Blog — Vanamos

The view from behind Wesley's windshield as we approached the bridge over the Rio Grande. Little did we know we would see this for a second time later in the day.

The sun rose like a tinderbox throwing gasoline on the shadows it cast before us and great billows of steam rose from the blacktop as it heated up after the cool of the night. We kept our eyes forward as we crept along through the rising vapors, certain the attack would come from the dilapidated shack at roads end where heads furtively peered over bulwarks and eyes cast stealthy glances through knot holes. We knew they didn’t like foreigners in these parts; especially Americans with squeaky clean driving records and a disregard of fried food. Cries of “Murir, gringo” broke the silence of the morning seconds before the rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun fire kicked up divots of dirt around our ankles. I dove behind the wheel, gunned Wesley’s engine, and headed straight for the ramshackle structure where the enemy, Mexican customs officials, remained hidden like cockroaches. R, Coconut, and J, jumped on board and threw our dirty laundry at them like hand grenades. If this was how they wanted it, they would have my dirty socks to pay for it. We’d come too far to be turned back now.

A Mexican border crossing as described above would be worthy of national news coverage and what most of us know about Mexico we learn from the news. And let me tell you, the national news does not run stories about how our border crossing went, and how hundreds of border crossings every day go – uneventfully. And the national news does not run stories about the oasis of a hotel and campground where we are now holed up – a mere 146 miles from the border – because the only thing that happened here today was that we swam, napped, and ate. And because the national news won’t run our story, I’m going to have to tell it to you myself.

R and I gave some serious thought to what we needed to do to cross the border into Mexico in the most painless and efficient way. Everything we had read advised spending as little time as possible in border towns, in particular on the South side of the border, so our plan was to spend the night in the U.S. border town of Laredo, Texas, cross the Rio Grande first thing, and put the pedal to the metal and drive 200 plus kilometers to Monterrey, Mexico, for the night. One guy we mentioned this plan to advised against spending the night in Laredo, but after searching for options north of Laredo where we could spend the night and still get to the border pretty early, we realized there were none and that his story was as full of holes as the heads of the boaters on Lake Laredo that the cartel used for target practice – may they rest in peace.

We booked a night at the Family Garden Inn in Laredo and arrived there from San Antonio just in time for happy hour – free hot dogs, nachos, and beer – and to find out there is truth to the adage that freedom isn’t free – the hot dogs were mushy, the chips were smothered in that fake nacho cheese crap, and the beer was Lite. I had indigestion before I finished my first hot dog.

The border opens at eight in the morning for those hoping to cross legally and we roused Coconut and J at 6:45 for our sugar-coated free breakfast and hit the bridge shortly after eight. The Mexican official poked his head into our van for about ten seconds, waved us through, and there we were – spit out into the streets of Nuevo Laredo. No guns, no threats, no hassle.

We had printed instructions about what documentation we needed to obtain visas for ourselves and import Wesley into Mexico to prove that we owned it and didn’t plan to sell it and after a few wrong turns we arrived at the customs house with our paperwork in hand and eager to be fed through the assembly line.

It was here that we learned that the Certificate of Title and registration that we had received from the Virginia DMV for Wesley had the wrong vehicle identification number on it. The customs official actually removed himself from behind his glass window, walked with us out to the parking lot, and confirmed this by comparing our paperwork to the VIN punched into Wesley – there was an X where there should have been a Z.

We were then presented two options – return to Laredo to get a temporary registration for Wesley in Texas with the correct VIN which would allow us to obtain the proper paperwork from Mexico to enter with Wesley, or leave Wesley behind. Since that second option wasn’t really an option, we drove back to Laredo. By this time it was 10 a.m. and about 100 degrees.

It was hot in Laredo and Mexico on Tuesday! The reading on the left is inside Wesley. The reading on the right is the outside temperature.

After going through U.S. Customs, where we wondered if the officer would make us throw away or eat the bananas that we had purchased the day before in Texas, and stopping at a traffic light on every street corner in Laredo on the way to the County Assessor’s office, the light started flashing that Wesley’s engine was overheating. This is the problem I thought I had solved the other day with a wire brush and some electrical tape. I guess I’m not the mechanic I thought I was - or rather, I am that mechanic.

We managed to get to where we needed to go in Laredo, were directed to a parking spot by a Sheriff’s Officer, were met at the door by a woman who made the copies we needed and directed us to the window where we could complete our transaction, and were presented with our temporary registration in about fifteen minutes. How impressive is that? Go Texas.

All during this time – from Mexican customs, back through U.S. Customs, and to the Texas office, Coconut and J were reading their books and playing Plants vs. Zombies on their screens without complaining about the heat, their hunger or thirst, or asking why we didn’t check the VIN when we received the VA DMV paperwork in the first place. In short, they made a stressful situation less stressful by being awesome.

Even after getting the Texas permit, we still had two situations to deal with. First, the permit is only for 90 days and it seems that we have to be present at VA DMV to be able to correct our VA DMV certificate of title to show the correct VIN. Since we won’t be present to do this, we are not sure what is going to happen when we try to leave Mexico after 30 days have expired to enter Belize with paperwork that shows the wrong VIN. Maybe we won’t be allowed to enter Belize?

Second, Wesley’s cooling system appears to have a problem that I can’t fix. While Texas was doing its thing, I fiddled around again with what I had fiddled around with the other day. This time I also added some water to the overflow coolant tank. However, once we had the right paperwork, I still hadn’t started the van so didn’t know if I had accomplished anything. Wesley might overheat at any time.

After a short discussion around these two issues - should we stay or should we go - R and I decided to go for it. We were going to Mexico.

When we arrived back at Mexican Customs, the official stamped us as official, charged us some amount of money – about 5000 pesos - to give us our visas and Wesley his sticker, and sent us on our way – which was into the now hot and throbbing streets of Nuevo Laredo with no data access – R had removed us from Verizon the previous night. So, essentially we were travelling South (compasses don’t need data plans) hoping the coolant light wouldn’t go on, hoping to stumble across the right exit to put us on the road to Monterrey, and hoping to find an ATM to withdraw pesos and a store to buy a SIM card to make our phones work again.

As I sit here typing this at La Posada camping and lodging in El Potrero Chico recreation area near Hidalgo, Mexico, which actually was our destination rather than Monterrey after R did some late night research on the free WiFi at the Family Garden Inn, I feel really fortunate that we did not allow the day to turn into the disaster pie for which it had all the fixins’.

We pitched our tent in the middle of the campground so we could have this view of the mountain. We made the right choice to leave Laredo.

This hotel and campground is beautiful and we are the only ones here. There is a cool breeze blowing that makes the 113 degree temperature we reached today a distant memory. The space we are in is set in a valley between two world class climbing mountains. There are beautiful, shaded grounds and a wicked pool which we’ve already been in twice, and I know my family is content and asleep in our tents which are just out of sight in the wall of darkness created by the lit porch where I am typing this. I know that as soon as I walk out of this canopy of light, and my eyes adjust, I’m going to walk over to Wesley, crack myself a final Tecate beer, and sit back and enjoy a sky full of stars.

J relaxing in the hammock hung over the pool after taking a swim.

Here's another photo of the pool and grounds at La Posada

The church at night - this church was part of the Alamo compound.

We drove from Austin to San Antonio to spend the night for two reasons – to shorten the drive to Laredo and the Mexican border and to visit the Alamo. We checked the Alamo off the bucket list this morning.

I’ve been excited by stories of the Old West since I saw the Brady Bunch episode where Bobby idolizes Jesse James as a hero only to have the grandson of one of his victims relate the story of how James shot his grandfather in the back as evidence that he was a lowdown, dirty, train-robbing, scoundrel. That did not have the desired effect on me, however, and I’ve always romanticized James and other Western characters like Cole Younger, Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday, and Wyatt Earp, not as heroes necessarily, but I admired their grit under pressure, their ability to thrive in harsh living conditions, and the fact that they probably never changed their underwear.

The Alamo, being from that same general era of history, holds the same appeal for me. Now, I’m not going to go so far as to say that visiting the Alamo was a dream come true for me, but one of the first things I thought of when we planned our route to Mexico was going through San Antonio to see the Alamo. You could say I was pretty jacked about it. Yet, everyone I know who had ever seen it was, shall we say, less than impressed.

Well, I say, pistachios to them! While it is true that most of the compound that existed during the battle is buried under the asphalt and concrete of modern day San Antonio, the façade of the church, perhaps the most recognizable feature, remains intact. I don’t know if I would have been satisfied if that was the only thing I saw, but fortunately I don’t have to say because there was a shrine and museum attached – both free, otherwise we might not have gone in – so we got to see important artifacts like James Bowie’s knife and Davy Crockett’s hair brush (they both died at the Alamo) and get a history lesson that allowed us to rate the experience two thumbs up.

All our pictures of the Alamo during the day came out crummy. Notice the Crockett hotel in the background.

I’m going to condense three centuries of Alamo history into a few sentences, and - spoiler alert! – I am going to reveal the ending. The Mission San Antonio de Valero, the original structure on the Alamo site, was a church and out buildings built by the Spanish in the early 1700’s as a means to convert Indians to Catholicism and thereby increase Spanish rule. It was eventually abandoned as the Spanish lost influence in North America and then re-established in the early 1800’s as a strategic military outpost because the town it was situated near, San Antonio de Bexar, was a crossroads and center of commerce. It was referred to as the Alamo starting from this time in honor of the hometown of the Mexican cavalry that was garrisoned there and the name stuck. In Texas’ fight for independence from Mexico in 1835-36, which ironically was brought on in part by Mexico’s restriction on further immigration of U.S. citizens into Texas, it was the scene of a famous battle where the greatly outnumbered Texans who were defending the compound made the decision to stay and fight rather than surrender. They were all killed, but their bravery in electing certain death gave rise to the rallying cry “Remember the Alamo” which inspired an outnumbered army led by Sam Houston to defeat the Mexicans at San Jacinto just a short time later and secure an independent Texas – which was admitted to the Union as the 28th state in 1845.

Surprisingly, Coconut and J were relatively interested in all this because when we stayed in North Carolina a few weeks ago with a sister of a college friend, Frank the husband let us know that his ancestor had been killed at the Alamo. Having this connection made it more bearable for Coconut and J to go through the exhibits looking for his name and reading about what an honorable guy he was. It turns out that James Butler Bonham was one of four commanders and had snuck through the Mexican siege line at one point to get help. Upon learning no help would be coming, Bonham snuck back through the lines, which the other couriers that had been sent out did not do, to let his compatriots know that they were on their own. He died with them on March 6, 1836. One has to wonder why, if it was so easy to sneak through the Mexican lines, the whole army didn’t sneak out and attack the Mexican rear, but I’m not a military strategist so I guess it didn’t make sense at the time.

We didn't do anything else in San Antonio, except leave our iPad in the hotel lobby. After we reached Laredo and realized it was missing we called the hotel but it had not been turned in as lost and found. It's a bummer, but the only things that are irreplaceable on it are some photos that we took with the GoPro and potentially all of our personal banking information.