Three longish days of driving have carried us from Ciudad Constitucion in mid Baja to Calexico, California and while long driving days usually mean "nothing to say" that is not entirely the case here. If nothing else we managed to capture some photos on each of these days that are shared below, had conversations with every military checkpoint on the Baja and at the end of this period an interesting day along the US-Mexico border.

Our route from Constitucion initially retraced our southerly journey. After a long day that ended in rain and failing light we spent a night amongst the large granite folders at Rancho Santa Inez near the town of Catavina.

A slightly easier day followed that saw us again at the resort hotel of Ester Beach on the southern edge of Ensenada.

We tried to get to the border town of Tecate in time to turn in our vehicle papers before the Banjercito closed at 2:00pm. However a slight navigation mistake had us touring the industrial back streets of Ensenada and while this was interesting and gave us an additional insight into the Mexican trucking and spare parts industry it also cost us an hour.

However even with our poor navigation, and a couple of lengthy stops at military checkpoints, we made it to Tecate before 2:00pm.

I need to explain the complexity of exiting Mexico. When one entered Mexico with a vehicle temporary import papers are issued (by an office called a Banjercito) for the vehicle that includes a sticker that is placed on the windshield. While these papers are valid for up to 10 years they must be returned at some point to ensure that the Mexican records show that you took the vehicle back out of Mexico. This sounds straight forward, except that when traveling south to north at the border crossings the route typically does not pass by any Mexican officials or offices and in particular typically does not pass by a Banjercito. Hence to turn in the vehicle papers one must go searching for the appropriate office before joining the line of traffic at the border.

In Tecate we accidentally got into the border lineup without first visiting the Banjercito, and had to ask a soldier to open a gate to let us out. Then discovered that the Banjercito's computer was not working so they could not process our exit. What to do ??

We decided to travel east along the border, along toll road Mex 3 to the town of Mexicali in the hope of finding a Banjercito with a working computer. This proved to be an interesting drive. Just east of Tecate we climbed over a sharp rocky mountain range on a spectacular road, a road incidentally that was still displaying remnants of a recent snow fall; there were even occasional patches of ice on the road.

We negotiated our way through some of the challenging streets of Mexicali only to get ourselves locked into the border traffic without getting to the Banjercito. So after 90 minutes in the border lineup we found ourselves back in the USA without having handed in the vehicle papers. I guess tomorrow, or maybe Monday when the border is quieter, we are going to have another try at getting those papers processed.