14 November ‘09 We had a great time in San Carlos, but now it is time to move further south. Our destination is Los Alamos or just plain Alamos. Louise and I are going to have company traveling with us for awhile… Sol and Carol have decided that journeying a little further south sounded pretty good so they are joining in. We’ve got it a little easier traveling because we’re in a 27’ motor home and they are pulling a 36’ 5th wheel with a 4x4 GMC 4 door dually. We were under way by 10:30am and heading for Guaymas and soon will leave the Sea of Cortez behind.
Hwy 15 will take us inland and directly through this major town, meaning that we’ll have heavier traffic all around us that will be jockeying for position at each and every corner and stoplight. As it turned out, the traffic wasn’t too bad and we were able to skirt through without any problems or mis-directions. Hwy 15 then takes us across some flat landscapes and leads us into the second of three large cities that we’ll have on this drive south. Now as we were about half way across this flat landscape, we came upon a sign that caught us off guard… There was a large red circle with a slash across it that said “NO FREE ZONE” and just about 100 yards in back of this sign was the station that we should have driven into… Unfortunately we were past it before we got our senses of ourselves and decided that we should turn around and visit this “official looking building”. For Louise and me, we were fine and could pass by but for Sol and Carol, we knew that they hadn’t applied for or had their vehicles “imported”. This is very important to be able to continue further south, so that is the reason that we made that impossible turn-around. Fortunately we were only about 2 miles past the station so we were able to get right back without backtracking half a day or more and possibly have a huge fine for Sol if caught without that import tag. Things always seem simpler than they are. We knew that they didn’t have their vehicles imported but we didn’t realize that they neglected to get their Tourist Visa’s as they came across the border as well. Now this does make it a little harder…Now they had 2 choices…one to head back north and take their time and enjoy the northern part of Mexico all over again or two, head back to the airport just north of Guaymas and pick-up their tourist visa and then back to the import station (about 80 miles round trip) and get import taxes and stickers taken care of so that they can continue south. Sol and Carol told Louise and me to continue heading for our destination of Los Alamos and if everything went OK, they would join us that evening, or check our email if they weren’t there and there might be a message that they were turning back. Well we continued onto Ciudad Obregon. Now we’re close to 12:30 so we stopped and had lunch at a great “Taco Stand”.
From here we traveled south to Navojoa and then due east and up into the mountains to our destination of Los Alamos. We’d been at sea level for so long that as soon as we got above 300 feet our ears started to plug so I was constantly taking a deep breath or pulling my ear to equalize…strange. After 30 miles (50 kilometers) we drove through the gates of Los Alamos and headed down into town and our campground. Getting all settled in, we grabbed the camera and took a short walk into town. The townspeople had been gathering throughout the day to celebrate “The Revolution of 1910” but seeing as how we were getting into town so late, we missed just about the whole thing but fortunately they will all be out again on Monday for the big parade. Well, we were going to make a short night of it anyway, so we just opted for another “street” dinner
and headed back to the coach. Just about 9pm a large truck pulled up next to us and a voice came with it…”We’re back and ready to go…” Sol and Carol got all the paper work done, signed and copied, and paid for before heading on to meet up with us once again.