United States Border Crossings

I thought that our border crossing into the United States deserved special attention. We are often asked how difficult it is to cross these borders in a vehicle and with a cat. Generally it is very straight forward.

The first border crossing was on a Wednesday morning in October at Philipsburg, Quebec south of Montreal. Traffic was extremely light. We stopped at the Duty Free to buy cigars. Sixty-five cigars to be exact. Then off to the border crossing.

Two lanes were open and only one car in front of us. Perfect, we should be on our way within 90 seconds. But no. We ended up with a chatty officer. He asked where we would end our day and I said Albany, N.Y. He asked where our final destination would be and I said Oaxaca, Mx. This did not seems to raise his interest. Tanya also said that we had a cat with us and if he wanted to see our Record of Good Health documents. No that was fine he said.

Next he asked if we had any fruit or food which we indicated, no. Then he asked if we had any alcohol or tobacco. I said that we had just bought cigars at the Duty Free. I did not say anything about the 12 bottles of wine and port we had with us. Well, the cigars perked his interest. He got out of his shack and walked around to the passenger side of the van. He opened the side door and peered in. I pointed out the bag with the cigars and he looked inside and asked if any were Cuban. No, they were Nicaraguan and Dominican.

Then he leaned over right into the van to look at Diego our cat who was sitting in the litter box at that time. "Oh, there's the cat." he said and then returned to his shack.

He still held on to our passports and started telling us about his three cats. He had two cats and then another turned up, "You know how it is." he said. He described his cats and from time to time he glanced at his computer. Was he delaying us while he was waiting for some report on his computer? Maybe.

Finally, he handed back our passports and wished us a safe stay in Mexico. All of this probably did not take longer that 5 minutes but when we are used to a cursory glance and few questions it seemed very long. And surprisingly, he never commented on the super loaded van or what was in there. He didn't follow up on the alcohol either. I don't expect that our personal bottles would have been an issue anyway. Then off we drove.

Visitng... friends, Elvis and travel plan changes

Well, we spent 5 hours at Graceland, home of The King. It was quite an interesting tour on many levels. It is way more shrine like, rather than museum like. They had an ipad to guide you around and provide you with good detailed information and offered as much or as little as you wanted to know. Ralph and I decided that Graceland was not an employer of choice. All the staff seemed to be at a general level of miserable. From the shuttle drivers to the picture takers to the restaurant and gift store staff, no one was specifically unfriendly, but none of the staff seemed overly excited to be there. We would highly recommend it as a tour stop, though, very impressive overall. Be prepared to buy something in the gift shop. They even had Elvis sheet sets.

We left Memphis early and drove onwards to Austin, and we've been spending our days visiting friends we have here, and prepping for our crossing over into Mexico. As many of you know, the northern part of Mexico is the least safe part. We were quite dismayed to learn that the great hotel we stayed at in Ciudad Victoria was fully booked for almost a week. We had to decide on a change, consider our different options: stay in the USA close to the border crossing, stay on longer in Austin, drive through Monterey, stop in Tampico... Lots of choices, but not many of them very safe. After a lot of discussion, research and prayer (more on this in a future post) we elected to stay close to the border crossing in Brownsville on the US side on Saturday, dead head very early in the morning right down to Veracruz on Sunday, and then inland to Oaxaca on Monday. But for tonight, we have a restful day enjoying friends, warm weather and Indian food for dinner at home this evening!

Road Trip with Cat - Rules of Engagement

Diego, our 4.5 year old Siamese cat, is joining us on our Mexico move. Although Diego has experienced a lot of change in the past 2 years, no matter how much coaching I had done with him beforehand, nothing quite prepares one for a 27 day road trip.

Diego has learnt a few things in the past few days that he wanted me to share here, for prosperity:

1. Cat beds rock.



2. Hotels that accept pets always charge an extra fee, and these fees are worth it in all cases. Some of these hotels include Quality Inn, all of the Marriott chain, and Staybridge Suites.
3. Park in the shade in all cases.
4. Extra canned, soft cat food is required for traveling.
5. Bring all toys and blankets that have ever been enjoyed/draped with cat fur. They will make settling into a new hotel room more agreeable for you as well as me.
6. When leaving me alone in the van at a gas station, bring your keys with you. The automatic door locks on the inside door panels are super fun to play with.
7. Locking you out of the car was super fun, too. Thanks for parking in the shade.

Human notes: CAA has a partnership with AAA. Just call the 1-800 number to be redirected to the local dispatch, and having a local who can spell the town you are actually in is also mighty helpful.

Three more sleeps 'till Elvis

After spending 10 days visiting family in Bath, Ontario, organizing the build of our cottage in Chertsey, Quebec and celebrating my grandfather's 93rd birthday and Canadian Thanksgiving in St. Lazare, it was time to hit the road for our drive to Oaxaca. In total, it will be about 4500km to drive to Oaxaca, and if we drove straight down, we'd drive for 6 days, about 10 hours per day. We drove in 2009 and crossed at Brownsville, Texas, and then drove down the coast through Ciudad Victoria, Tampico, Veracruz and from there cut inland on the Toll highway to Puebla and then south to Oaxaca. We'll take roughly the same route this time. It's three days of hard driving from the US border to Oaxaca. It's lovely, but long. We're going to consider a dashboard camera to capture the Mexico drive, so we'll put that video (sped up, of course!) here if we decide to do that. Any brand suggestions from anyone out there?

Today we are in New York. Albany was home last night, and the drive through the Adirondack National Park was spectacular, the fall colours were brilliant. Of course the iPad and camera were in the back of the Caravan, so no original pictures for the blog today. I will do better tomorrow! We head to New York City for a night to visit good friends, and then we're off to Somewhere in Tennessee overnight and then... Memphis! I am just about to go online to purchase our VIP tour tickets to Graceland!  Three more sleeps 'till Elvis people! The King's palace awaits us. I am all shook up...

Insurance

One would think that getting auto and home insurance should be simple. Well not if you do not have a permanent address. Our mail is being forwarded to a Toronto friend. The only property that we maintain is the cottage north of Montreal in Chertsey, P.Q. We do not get mail here because we will not be here on a regular basis. In the Spring we will have the cottage rebuilt. That is why we will be back in the Spring for a short time.

Because we will only be in Quebec for 15 days it does not make sense to transfer registration to Quebec. Fair enough. We will maintain Ontario insurance until we cross the border into Mexico at which time our Ontario policy will be cancelled. We then need Mexico auto insurance. This makes sense also. Now the tricky part. When we return to Canada in April we need to continue Mexico insurance to get us back to Quebec. Then we can get Quebec plates and Quebec insurance.

More tricky stuff. We will only be staying in Quebec for a few months and then moving permanently to Mexico. Will an Insurer provide us insurance for such a short time? We will wait and see.

Housing insurance is worse. Because we do not have a permanent address our Insurance Company will not insure the Cottage nor our belongings which we have stored in a locker in Montreal. Crazy. Out intent is to move the remainder of our stuff to Mexico when we return next Summer. Let us hope that there is no fire at the Storage Company before we return. Maybe we will use a Moving Company to move our stuff to Mexico and they can insure during the transfer.

Keep watching for more Insurance posts as this story will surely evolve.

Lessons learned: When leaving the country, go once, forget a transition.

Sound Advice

Saturday evening was our official going away party for our friends, which was lovely. It was nice to see people and get caught up. Many of our friends stayed in touch through us, so many were happy to have an occasion to get caught up with each other as well as bid us farewell. I teared up a few times saying farewell to good friends - but overall tried not to hug anyone too hard or linger too long on wondering if we would see them again - either in Oaxaca, Toronto, or elsewhere.

When two of our friends left, I shared with them that they had given us some of the best advice we ever had received about immigrating to another country. They both immigrated to Canada not so long ago, and told us that they made the mistake of treating the first 6 months they were here like a vacation. This piece of advice really resonated with us - how rich do you think you are when on vacation?

Some other great advice we received:

• Buy a sombrero as wide as your hips to make sure you stay shaded
• There is always a spare room available at a friends place to come back and visit
• You will eventually be stopped and asked for money - 17 years of good fortune in this area has to dry up sometime
• Just because some people eat it, does not mean you should eat it
• As we were downsizing and getting rid of our belongings, a friend told us that if we had things that held a memory but we did not want to get rid of them, to take a picture of the item and then donate it. the picture would bring back the memory just as fondly and sweetly as the actual article, but it was a whole lot easier to pack

I am sure there are more that escape me right now, but I thought I'd get these down to encourage you to consider other gems that should make up this collection.

Almost four and a half years since our last posting when we returned from our stay in Oaxaca, Mexico and here we are again, ready to return to Oaxaca. Just 4 more days and we will be off on our new life's journey, the three of us: Tanya, Ralph and Diego (the family cat).

As back in 2010, we will be blogging our experiences and adventures. We hope that you will find the posts interesting and that you will follow us on this blog. Through reading about our adventures you will be able to experience Mexico and its peoples from the comfort of your homes.

Welcome aboard,
Ralph & Tanya