Safe in Mexico!

Wooohooo! We made it to El Rosario, Mexico.  We woke up at 5:15am, said our goodbyes to the Simkos, and then headed to get gas before making our way to the border. Our odometer read 70,682 miles- the start of our 30,000 mile journey to the tip of South America! As luck would have it though, when we were pulling out of the station, Tree noticed one of our headlights was dead. After some impassioned fist shakes by Tree we made a quick detour to the Sprinter dealership to have the bulb replaced.

I’m not going to lie. At first I thought, BAD OMEN, BAD BAD OMEN!!! But then, I reshuffled the deck and realized that it was actually a blessing.  It was a fluke that Tree saw the dead light, and because of that we were able to catch a potential problem and fix it immediately.  It was divine perfect order, serendipity, God, the fairy godmother- whatever you want to call it.  It was good and working in our favor.

We approached the border a little after 8am with our palms sweating and hearts pounding. We got the green light but there’s a mandatory check for all RVs so we had to pull into the customs lane. A young woman in uniform approached us and asked if she could enter to inspect. Tree unlocked the doors, and then in one fluid motion, she pulled the slider open, jumped back, and screamed holy hell. Apparently, we forgot to warn her about our perro peligroso.  She peeked in a cabinet, yanked open a couple drawers and then backed out of the van as fast as she could. Good work, Kiki! Who knew you could be so scary? Unfortunately, Tree and I were still a little nervous so we pulled out and forgot to get our tourist visas stamped.  Not sure how to fix that, but it’s on the list for tomorrow.  More importantly, we made the infamous right turn onto the toll road without incident, skated through three military checkpoints, and finally arrived at El Rosario around 2pm. 

Somewhere in between all that though we stopped to perform our family’s sacred Flag ’n’ Dirt border crossing ritual where we ceremoniously scoop up a small vial of the new country's foreign dirt for our global soil collection, and then we adhere the same country’s flag decal on the back of the Sprinter (see photos). 
On a final note, when we got to our hotel where we've had reservations set for a regular room since September, they told us that they'd lost the record of our reservation and had sold out of standard rooms so, instead, they'd have to upgrade us to the bi-level, family-size room for no extra charge. 

GOOD OMENS, GOOD GOOD OMENS!  -STEVIE