Cota Rica Driving Adventure Day 4: Laredo, Texas to San Luis Potosi, Mexico

We got up at 9:00 to spend my final morning in the U.S. in Laredo. It was pretty hot out for a morning being in the 80's already. On the way to the elevator, a guy was passed out on the floor of the hotel.

I guess he had too much fun on Saturday night in Laredo. As I was walking the pugs out of the elevator, the door opened and a little girl screamed at the pugs. Her mother explained to her that they were just "perritos", or little dogs. Laredo is kind of strange in that most everything is in Spanish, including gas stations that quote prices in Mexican pesos. Also, I never saw any caucasian people in Laedo at all. The border was only 3 miles from our room at the Red Roof Inn. On the way to the border, I stopped at a "cambio" money exchange office and an insurance agency to buy Mexico car insurance.

It was Sunday morning and they were open. When we got to the border, Barney took a picture. This resulted in us getting pulled over, questioned and Barney having to delete his picture. Oops. We crossed the International Bridge from Laredo to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. You pay a fee and then you are in Mexico. However, we never had to show the car paperwork or the pet paperwork. I asked a guy at customs about this and he pointed me to a "helper". There were no signs at all. The helper got us to the Aduana building which required a drive of about a mile.

At this building the procedure is as follows: (1) Stop at first window and get a card, (2) Fill out the card, (3) Get back in line and receive paperwork to pay your entry fee, (4) Go to next line and submit car paperwork and pay the car fees, (5) Go to next line and pay your entry fee. The helper saved us a great deal of time as none of this is explained or obvious anywhere.

I tipped him $20 and we were off. As for the pets, the helper explained to us that their paperwork would be submitted at the next checkpoint about 20 miles into Mexico. The whole process took about an hour and a half. We headed down highway 85 toward Monterrey. We kept having to stop to: (1) pay tolls, (2) go though a police checkpoint, or (3) go through a military checkpoint. It was annoying as each stop woke up the dogs. At one of the military checkpoints we were told to go to the side of the road to be searched. They did a quick search of the car that took about 2 minutes and we were off. After about 25 minutes we hit the 2nd bode checkpoint. Here we had to show our passports. The border agent looked at the pugs and waved us through. No pet paperwork was shown again. The Mexico terrain reminds me of the area around Las Vegas, NV. It is mostly desert.

It does have a lot more mountains than I thought though.

The highways are in better shape than those in the U.S. However, they have a lot of toll roads that are somewhat expensive. Just today we spent $50-$60 in tolls. By early evening we made it to San Luis Potosi. This is a large town of over 1 million people. We had a heck of a time finding a hotel that accepted dogs. We went to a few hotels to find one that accepted pets and were denied. At one, Dean and I got out of the car and talked to the office manager about getting a room. I spoke to him in Spanish and told him the 3 of us needed 2 rooms. He looked at me with a blank stare. I was confused as I know my Spanish is decent. I looked at Dean in confusion who also explained that we had 3 dogs. The office worker explained to us that they only rent rooms in 6 hour time blocks. It suddenly dawned on us that it was one of "those" hotels. The office worker thought we wanted to have a gay orgy with dogs. Hahahahaha. It was like a scene from a movie. We quickly left and looked for another hotel. Finally, Dean went into one and asked if they took pets and was told yes. After I bought Gretel and Midas into the room, I was summoned to the front desk and told that they don't accept pets. I guess Dean's Spanish is not that good. I was given a refund and we had to leave. That hotel did let Barney use their wifi to look up a hotel that accepted pets. After finding one, we put it into our gps. We could not find it. We drove around and around. Basically, my Mexico gps sucks. Then I called Lori to find a pet friendly hotel. She found the Westin and we headed there. The Westin was not in the gps at all. So we had to get directions. We got close and then two Mexican teens told us we could follow them to the Westin. We would have never found it. After 4+ hours we finally found a hotel that took the pets. There was a wedding party ahead of us checking in and one front desk person working. It then took 30 minutes to check in. Ugh. The Westin is a very nice hotel.

We got a bit to eat and headed to bed. After driving through northern Mexico that is supposedly inhabited by dangerous drug cartels, I just have to laugh. There was nothing even remotely scary about today. Maybe the U.S. Government is spreading propaganda about Mexico being unsafe? Nah. I am now having a great deal of problems with charging my phone. Not only is it becoming hard to take picture, but to download them to my computer is nearly impossible. I will add pictures when possible.