I went to Mexico the other day and has a very interesting experience. Ivonne and I are actually still baffled by what happened there. I think every conversation we've had since then has included the exclamation "I can't believe we got kicked out of Mexico!". Now I apologize now that there are no photos from Mexico, but I really thought we would be staying there longer and I had no time to take any. And so, without further ado, here is that story.
I had met Ivonne a week prior and she was that free spirited type of person. The kind who'll do some crazy things on just a whim. We were talking one Wednesday and she was telling me about her family in Monterrey, Mexico when I said we should just go to Mexico sometime and visit them. Well why not this weekend she asked. And in that way we decided to drive to Mexico. It's only a 5 hour drive from San Antonio to where her aunt lives. We were both super excited to be on our way. I picked her up Friday after she got out of school and we road tripped down to the border with me trying to learn Spanish on the way there.
Now we got to the border in Laredo and we didn't really know where to go. We were just following signs to Monterrey really. We passed over a bridge, which I was pretty sure was the Rio Grande, drove through some checkpoint like stations, and were lost in some town that I was pretty sure was Mexico, but we didn't know. We didn't know because literally no one stopped us at any of the checkpoint things. No one stopped us to ask us for ID's, passports, visas, or anything. We just drove through everything without talking to a single person and then bam, we were in Mexico (though we still weren't sure). Because why would we not get checked for a passport or anything??? So we were really confused, but kept going just following signs to Monterrey. We had to stop at a gas station and ask for directions once (we were going the right way though). So on we go on our merry little way. We get to the "highway" and keep going on that. By this time we have been driving in Mexico for about an hour, and we get pulled over. We don't really know what's up because we hadn't done anything wrong (that we knew of). Thank goodness Ivonne speaks Spanish way better than I do because apparently we were in trouble. Apparently we had come into Mexico illegally, though not intentionally. The feds had stopped us and we didn't have any of the things we needed that we probably should have gotten at the border. We believe somehow we accidentally skipped at a checkpoint or something and that's how we got in, but, again, we are not sure. The officers were saying that we had committed a felony and yada yada yada. They said they were supposed to take the car and take me to jail. And Ivonne was just pleading with them to let us go back and do whatever we needed to do or saying we'd just go back to America. This goes on for a little while because we are so confused and so they take her out of the car and talk to her (because she actually speaks Spanish). Apparently they were asking her all sorts of things like what we do for a living and how we are funding this trip. Ya' know? Those sort of pointed questions like they want something. And then they ask for $200 to let us go. Yes, they were asking for a bribe. And they said they would give us the code word for the next cop who stopped us. Just to tell them Officer Ochenta stopped us and we would be free to go. Unfortunately we only had $42 though and 300 pesos. Well we were kind of screwed then. A while later they are finally convinced we have no money and tell us to just go back to America. We GTFOed haha. We were so gone. So so so gone.
We were worried about not getting back into America, but we made it back in. And we made it past the first checkpoint in America, telling neither that we'd just snuck into Mexico accidentally. Interesting times in Mexico for sure. I'm gonna try not to drive there next time! But it was so much fun. Good experiences all around! No harm no foul after all.
I'm headed to Ireland in two days, I'll update again sometime over there.
Be happy,
Beacon :)
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