It took us three days to drive from Austin Texas to the border of Mexico at Tecate at our leisurely pace. The terrain becomes quite mountainous as you approach the border. I’m trying to imagine what this great wall is supposed to look like that Donald Trump is going to have the Mexicans build to keep their people (as well as ISIS terrorists) from coming into our country. Has he been down here? It’s going to be quite an engineering feet, and what if the people he’s trying to keep out just swim around either end of it? Did he think of that?

At Tecate, on the border we pulled up to the guard station. There was no line here which is one of the reasons we chose this place to cross the border and not Tijuana or Mexicali. They didn’t ask to see passports or anything. After about a two minute cursory poke around the vehicle they waved us through. Ann kept saying we’re supposed to show proof of insurance and get a temporary Mexican motor vehicle registration as well as a temporary visitors pass. I kept saying just drive through, we passed the test! On the Mexican side now she insisted we pull over and she’d show me the requirements. It turns out that Baja is a “free state” which means neither a Mexican vehicle registration nor a visitor’s pass is required. Before we take the ferry across the Sea of Cortez to the mainland however we’d have to have all of the above. We decided to park the truck on the Mexican side and walk back through to the U.S and get our documents in order for the long haul.