November 11th, 2022 was our big, much anticipated border crossing day so we started out early.
Our plans pretty much came off without a hitch with an easy drive to the border crossing at Sonoita, Arizona and no wait to get our paperwork approved AND WE GOT THE FULL 180 DAYS!
Now for the 1.5 hour drive out to the gulf of Baja to Puerto Peñasco for some much needed R&R!
Of course, then there was the adjustment of driving through Mexican towns and reading signs in Spanish, etc. But the drive was pretty straightforward. We were so flipping excited to get to a beach with warm, clear waters and spend a bit of time soaking up some sun… Our first big goal had been reached!
The RV park was quite a ways from stores and supplies so we had to hire taxis to run us around on errands…including going to a money exchange house to trade a few thousand or more dollars into pesos.
Even though Puerto Peñasco is a big “Gringolandia” sort of tourist town many of the places we went to buy groceries and such did not have anyone who spoke Spanish so our almost total immersion into Mexican culture and the Spanish language was on.
One of the most interesting challenges we had was purchasing a Mexican cell phone and getting pre-paid phone service and getting that all set up. Very little English was spoken at the TelCel store and talk about a brain bender…navigating technical terms in Spanish is a whole new ballgame!
It was not too long afterward that Chris started testing out mobile app translators and when he got that figured out it helped make life easier.
