We have finally relocated completely to Mexico! The last year has been difficult as we have been spending every week traveling back forth. That was a lot of driving and I am happy we’re over that part of our life. Now we have all of our stuff here in the house in Hermosillo. I have been bringing things incrementally for a year now, but we still had a lot of things left to bring as the picture above shows. It was an incredibly hard move. Yun and I spent a week prior to the trip disassembling everything we owned for easier transport. Then we wrapped everything in a thick black plastic in hopes to prevent (or at least minimize) the damage. I then moved everything out of the main house and put it in the guest house to make loading easier.
Yun’s parents came up to help last Wednesday. We spent the entire day packing up the truck and trailer in hopes to depart that evening. We weren’t even close to finished, so we had to postpone until Thursday. We didn’t finish packing up until Thursday evening around 5pm. The drive generally takes 4-5 hours depending upon conditions, but we suspected it would take longer given how much slower we would be driving. We never suspected it would take as long as it did. Both truck and trailer were far too heavy which made braking extraordinarily difficult. Our average speed for the trip was somewhere between 30-40 mph. I drove the truck most of the way with Yun’s dad and her mom drove the VW and Yun drove the Mazda. The drive was absolutely horrifying and my heart was racing the entire trip.
The process at customs was a breeze. Much easier than I thought it would be. It always helps to know people. The fee was much less than I thought it would be and we didn’t have to go through the Consulate as we had anticipated. At this point, the trip was going well.
The highway south of Nogales is very curvy. This is where the nightmare began. Some of those curves were on a decline. Since I had little ability to brake, it was hard to control my speed in order to handle the curves safely. Not fun. A few hours later (and long past the curvy area) we blew a tire on the trailer. Fortunately the trailer had 2 wheels on each side, so I was able to control the truck and come to a stop. It was the middle of the night at this point and we were in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately we had two other vehicles in our convoy, so once we removed the tire, Yun and her father headed back to the closest “town” (ie, small village) to find help. Thank God they found a kid that had a tire “shop” (ie, a tent with very old used tires). Roughly an hour or so later we were on our way. However, the tire we bought for $20 US (we had no smaller denomination to use for a tire that was clearly intended to be trash) had a much, much shorter life span that we had hoped. Roughly an hour or so later we had our second blowout. We were able to find another tire “shop” (a much nicer tent) and had another tire that made it all the way home. We arrived around 4am.
Unloading the truck was not easy, especially since we were all beyond exhaustion. The 4-5 hour drive had taken 11 hours. Even so, with the help of Abe and Gab, we had the truck unloaded around 6.30am. Not bad given it took 2 days to load. At 6.30, it was in the mid 90s and we were all destroyed. At that point we decided it would be best to go eat some tacos. Strange idea, but it turned out to be great. Where else can you get a taco at 6.30???
This was a really tough journey and one I hope we will never have to do again. To compound the misery, we had finally closed on the sale of our home on Friday, so after all of the madness of this trip, we got 4 hours of sleep before loading back into the truck and driving back to Tucson. We didn’t have room for the washer and dryer and a number of small things (like all of our plants) in our first load, so we had to get it out of the house by mid-day Friday. We also had some items to pick up for Abe and Gab, so once we finished with that, we immediately turned around to return south. This time we were only able to make it as far as Nogales before we decided to stop for rest (it was once again midnight). Once we finally made it back home we crashed hard. It has taken nearly a week to recover. For the most part, I think we’re recovered now.