1) the Mexican Embassy 1pm rule
2) your traffic sucks
We drove 5 hours to Houston from New Orleans, an extension of the same highway we drove from Tallahassee.
We drove through Houston to try to get the vehicle permit before the Mexican boarder. The vehicle permit is a deposit you pay and get back when you leave Mexico. We think it is to dissuade people selling there car in Mexico, apparently you can get more for your car there than in the USA. According to all the blogs, it is easier to purchase before the boarder which is apparently, a bit of a free for all.
We rang the embassy ahead of our visit, they confirmed they did the permit and for our car it was $usd300. We said we would come the next day, they said they shut at 4pm. What they didn't say is 'we don't offer this service after 1pm'!!!!! Of course, we arrived at 1h30pm and were told that they cannot help us today but they assured us we could do it at the Mexican boarder.
The day was not lost as we were able to catch up with Kunal Karan, our old housemate's (Rohan) brother as he is doing an internship in Houston. We went to a great Texas BBQ place that he recommended. Delicious!
As our goal was San Antonio, we were ready to leave Houston, we headed off, only 3 more hours and we could take a rest from the road!
How wrong we were! We were stuck in Houston, in traffic, for 2 hours. Crawling along on a highway..... It was super frustrating, and we found at the end, it wasn't due to a crash, it is just that they have a 6 lane highway each way as their main route through town and people are zigging and zagging all over the place to get on and off at their exits!! As you can see the are a crazy number of exits!!
Fletcher is going to love that bison head!
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