So I cross into Mexico tomorrow en route to Belize. Wish me luck!

(Typed on my Droid on the way)

Good luck! Have a great trip!

Are you traveling light, or are you moving a household? Have you done the research to see what you need to do to bring your auto into Mexico? Have you double checked that the VIN# on your title (you did remember to bring the title to your car, didn't you?) exactly matches the VIN# stamped on the car itself? Does the name on the title exactly match the name on your passport? If your title says Janne N. Bjorgen and your passport says Janne Nils Bjorgen, be prepared for a difficult border crossing. Have you arranged for Mexican auto insurance? Buying it at the border you will pay absolutely usurious rates -- a 6 day policy will cost you what a year's insurance would cost from a broker in Mexico proper. I have no idea what hoops you would jump through to bring your household goods through Mexico rather than into Mexico, but if they are anything like what I had to go through... well, good luck to you.

I had the assistance of a very good Mexican friend who was politically connected and very conversant with Mexican bureaucratic procedures. There is no possible way we could have made the border crossing with our household goods loaded up in the old school bus without his assistance and a generous helping of mordida.

Since you're just passing through rather than immigrating, hopefully it won't be as complicated (and expensive) for you as it was for us. Just remember this: Mexican bureaucracy is far more interested in the process than in the end results. For example, two pieces of I.D., one with middle name spelled out and the other with just middle initial, will stymie them because the form they are filling out doesn't have a way to accommodate it so the easiest thing for them to do is make you get one or the other of the I.D.s re-issued so they match, even though it is 100% obvious that you are the person identified in both of them.

It's all been worth it, though, now that we're here and settled in. Of course, it isn't all sunshine and good times. I got our electric bill today, and it was a shock. It came to nearly five times as much as my property taxes! Of course, my property taxes average out to $2.48 per month. Outrageous!

Good luck on your trip. Stop by and say hello if your route takes you through Ajijic. (Highly unlikely!)

tanstaafl.

Short reply from phone:

Not going nearly as loaded as you. Have moved 5 time in last 2 years and am lean and mean.

I've hired both a full-time guide and a broker for moving through Mexico.

Belize is easy compared to Mexico, other than the arbitrarily assessed high import duties.

Here's a pic:

You may come to the realization that it was some of the best money you ever spent!

Please let us know how you fare at the border crossing and with the control de aduana (customs inspection.
Keep us posted on the adventure... although that may e difficult as your Android may lack internet connectivity
in Mexico, or possibly be prohibitively expensive.

tanstaafl.

So you’re probably wondering how I have internet access on a night we were going to sleep in the Jeep…

You know that tiny squeak in your car that you keep meaning to check out? Well mine went away about a week ago and didn’t appear throughout the first 1000 miles of our journey. I figured it was a squeaky belt or something so I didn’t bother.

Bad choice. As we’re driving through a small town in Mexico, the clutch starts screaming like a banshee every time it’s engaged. Uh oh. So we limp along for about 150 more miles, being quite creative about not using the clutch as much as possible (including shifting by rev-matching). We weren’t able to avoid it all-together, especially a couple times when going through police checkpoints. After using it off and on for a minute or two, you could smell the burn.

So we’re now at a Holiday Inn in Tampico, Mexico and will be visiting a mechanic in the morning, likely as not to get a new clutch . Through it all, God was watching out for us, allowing us to reach a major city with qualified mechanics and available parts and a safe hotel with gated parking where we can leave the trailer while getting the Jeep fixed. Most of all, we weren’t stranded along the side of a remote highway in the dark in the middle of nowhere. I can almost see the bright side in that it will almost certainly be cheaper to repair here than either the US or Belize.

I’ll report back tomorrow when I know the full damage. Until then, we’ll be enjoying the tacos, but not drinking the water

Well, the broker cost $250 US. In the end, we ended up getting a green light and sailing through customs with no search at all. Pretty fortunate, as pretty much everything else went wrong this morning and we were running very late. Guess they didn't want to search us in the rain. Everything at the border went very smooth. Insurance was only $20 for transmigrantes (just movin' through) and the visa was another $22 for 30 days.

Definitely turning out to be an adventure so far.

Yikes, quiet the adventure.

Question of semantics here... When you say "...it's engaged" you probably mean when the clutch pedal is pressed down. Being nit-picky here, that means the clutch itself is disengaged. If indeed that is what you mean, then the clutch (flywheel/pressure plate/driven plate) is probably OK (those are the expensive bits) and you just need a new clutch release bearing. This is probably a $35 part. However, to install it you have to remove the transmission, not a major task but not altogether trivial, specially on a 4WD vehicle. Figure about four hours labor for an experienced mechanic with proper tools (vehicle lift, transmission jack).

tanstaafl.

Yes, I mean disengaged.

Well, they had me purchase a whole clutch kit for about $300.

They're swapping it in the hotel parking lot with the tools I had with me. (204 pc. mechanics tool set, breaker bar,jack stands, car jack, and misc. hand tools)

So the whole thing ended up costing about $800

$300 for the clutch, $300 for the labor and $200 for an extra hotel, meals, phone calls, etc..

I think it was just the bearing, but they wouldn't sell me the bearing at the auto parts store without the whole clutch kit. Perhaps it's not a bad idea to replace the whole clutch on a 16 year old vehicle anyway.

Jeep runs great now and we'll forge on tomorrow. We’re going to try to drive for about 16 hours to make up for lost time. It’s going to be a long day.

You're doing fine. Full clutch job would be $800-$1500 here.

Cheers

Indeed lucky for you! A couple of atheists in a Land Cruiser were found just this week on the outskirts of Tampico with a seized throwout bearing and their eyes and genitals had been pecked out by a flock of ferocious Mexican ducks!

Your weak attempt at making fun of God has been duly noted. Thanks for adding to the thread.

We made it! After the breakdown, we made up time by pulling a 19 hour day from Tampico all the way to Escarcega (about 775 miles). There we stayed at a meager but sufficient hotel called El Gran Hotel. We slept from midnight til 5 am. We made it to Chetumal by 8:30 am, back on schedule. It took until after noon to clear customs and immigration. We were fortunate to only have to pay about $1700 in import duties. They can assess up to 72% of the value of a vehicle like mine. By 3pm we were in Belize City.

All in all, it was a good trip, and I'd do it again. The guide and brokers at both the US and Belize borders were well worth the $1000 I paid for them and ended up saving me far mre than that in the long run. I would definitely carry a lot more cash next time. I thought it would be safer to use the card, and it ended up being a headache trying to withdraw my daily limit each day at atm's because noone takes a card. Of coure my card got deactivated by fraud prevention and I had to spen a half-hour on hold to get it fixed.

To be fair, he wasn't making fun of God; he was making fun of you. (I think I'm going to sit this one out other than this clarification, though.)

I, for one, found it brilliant.

How do you figure? If Jim was a believer in God, he would not have found anything worthy of mocking in what I said. He's clearly mocking the idea of a God that's personally involved in our lives.

That's his prerogative. I hope for his sake that he's right.

I think that's all I'm going to say on the matter. I shouldn't have been baited into a snide comment of my own. You know...feeding the troll and all that.

Wow.. Jim's comment was pretty harmless, and I don't see anything in it that was mocking the maker. If your beliefs can be shaken by something so simple, well..

Yes. Mocking the idea. Which is making fun of you for your belief in God, not making fun of God. If a believer had said, heh, how dumb of God to "watch over you" by arranging for a whole city full of car mechanics etc. to exist, when He could have just not had the clutch fail in the first place, then that would have been making fun of God. I don't think it's possible to "make fun of God" if you don't believe God exists.

And really even the "how dumb of God" remark, if made by a non-believer, would be fairly clearly intended as sarcasm, as a sort of reductio ad absurdum argument intended as a criticism of the practice of systematically attributing random beneficial happenstances to God's intervention, while systematically not doing so for unwelcome happenstances. Either He's got His finger on the scales of chance, or He hasn't.

Peter

Not sure where you got that idea, but my beliefs are firmly in place. I have no problem with believing that God allows and even orders hardship in the life of his children in order to increase faith and prune the unwanted parts of their character. I also believe that he answers personal prayer. So what Jim sees as a string of fortunate circumstances, I see as answers to specific prayer.

Both are perfectly logical conclusions when put within the construct of their differing worldviews, however silly mine sounds to him.

Argh! I can't stop myself!


Then why didn't you thank him for burning out your clutch?

Heh.

I did.

That said, it's an appreciation of the process. Like an athlete who appreciates that without painful physical practice, they'll never reach their full athletic potential. So yes, I thank God that my clutch burned up.

Weird eh?

Excellent commentary!