We left San Carlos about 9am and had a good drive on toll roads to Hermisillo where we stopped for our final Mexican grocery shopping spree.
Then on twisty narrow roads to another town, Cananea.
I remember saying to Sara this is not a pleasant road and glad I am not driving this in the dark!!
We got lost here looking for the office to turn in the vehicle permit for the scooter. Rather than take the directions that were being offered by a couple of local people I flagged down a taxi and paid to follow him to the office.
YES VICKY I know what day it is and I am wearing all green!!!!!!
I have since found out that I did not need a permit because the scooter is 49cc so that will be one less thing to do next winter.
We were then on our way about 20 km from the border when we came to a police road block. The officer spoke perfect English and told us the road was blocked further down as the local mine was closed and the workers were protesting and have closed the road, he thought it might open at 6pm. Our other choice is to go back an extra 150km to Nogales, not an option.
There are dozens of trucks pulled up on the side of the highway
so we turned around and I found a shady spot where we stopped and waited. Not bad really we have food, drinks books to read.
The story gets more involved from here. Around 6.15pm I found the same Police officer and he was very sorry but the road would not re-open tonight and he was not sure about tomorrow. Now we had no choice we had to go back the same road, the one I didn’t want to drive at night and back on the highway to Nogales.
Sara made me a nice cool drink and away we went it was a little bit uneasy but we did make it to the border about 9pm.
We were pulled over for the mandatory customs inspection and we knew we had eggs to hand over and also one avocado and I reluctantly gave up the small cactus I had bought in SMA for 80 cents. The lady Customs officer was very obliging and even offered to cut the avocado and take out the seeds so we could take it with us. They didn’t even ask about the 72 bottles of tequila Sara had bought!!!!! Kidding!!!
We drove along interstate19 towards Tucson and pulled off by Tubac and found a very quiet parking lot by the Quality Inn Hotel, had a very restful night and this morning it is sunny and I even have Wi-Fi from the hotel.
The right pin is where we got turned around. The left pin is about where we are.
In the next few days I will write about my thoughts on Mexico.
One of the things I really enjoy doing is planning the routes we go and the places we will see and I had spent some time doing that but because of the problems yesterday we are not entering the USA where I wanted to I will have to change some of those plans, back to the books!!!
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