Tucson Road Trips

We've now made 3 road trips to Tucson and back. The car trip takes about 8 to 9 hours northbound depending on the wait at the border and 7 hours south bound. The wait at the border into the States can take 1-2 hours, southbound can be much easier depending if you stop to declare items and how long that process takes. Returning to Mexico the first time we stopped to declare a few items and they just let us go with out paying any duty. The second time we had more items to declare and they quickly processed us, we paid a small duty and in 15 minutes we were off. The last time they made us go through 'Small Imports' and while they were very friendly it took us nearly an hour and cost about $75 to bring in $400 worth of items.

The last time we also had some extra excitement when a car pulled up next to us as we were leaving the last inspection point and told us we had a flat tire. We pulled off the road and some young guys quickly ran over and offered to change the tire for us. They were very friendly and did a quick and good job and we gave them a few pesos for their work. They pointed out a small shop just a few hundred yards down the road where we could get the tire fixed, our spare is one of those mini tires and it was low on air so we slowly made our way down the road to the repair shop. The shop only repaired tires and sold used tires. The man did a good job, 3 days later it is still holding air, and only charge a few pesos.

We will have at least three more trips to Tucson before we leave San Carlos in October. We are planning to buy 2 new heads for the boat, that will take one trip, and a Hookah diving system which will take another trip. Then there will be the last trip to put the car back in storage and take the bus back to San Carlos.