We loved our quick stop at Gilbert Ray Campground, we were up early the next day to pack-up, head to Costco for one last pickup of things before we cross into Mexico. The plan was to stay overnight, close to the border so we could get our large amount of laundry done before we cross over early in the morning. The closest we could find was the Pilot truck stop in Rio Rico, AZ. What we didn’t anticipate was how busy this place would be! We’ve overnighted in truck stops before without an issue, but we also never want to take a parking spot away from a trucker who needed to sleep. We assumed based on the amount of traffic in and out of this truck stop at 2 pm, this place would be full by 6 pm. I had read online that they had 10 “reserved” parking spots at this location, so Todd went to find out how we pay for a reserved spot, so we wouldn’t be taking a free spot. He came back with a membership card and we were able to reserve a spot for a small $18 fee. We got ourselves parked and headed into town to get started on our huge pile of laundry done!

As you can imagine, navigating an RV trip like this takes a bit of planning and investigation. About 6 months ago, we joined a couple of facebook groups for RV’ing in Mexico. In these groups, we can ask questions about anything and find recommendations for just about anywhere. When crossing the border from the US into Mexico, there can be some driving obstacles for a unit as big as ours and possibly confusion on where things happen at the border (vehicle inspection, tourist card and vehicle TIP). It was recommended by the group that we cross at the commercial truck crossing in Nogales, and stay in the right lane. We left the truck stop by 6:45 and headed to the border….the signs to Mexico are limited….the only sign we really saw said “Mexico Trucks right lane”. We kind of ignored that sign, cause we aren’t a truck and in hindsight, this was probably the way we were supposed to go! A few hundred meters down the road, there was 1 open border crossing lane that said CAR’s and a closed lane on the right for large/oversize loads. Well, we had no choice but to head to the “CAR” lane, and just as we pulled up, the border agent stopped us from moving forward and said we were too big and wouldn’t get through, so she will open another lane up for us! She did, we drove through and missed any cement obstacles fairly easy….was this was the entire border crossing….?? No one asked us for a passport or car documents or anything. So we kept on driving and about 5 or 6 km down the road was the first Toll booth; we paid the $100 pesos and kept on going. Another 5 km down the road was the first national guard inspection; he asked to come aboard looked around, did we have any guns and then left. We then new at the 21 km marker was the tourist card and vehicle TIP stop. We had heard if you missed the first easy turn off the highway, that the second turn was quick and sharp….so we had our eyes peeled for the easy turn! It was no problem, we parked, gathered our documents and headed in. The tourist visa is easy, took 10 minutes. Then we went over to the vehicle TIP station (temporary import permit) to get the car and bus done. Everyone on the FB group recommended that we bring multiple copies of all vehicle documentation with us, as they will need multiple copies….and the TIP process can take anywhere from 20 minutes to a half day depending on the situation. The first person looked through our documentation, and then asked us to get a photocopy of the tourist permit that we just got (why they can’t just take a photocopy right there, is beyond me, but also so very Mexican!). Todd walked over to the photocopy station to get that, then went back in line. He was called to a different booth with a different person. She looked through the documentation, no word of a lie, probably 45 times in consultation with the person training her before she actually started doing anything with it. About an hour into the documentation review, she actually entered information into the computer. Two hours later, we had our vehicle TIPS! Back to the bus for a quick snack and we had a knock at the door from another TIP guy saying there is an error with the car TIP paperwork and we had to go back to get it fixed! So another 30 minutes later, we had the right TIP in hand. They never told us what the error was….

We were finally in Mexico with all the legal’s done, lets get driving! The highway was double lane pretty much the entire way to San Carlos – most of the time it was cement highway and in great condition. The speed limits changed in the blink of an eye though from 110 to 40 then back to 110km/hour! In the 5 hour drive (445 km) we had 3 additional Toll booths (total of $42) and 1 national guard that we didn’t get stopped at. Around Hermosillo, there were huge orchards with citrus fruit (lemons for sure) and then greenhouses for acres! A lot of Canada’s citrus is imported from this area of Mexico, it was cool to see for food safety Jill! We arrived at Totonaka RV Park in San Carlos around 3 and booked 4 days here to relax and get into it before heading farther south. Surprisingly there was another Prevost in the lot, from Saskatchewan (Kevin & Rhonda)! The park is probably 90% Canadians…we met quite a few fellow Albertans.

Our first full day here included a beachwalk, a bike tube fix/replacement and propane tank filling all before breakfast! Todd is still suffering from long covid with coughing and sinus issues, so we decided to get in the car and take a drive (instead of a bike ride) to see what we could see. Found a few more beaches to walk on, sand dunes and a lookout from Mirador San Carlos – it was stunning! An evening drive into Guaymas (pronounced “gwy-ms”) and then back to San Carlos to JJ’s Taco’s for some el pastor taco dinner.

This town is also very bike friendly, and they even have a single track north in the desert on a ranch near the airstrip. It got a bit too technical for us and we cut it short, but still had fun. Found a new grocery store on the way home and this one had your own orange juice squeezer machine! We had been hoping to find the orange juice guy in our travels, but this was equally awesome! These snowbird RV parks in Mexico always have a schedule of activities, but our favourite days are when the sales people come with fruit & veg’s (Wed) or Fish and Seafood (Thurs)! A KG of shrimp was only $21 and we made some delicious coconut shrimp that night. Also went with a small group from the park to see a live band called the Dudes from 4-7pm at Carlito’s bar. Our neighbor John had been talking about this band since we arrived on Tuesday! Great band…Deanna (from Edson) and I were trying to convince them to come to Canada in the summer for a tour, they were so good! Thanks, John, for encouraging us to join in the fun on Thursday! A  sample of the band: https://rumble.com/v5xxu5t-happy-hour-live-music.html

We went boat shopping/browsing the next morning with Kevin and Rhonda (I was very excited to do this and invited ourselves to their shopping experience the night before – probably the tequila talking!) Boats and boating life is still very expensive here in Mexico….everything is $US.

Our final day in the area included a Malecon bike ride down to the marina for a look and a beach walk. We will definitely be back here in the spring on our return trip back to Canada. The RV park has a very strong community with planned events and if you can’t find what you are looking for in the park, the town also runs a very solid activity and events calendar online as well. Here is some evidence of our time: https://rumble.com/v5xgkyw-san-carlos.html

The 4 days went by so fast…we loaded up, said so long to our new friends and left San Carlos…heading down to Los Mochis. The entire trip was just under 400 km, but travelling in Mexico is never fast….just as you put the vehicle in cruise, you see a sign for a tope, or a toll booth or government inspection. Sometimes there are no signs and you see a tope and slam on the brakes….for those that aren’t sure what a tope is…basically speed bump(s) that are 2-3 times larger than regular speed bumps, used on the highway to slow cars down for various reasons (bus stop, cross walk, towns, gas stations, truck stop) or for no reason…sometimes they just exist and it’s a mystery why!  Aside from the tope’s and such, the drive was once again exciting for food safety Jill! We saw so many fields of crop production including: orange trees, corn fields, lettuce fields, agave fields and hoop houses with what I assumed was strawberries. We also saw trucks of pigs (assuming a pig slaughterhouse somewhere) and a tonne of chicken barns. Todd was pretty excited when we saw the Tecate Beer production plant in Navajoa!

No idea what this statue means but it was in a town along the way.

We were stopped at one “government inspection” station, where the agent asked us for our vehicle TIP’s, but no agents asked to come inside the bus and went through 5 toll booths for a total of $1,517 pesos ($110 CA). In general, the roads were pretty solid and made of cement (take a look: https://rumble.com/v5xxpae-cement-highways.html ), until we crossed into Sinaloa; they changed to asphalt at the chemical phyto-sanitary spray location, the roads were really crappy. Lucky for us, we weren’t subject to the vehicle spray this time. We navigated through the bumps and dips and more bumps and dips and made it to our overnight fenced and gated truck stop where the security guard said $100 pesos pr favor ($7 CA)! That’s pretty cheap to hide from the cartel for a night. The next stretch between Los Mochis and Mazatlan lately has had an increase in cartel activity, specifically in Culiacan, where two cartels are fighting out with each other and people get caught in the cross fire. For travelers through the area, pickup trucks pulling trailers or 5th wheels have a higher rate of being pulled over and stolen by cartel (to use in drug smuggling) and with that, there have been recommendations for people to travel in groups/convoy or get escorts. None of these things made us nervous…I was mostly nervous about the next section of poor highway we had to endure!

We were both up by 6 the next day, some trucker boxed us in so we got the security guard to wake him up to move to we could depart by 6:15. We had 403 km to go, and based on comments we heard from other travelers, that would take us at least 5-6 hours…. but the first 100 km took almost 2 hours! As we drove, we were both surprised to see non-stop fields full of produce! The big farms use school buses to drive their employees out to the fields and then light open fires in the ditch to keep them warm. Some farm fields we saw included green onion fields, potato fields and farm hands picking cucumbers into crates (@tacyface and @alyssab_) Then we came upon thousands of acres of fully covered fields that I tried to google and think were bell peppers but not sure. I assumed that we would see avocado trees everywhere, since Sinaloa is the avocado export capital, but maybe that is just avocado box used to export cocaine! During this 403 km trip, we had to stop 5 times for the toll booths… for at total of $1,376 pesos or $96 CA. We had two issues with toll’s today: 1. The asphalt roads were absolute crap and it killed us to pay for something that was so shitty (rough asphalt with bumps you can’t see, then potholes, then smooth, then ripples, then chunks that are crumbling, then smooth, then more ripples, then 35 topes all together) and its non stop – in spots we couldn’t go more than 50 km/h – which is why it takes so long). 2. Toll booth 5, the one and only person scammed us an additional $10 extra on the toll and that pissed Todd off. The issue with toll $ is that we are a bus with a toad vehicle, so technically we have 5 axles. Some booths charge us as a bus (3 axles) cause they can’t see the car behind us, some booths charge us for a bus + a car and some charge us for a 5 axle vehicle. So its never the same EVER and we don’t know what we are charged until they give us our change with the receipt(s). This is when we figured out the 1 girl pocketed $150 pesos cause she charged us $550 pesos, but then gave us a receipt for a 3 axle bus (only $350).

A couple of things we noted from San Carlos to Mazatlan is the number of US plated cars and trucks that are packed and stacked beyond capability heading into Mexico…our question is, are they illegal immigrants heading back to Mexico before Trump gets in? Not sure.

Todd wanted to note that from Nogales (750 mt) to Mazatlan (50 mt) we started high-ish in altitude and have been rolling through relatively flat plains all the way down to Mazatlan.

This was a very tough driving day for Todd; he was coughing alot and still trying to navigate the very rough highway…we finally arrived 7 ½ hours later at the Las Jaibas RV park in Mazatlan (north end) and it is across the street from a beautiful beach. I would say the park is 99% Canadians, and 30% full; we are planted here for a month and looking forward to some R&R!

Here is how far we have gone so far…over 4000 km: