Tecate, Mexico

No, I have not ridden the bike to Tecate, Mexico, but I did visit Tecate whil spending Christmas with my son and his family in San Diego.  This is somewhat motorcycle related since I wanted to check out the border crossing I will be using when returning to the States in a few months.

My wife and I crossed the border easily and just strolled around looking at the town.  It is amazing how "Mexican" this town is being right on the border.  All in all we spent about three hours and had lunch at a great little outdoor restaurant called Lolo's.  Yes, we ate Mexican food but I was surprised how many Chinese restaurants were there!

Crossing the border back into the US was not so easy.  We could not find the pedestrian crossing at first and had to ask a Mexican border guard (with the biggest dang gun I've seen in some time) how to get back across. He did not speak English and my Spanish is pitiful.  Eventually we saw some folks following yellow arrows on the pavement and decided to follow them.  Voila! The arrows lead to the good ol' U S of A.

Stay tuned as I plan my trip to Central America with a tentative departure date of March 15, 2012.

The Plan

My current plan (which I am sure will fall apart on day 2 of the trip) is to ride to Texas (my home state) and get new tires mounted. From there I'm going to ride across the state to Big Bend and spend few days there. I spent time there in the 70s when you could walk across the river to Boquillas del Carmen and get a cold Carta Blanca. I understand that since 9/11 you can't do that anymore.

From there I'm going to cross at Eagle Pass and head for the eastern coast and eventually cross into Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and winding up in Meteti, Panama. Spend a couple of days there and then head back up the Pan American Highway this time riding through El Salvador back to Mexico. In Mazatlan I will take the ferry over to Baja and ride up to San Diego (re-entering at Tecate) to visit my son that lives there. My wife will fly out and we will do some sight-seeing together for a while. 

From San Diego I'm riding up to Nevada to ride Highway 50 (The Lonliest Road in America) and then over to Monument Valley. From there I think I'm going to pretty much high tail it home through the mid-west.

As I said this plan will probably fall apart faster than it took me to type all that!