Update Day 3, 342 Miles

January 13, 2008

Mike and I left the motel at 9 am and headed for the gas station to fill up. After that it was a 6 mile trip to the border. After a brief stop on the American side to make a last call to Sylvia we crossed the border to start our journey. The crossing went very easy. Immigration just waives you on through but then we needed to get our bikes a 6 month import permit and one for ourselves. That whole process took about 1 hour and $150 including insurance for 60 days.

Once all that was completed we were on our way. We decided I would lead the way and I had no problems with that. So with me at the front and Mike closely in tow we were lost within the first 200 yards. In my defense there was no signage on which way to go and I turned into a dead end residential area. It took us about 30 minutes to find our way out of the Reynosa and on to Highway 97. Our destination was as far South as we could go for the day. We made it about 20 miles and we hit the first checkpoint. It was there to make sure we had all of our paperwork in order, which we did. I was told by people on AdvRider.com that I should get an International Drivers License. I handed them the license and they looked at me like I was crazy. He said in english that he had never seen one before and then pointed out that the license states that it is not valid in The United States, so why should he accept it. It was hard to argue that point so I handed him my real one and we were soon on our way again.

We stopped about 2 hours down the road and ate tacos at a little roadside stand. It makes the taco joints on San Fernado Blvd. look like The Ritz Carlton but they were good tacos anyway. After lunch we drove down to Tampico on the gulf coast. Our trip took us through mostly coastal plains and was pretty much all cattle ranches the whole way. At 5:45 we ended up finding a very nice hotel in Tampico and it appeared like we were the first people to stay in that room. They were still building the hotel around the few rooms that were open. After checking in we hopped into a taxi and asked him to take us to a nice local restaraunt. Now Tampico is a big city and as he drove us around the first place he pointed out was TGI Fridays. We respectfully declined and settled on the Mexican equivelent of that. I forget the name but it was good.

It was a good first day in Mexico with many to follow.