Reno or Bust Part I

I'm going to write about our journey home in 3 parts.

First: Getting out of Mexico......

I was pleasantly surprised that we came out of Valle into Toluca and then found the correct turnoff without incident! Once before we tried to head towards Queretero and ended up in Mexico City because we missed the "special" turnoff. :(
So the first day of driving went very well. We drove a couple of hours past San Luis Potisi so it would be an equal drive both days. Found a great little hotel where our van could be out of sight and we could walk to a fried chicken place for dinner. It was really good chicken as I recall!
The next day was border crossing day. We again did great until we reached Monterey where there was some construction going on right at the entrance to the highway we needed to turn onto. Missed that and went into the city a bit but we needed to find a bathroom anyway.
We pulled into a gas station and a police truck pulled up behind us, blocking us. We were told that we had just run a red light (not) and that we needed to go to the police station to pay 800 pesos. Mike would not give the guy his license and we were trying politely to let them know we weren't going to pay for something we didn't do. The good part is that a very nice man was watching the whole thing and he knew we were being scammed. He called a policeman friend of his who arrived and told us we were free to go with no fines!
So, we took off down the road a ways to make a U turn to go back to the freeway entrance we had missed. As we are just about to get into the lane for the entrance another policeman walks across the busy road pointing at us and motioning for us to pull over! We didn't do it. We hadn't done anything wrong and we were pretty sure the first guy who pulled us over had called this guy to see if he could scam us. We just got on the freeway and put the pedal to the metal! So, that was 1.5 efforts to get some money out of us as we were leaving Mexico!
The other successful attempt was right in Nuevo Laredo. We were pulled over by a motorcycle cop who said we were going 2 km over the speed limit. What is that, 1 mph? At this point we could see the bridge and the cars waiting to cross the border. This guy also wanted us to go to the police station and pay 800 pesos. We suggested that we just pay him and he could take it to the police station (ha) but we didn't have 800 pesos, only 500. He got really happy and friendly then and took the 500 under the ticket book and let us go! Well worth it and we were across the border in about an hour.
It was too bad that in the last few hours we had these 2.5 negative experiences that marred our enjoyable time in Mexico. But, hey, there are crooked cops everywhere I guess.
We stayed in Laredo U.S. this night at the Holiday Inn. Corpus Christi here we come! I'll write about that next time.