Let the Adventures Begin

Adventure Number 1

Well it did not take long for the wonder of Mexican travel to rise up and greet us. We left Phoenix after a perfect and generous afternoon and evening with Joan and Urban Thoennes, family friends of the Catton’s, and caught a cab at 4:45 am on Monday for the bus station.

We boarded the bus at 6:30am bound for Navojoa, Mexico where will be changing buses for Alamos. We had been wondering a little about the whole bus thing when it comes to Mexican Customs and Immigration at the border. The people who offered information on the topic said not to worry, the bus stops and you get out and get your passport stamped, get a visa, and get back on the bus……

We stopped in Nogales at the border, and were part of only a small handful of gringos that needed visa’s, but were told where to go. Our two large luggage were unloaded, not sure why, and our valuables and money we kept on our backs in backpacks. We felt a little uneasy just leaving our luggage there on the sidewalk. We went in…filled out our forms, got stamped, and the man said to go “outside to the bank, pay the fee, and come back and get stamped again.” Easy enough.

We walked outside and did not see any bank. It’s here where you usually look for a line of other innocent, naive looking northerners. An official looking guy waved us over through an iron gate to a bank window. There was just one guy ahead of us….With a stack of bill of lading for the border crossing as tall as a breadbox! We waited. And waited and waited….

I kept glancing over at the bus. It was there, idling away, so we felt good. Then a local guy got in line…what you would call…just ahead of us….or but, as they say. We were getting a little impatient, and Lisa decided to tell him that he was behind us in line. In a pretty funny exchange of Spanish and English…she started wagging that Catton finger saying “no no no…behind us”. We lost the argument, but he had only one document to pay for, so we did not make a big deal of it. I glanced back and saw the bus waiting patiently for us….25 minutes had passed.

Finally, we got up to the window….and after 5 minutes of banging on keys on the computer, and looking through all sorts of paper, and lists, and Mexican FBI Most Wanted lists, I presumed….she finally told us we owed her $23.00 a piece. Lisa pulled out the money and as I glanced back…the bus was gone!

A few more frantic minutes of getting stamped and change, we ran back to the Immigration Office to get the last stamp and tried to ask where the bus went??!! Blank stares is all we got. We walked outside, in a mild state of pandemonium, and noticed all our luggage was gone, and the bus was nowhere in sight.

We flagged down one of the Immigration guys, and got across to him that the bus left without us, and has all our luggage. I think the only part he got was that we needed a bus to Alamos….and took us to the ticket office. No no , we tried to explain…we have a ticket, but the bus left and has all our stuff! Emergency language and speaking on their part and our part gets a lot faster, so nobody knew what the other was trying to say…a young woman who spoke pretty good English helped us out, and it was determined that if we hustle…we might be able to flag a cab and catch up with the bus.

What?! On the highway?! We are gonna try to run down the bus and get him to stop?! A security guard had a fast conversation with a taxi driver, and off we went…speeding helter skelter through the streets of Nogales! After about 10 minutes of careening through traffic, we looked at each other and just laughed…”Welcome to Mexico!”

As it turned out…the driver took us across town and pulled into the Nogales Tufesa Bus station, where our driver was sitting idly smoking a cigarette waiting for a few new Nogales passengers to board….we checked he had our luggage…skipped the argument over what happened and why he left, and just got on the bus, and settled in happy to be on our way!