Tomorrow's the day! It's time... CJ's suitcase showed up (at 0130 hrs.... It's a long story that includes sloppy luggage loading in Victoria, good intentions in Edmonton, mis-direction in Calgary, unwillingness to engage brain cells in Phoenix, good service from well-intentioned baggage clerks in Tucson, another round trip for us to Tucson, and one VERY broken baggage handling system... Oh, and Kathy spending literally hours, over the course of two days, on the phone with three different airlines, explaining to each one what the others were doing...). Enough said about that!
We are all together, better rested, and ready to roar. Our plan is to leave Esplendor (Rio Rico) tomorrow morning about 0530 hrs.... get to the border nice and early, move along down the road to KM 17 where we will get our Tourist Visas and a TIP for the truck (in case we decide to drive it to Mazatlan later in the season) and head on down the road to Guaymas and San Carlos. It's a 7 hour drive that will probably take about 9 or 10 hours depending on officialdom, weather, and coffee stops...
Let me tell you about weather for a moment. One of the reasons we didn' t push ourselves to leave today was the forecasts calling for thunder storms between here and our destination... While our intentions were to sit tight watching TV and resting... we ended up having to drive back up the road to Green Valley, to the vets office, to have some typos in their International Health Certificate issued for Sophie - corrected. Once done, we headed south again towards Rio Rico expecting a short and uneventful drive. Didn't happen. While still on the entrance ramp to the highway we were nose into a ferocious thunder shower complete with wind gusts and driving rain so thick we couldn't see the road ahead of us. Rule one: if you can't see the road, stop trying to drive on it. Luckily there was enough shoulder for us to pull over and wait, with emerg flashers on and all eyes alert (well, except for Sophie. She's so deaf now she slept through the whole thing). A car behind us did the same thing (provided a nice little guard for our rear). Anyway, about thirty minutes later the thunder, lightening, wind and torrential rainfall had passed us by and we were able to complete our journey under blue and cloudy skies and warm sun. We're really glad we decided to wait out the thunderstorms as the roads in Mexico don't all provide nice shoulders to pull over on.
For now we are tucked in to our nice little hotel room, catching up on The Good Wife and turning in early in anticipation of tomorrow. Will write again from Mexico. We are well, and we hope all of you are enjoying each day. For now... Adios and talk to you soon.... CJ, K and PS.
