I’m glad I started when I did and not a moment later.  Running around town in Nogales was a bit of a pain.  Sanbourns, bank, food mart, hotel, food mart, bank, food mart.  The food mart was where the ‘cambio’ was, but hty only took cash.   The exchange rate is 10.6 to on yankee buk.  A far cry from the 13 or so when I was in Cancun two years ago.  Pretty soon they will be at 10 and we will be at par and the new economic entity can emerge.

Anyways, I finally got rolling around 1:00 and then spent the next few hours felling completely lost, just hoping someone would take care of me.  I hadn’t a clue what door to go in first, and you’d think those guys at the border would speak a little English… I think they were having more fun watching me squirm.  That’s how you learn, though.

Sanbournes supplied me with an absolutely crappy map of Mexico, that that we the first stop once I had cleared the border.  I had to find a decent map.  Sanbournes did supply me, at a cost, with a travel log that details pretty much every bird and tree along the way with detailed logs from one town to another.  If it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t have been able to find a place to buy the map.  You never realise how many road signs there are out there until they are all staring at you in Spanish.

Once past Santa Ana, the road straightened out and you could pick up some speed.  This is a place where you don’t take you eyes off the road either. There is NO shoulder here.  If a tire was to go to go off the road, it’s about a foot drop before you hit anything solid.  I was wanting to pull off the road and check things out, but nowhere, no how.  People here pretty much ignore the speed limit and only slow down for the topes on the outskirts of every small town.  Topes are like speed bumps on steroids, and will RUIN your front-end if you hit them at any sort of speed.

I was aiming at getting into Hermosillo, where I am now, at around 4:30-ish so I had enough time to find a hotel and get my bearing in the daylight.  I almost made it.  This place is booked solid.  Drove all the way through town, as the sun was dropping our of the sky, and three hotels I stopped at were booked full until I looped around and found this one.  Hermosillo is a town of 500 000.  I didn’t want to loose my bearing either.

That kind of shot my plans for the evening, not knowing where I am and all, but hey, this is my first day in Mexico.  Hopefully I can get my feet wet tomorrow.

Did I mention the women?  It is now morning and I am sitting in the restaurant/hot-spot and typing this out as a pianist plays in the background.  Things look so different in the daylight.  This, apparently, is a high end hotel.  650 Peso/noche (night), and to be honest with you, the rooms aren’t that nice, but the people sure dress to the nines to come out and play here.  I’d swear I was surrounded by this city’s royalty.

Sorry, one picture today.  I was just to busy navigating to deal with taking any pictures.  Basically, norther Mexico looks like Arizona with a little more water and a little more ‘mountains’.  I am looking forward to seeing the ocean again and getting my feet wet for a change.