leaving the toll road we noticed a cop car. Not much later Timon spotted the cop car in his rear view mirror. Sirens wnet on and we were pulled over. Cop "Hola", Timon "Hola", Cop "Just wanted to say hi, noticed the NY plates on the car" Timon "Ok, bye" Cop "Buenos tardes". We've heard about worse experiences with the police in Mexico.
We stayed in an AirBnB with Gina, who was very, very nice. During the day we discovered the city on our own, but in the evening, she took us for a drive and brought us to some nice spots in the city. She brought us to a new church, which was on a hill and from where we had a pretty view over Culiacán. After that we drove to a place where some sort of a memorial chapel was built for Jesus Malverde, who they say was some sort of a narco saint. Apparently, he was like a Robin Hood who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. Except, he was a narco. A lot of cartel members come there to sing to him, offer to him and beg for protection for their families. When we were there, we saw a music performance directed to Jesus Malverde. Pretty special, but when we were back in the car Gina told us that it also was a bit dangerous.
From Culiacán we drove off to the coast, to our first stop at the beach in Mazatlán. Unfortunately, Timon started to feel a little unwell, so he stayed most of our time in Mazatlán in bed. I went out for a few times, discovering the historic district with a big covered market, stepped in to the ocean and of course bought some vitamins for the patient. It was also very hot in Mazatlán, so the AC in the apartment was very convenient after a long and hot walk.
All and all our first experiences in Mexico are exciting, adventurous and very positive.
Things we've noticed so far:
They don’t eat guacamole in Mexico – prices of avocados are too high currently, they can sell them for a lot of money in the US.
We are very interesting to look at – they probably don’t see tall and blond Dutch guys that often
There are a lot of military checkpoints for traffic going north – leaving every state or big city, you might get searched
The farther south we go, the more English is spoken – you would have expected the people closer to the border to speak some English, but no
People are very friendly – especially when we tell them we are from Holanda!
Mexicans use a lot of solar power – more than we have seen so far in the US
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