Field trip

Today was a paperwork day. We met the participants in the morning and divided into groups to drive to the border. Since we have four seat belts in R2V2, we offered to drive another couple. They are from near San Diego, and I am pretty sure they are the oldest on the tour, while we are probably the youngest.

We spent a couple of hours dealing with paperwork. We needed to get visas for our stay. The wagon master, Wayne, is Canadian, and he doesn’t speak Spanish. There is an apprentice, Horacio, who will be the “tail gunner” at the rear of the caravan. Horacio is Mexican and was helping with translation. We started the paperwork at one office, crossed the street to pay the fees, then returned to the first office to finalize the paperwork. Horatio stayed at the first office, so Amy used her Duolingo Spanish skills to help at the bank. When a police officer entered quite annoyed, Amy was able to figure out that the police officer wanted a vehicle moved and explain that wasn’t our vehicle since we walked from the parking lot to the border. At that point, one of the Canadian women adopted Amy as an unofficial translator!

Once we all had our visas, we stopped by some banks, then went to the “best bakery in Tecate”. It was huge with a ton of variety. We grabbed a few pastries each with flavors like guanábana, pineapple, and fig. We feasted on the pastries while we waited for others to finish paying. Most others had the good sense to take their treats home, rather than pig out on the spot.

We walked back into the USA, drove back to the campground in Potrero, and spent the afternoon getting our rigs ready for departure tomorrow.