Day 51: HOLA MEXICO!
Last few hours in the USA.
Donated the book I had been following for the USA pacific coast to the hostel library. It is battered and bruised but hopefully someone might get some use from it.
Also got Garmin explore and Garmin messenger apps working on the phone after their tech support got back to me. I had hit into some rate limit apparently.
I have some travel insurance. They have 2 plans. First plan is called “Global”. The second plan is called Global + the USA”. The second plan is literally twice the price as the first. So canceled this subscription and will purchase the half price Global plan excluding the USA tomorrow.
The wider tires that I got put on the bike caused some silly problems by rubbing off my fuel bottle. So had to rearrange cargo mounts to account for this.
Then got some pdf route descriptions and resupply locations printed out from https://phatboyle.github.io/bajadivide/. I guess I won’t need this but better to have it in physical form anyway.
Met Kerry who volunteered to drive me to the border crossing at Tecate. This man has helped me so much over the last while. Thank you so much Kerry! Even agreed to lie for me if I wanted to say I cycled to the border!
The border crossing was weird. I just walked straight through. No checks. No showing passport. Nothing. Guess I am in Mexico now…
I decided that this was a mistake so went back and asked if I was supposed to show my passport or get a stamp or something. They didn’t really understand but when I pointed to my passport, they shook their heads and laughed to each other in Spanish. Guess it is pretty easy to get into Mexico.
I knew from being in Mexico before that I am supposed to get a Visa and if I didn’t get one it would cause problems later. Eventually they understood the term “visa” and called on the phone for some more official looking dude. I had to abandon my bike outside and follow this dude to some random back room. I was given a form to fill out, then had to go across the road to pay the fee, and then come back to the back room where they stamped my passport and gave me a little visa sheet of paper. Was a little worried about my bike being left outside during all of this, but the bike was still there when I returned.
HOLA MEXICO!
Immediately some american guy that just passed through the border in a car rolls down his window and asks me about a passport check or visa or something. Seems like he was as confused as me. He just drove across the Mexican border without any passport checks or visas or anything. I tell him my experience and we just laugh it off. We are in Mexico now.
First port of call. Tacos. Yes they were good.
I checked into a hotel for the night. Was thinking about spending another day here but at this point I want to start the Baja Divide. No reason to delay this further.
NOW THIS SILLY LITTLE CYCLE REALLY BEGINS!
