We did it. We took that scary drive from Laredo, Texas to the center of Mexico. We crossed through the border. We went through their customs declaration. We traveled 610 miles of Mexican highways. It was uneventful. The scenery in the mountains was breathtaking.

The crossing.

When you cross from Laredo into Mexico there are about six lanes. The right lane is for Declaration. Since we had our car packed to the gills with electronics for our home down here we stopped there. The other five lanes were filled with cars zipping into Mexico, no stopping.

While we sat waiting in Declaration we noticed a couple cars pulled over by the people manning the little booths where they check your passport. Most were glossy dark colored and newer SUV’s with tinted windows, drug baron’s types of cars. I cannot imagine that a drug baron would not pick up on that fact but it fit the stereotype that the border guards must have. We showed the lady guard the list of what we had. She looked in the car’s back seat, packed, and I told her “ropa”, clothes. She looked into the trunk and noticed my three five gallon cans, wrapped in garbage sacks, of diesel.

“No gas.” She informd me.

“No es gas, es diesel”. Those of you struggling to speak Spanish can understand how this was going to go. My limited Spanish vs. a border guard who is doing her job. Actually telling her it was diesel and the strain of her and I trying to hash out exactly what was wrong with that won the case for me. She let it go. It wasn’t worth it.

She then started to probe an old backpack that contained an old laptop we got for our tutor in Mexico.

“Laptop” pronounced laptope, I told her.

“No necessita pagar” she said. We were done. I didn’t need to pay for importing anything.

Meanwhile car after car whizzed through the border, trunks probably laden with stuff, and they didn’t bother to go through Declaration. In fact, if our backseat had not been filled with boxes the border guard would have kicked us out of the line and got us on the road.

There is a second military checkpoint about 25 miles inland where we were waved through. That was it.

All those cars, all those opportunities to smuggle guns or money into Mexico are whizzing into Mexico at this one border crossing almost unchecked. There is really no other way for connected countries to have common borders open. The crossing back into the USA has to be similar.