The Wall loomed at the top of Mexico. Crossing the Rio Grande into the USA felt like a mahuuusive milestone in our travels. Not merely the end of Mexico, but Latin America too. Almost exactly four years after we hopped on the ship in Germany to sail to Uruguay, we ended our Latino trail entering the Lone Star State of Texas. Yes, we were absolutely looking forward to greeting Uncle Sam, but our crystal ball predicted change… big change. Some good change, some bad change, but definitely change.

Talk of Roads

Let’s begin with a big part of our travelling lives… roads. All of a sudden, we have good roads, clear road markings, signs, consistent traffic lights and generous hard-shoulders. All novel concepts that never quite caught-on in most of the Latino world, well… not consistently, at least. Also, there is a fabulous absence of the hugely frustrating Mexican speed-bumps (topes). Guess what Mexico? Every driver does not speed recklessly through your village just because you don’t have a skilfully concealed mountain ridge-line stretching across the street every 50 metres.  

Then there’s language. Marcus can be independent again and talk to people. I will no longer have to be there to translate everything for him.  Might sound a bit triv, but how many times a day you make small-talk? Or read a sign? How different would your life be if you needed an interpreter for every interaction? Immediately as we roll-up to the US immigration/customs officers, the ability for both of us to communicate makes an instant change to how we operate.

Need to Know

Another joy of the USA is ‘information’, arguably, information overload. Clear, reliable and available information on everything. We’ve spent the last few years hunting for information on where to go, what to see/do/etc.  Not in good ol’ USA. No Sir. Here, they have things called ‘websites’. Not that they don’t have websites in the Latino world, but here the websites have complete, relevant and above all… current information! What a concept, eh? Being able to establish whether something is going to be open before going there. Whatever you need to know is right there, on the screen. If you haven’t joined the 21^st Century and don’t have a screen, there are leaflets. For whatever you want to know – and for a lot of what you don’t want to know – pick-up a leaflet. Admittedly printing piles of high-quality paper leaflets is not the ‘greenest’ of policies for dissemination of information, but they’re everywhere. In shops, petrol stations, road-side booths and in places called ‘visitor centres’. But they have tourist offices in Latin America, you may well cry. True. But here’s the thing… in the USA the offices are open and they’re staffed. What’s more, the staff know stuff. They offer relevant, accurate information. A novel idea, I know, but it seems to work.

Rules is Rules

What next? Ah yes… rules. They have rules here. And then there are more rules. And when you have (if you’re diligent) complied with those, there are even more rules.  Jeeze… it’s almost as bad as UK (but I must stress the ‘almost’ here, nowhere is as bad as UK for camper-vanning rules). As a lovely American friend warned me, contrary to popular belief, USA is not the land of the free. Before we even arrived here, we had the problem of complying with rules to get an advance import permit and insurance for Cuthbert. Now in the country, we have parking rules, camping rules, kayaking rules, hiking rules… we’d forgotten what it’s like to travel in a rule-bound society. Within hours, we are sorely missing the freedom, the ‘que sera, sera’ attitude of the Latino world. Wondering whether we have missed a rule. Whether we have parked Cuthbert within x feet of a junction (ooops, sorry, intersection) and whether the FBI will leap out and book us for inadvertently breaking some county, state or federal regulation 😉.

Nosh

Another change is food. No longer the scrumptious street-cooked tacos/empanadas/patacones/ papusas/whatever, or the wonderful fresh fruit and veg, straight from the field to the road-side stalls. These dining opportunities are replaced, on the positive side, with cool little road-side diners with great coffee and pancakes for breakfast. On the less positive side for USA we predict for the urban areas, an abundance of Denny’s, McDonalds, Red Lobster, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and other such gourmet chain-venues. On the plus side… we’re already enjoying juicy Texas steaks on the barbie. Most of Latin America (save for the enlightened Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil) is still waiting to enjoy the wonder of a piece of exquisitely grilled, tender cow. The jury is still out on whether we enjoy the culinary delights of USA more than Latin America. We’ll see…

The Price of a Night

A major negative for north of the border is the budget change – nowhere in the USA and Canada will we be able to have filling, tasty meal for two with a beer each, for less than $12/£10. A packet of crispy tacos costing just 50c in Mexico, in a store literally 500 metres away from Mexico in a US border town costs $2.50 for exactly the same size and brand. Someone is making a killing there.

And camping costs… eeiisshh!! We’re self-sufficient in Cuthbert, with solar electricity, a 230 litre/60 gallon fresh-water tank, plus grey and black-waste holding tanks. In most of Latin America we can just park-up by a scenic mountain track, on a quiet city backstreet or – worst-case scenario – in a Pemex truck-stop, all for free. Occasionally we check into a campsite for wifi, water-refill, and grey/black waste dumping. When we do this, it rarely costs more than around $5-$10.

Over our vast US experience of a few nights in western Texas so far, we’re finding a biiiiiig change! Remember those rules we mentioned above? They’re pretty big on night-stopping rules around here! No night parking in streets or truck-stops. Private campsites start (if you’re lucky) at around $25-$30 per night. They often have ‘full hook-up’ which the ubiquitous US monster-RV driver needs, but we don’t. In state parks they have ‘primitive’ camp spots with no facilities for around $12-$15. Before our in-box is flooded with advice about BLM land, Walmart car-parks yardy, yardy, yardy… we know about these and look forward to them when we get to them. But so far in western Texas… this is how it is.

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Picking up the Pace

Another change in USA for us will be pace. Much as we’d love to spend a couple of years moseying around, it all comes back to those dratted rules again. The vehicle permit gives Cuthbert only one year in USA and Canada combined. Our USA visas give us, if we’re lucky, only six months on each entry (subject, as in every country, to which side of the bed the immigration chap took advantage of that morning). The distances and the restrictive seasons mean we need to plan. No more the ‘relaxed’ – some may say ‘slap-dash’ – attitude to which we have grown accustomed in Mexico. Here, we’ll have just one winter and one summer. If we do Alaska in the cold, short days of winter, or Arizona in 50C heat of summer, it isn’t going to turn out well for us. To ‘do’ USA and Canada, we’re going to have to, as we believe the locals say here, ‘step on the gas’.

And thanks…

We were blown away by the welcome in Mexico – it rapidly elevated itself to the top of our ‘best country’ list. But we must say, Americans have so far given the Mexicans a run for their money in the friendliness stakes. We’ve received many friendly greetings on the streets. We’ve also received messages from several of our social media followers across the country, with kind and generous offers of accommodation and help should we need it. A huuuge ‘thank you’ to everyone who has contacted us. We really hope to get around to seeing you all, but those pesky permit and season limitations mean we can’t spend as much time in the US and Canada as we would like.

In the meantime, we’ll sign off with a little salutation we’ve picked up from the locals here in Texas… Y’all have a nice day y’all 😊

Cuthbert’s Mexico Geek Stats

For the curious geeks out there… here’s a few Cuthbert statistics over a year in Mexico:

• Drove 21,601 km staying in 125 different camp spots
• 55 refuels, taking 3,527 litres, of which 3,344 used to produce torque
• Av fuel consumption 6.3 km/l, 16l/100km, 17.7mpg, 14.7mpg(US)
• The engine did 904 starts and ran for 477hrs
• Glowplugs came on 280 times for a total of 46mins
• Engine fan switched on 19,819 times for a total of 199.5hrs
• Climbed above 2000m 4,447 times
• DPF post injection re-burn: 142 times, using 2 litres of fuel
• Engine revolutions: 48,275,000
• Windscreen replaced: 1
• Vehicle services carried out: 2
• Tyres re-grooved: 5

Click here for the full zoomable-clickable Google Map of our Mexico route map