Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Mexico - Canopy Tour and Crossing the Border

Our second day in Mexico we went on a canopy tour that included hanging bridges and ziplines.


Neither one of us had done hanging bridges before and it was a big challenge! They had five different types of bridges. The one below was straight boards single file so it was like walking along a moving balance beam high above the ground. They had another one where each plank was suspended separately so all the boards would move in a different direction as you stepped from one to the other.

It took a lot of arm strength but it was exciting and rewarding once we got to the other side!


The ziplines were also a lot of fun. The one in the picture below was the longest. It was so long they required everyone go tandem because if there wasn't enough weight to propel you to the end, you could get stuck in the middle just hanging there. I circled where we ended up.

After an exciting morning we went back to the house to enjoy one more afternoon of the beach.


We had fun searching for sand dollars, I had never found one before this trip!


One of the toughest things about the trip was trying to find food. We weren't in a very touristy area so there weren't a lot of options available. There were shacks on the side of the road that offered various things like fruit or raw fish/shrimp but that was about it.

Thankfully we brought enough food with us to basically get us through the whole weekend cooking at the house. However on our last night we did find La Marina Seafood and Grill less than a mile away.

There was a pretty sweet car parked outside so we figured we were at the right place.

It was very simple inside with tables, mis-matched tablecloths, some plastic lawn chairs and some wooden chairs. But everyone was so nice and having a blast celebrating someone's birthday. They had a man singing mariachi and people dancing.


After all that excitement we were beat and needed to get ready for the trip home!

On the way out the next morning Eric stopped to pick up a few tamales.

The drive up was just as beautiful as the drive down.


Once we got about one to two miles outside of the border, things started going downhill. It was just before noon when we reached the traffic getting back into the U.S. We had heard sometimes it could take two hours to get across the border.

It was all very interesting at first. There were people running up and down the streets trying to sell you anything - food, drinks, blankets, toys, car parts, desks, anything. The guy behind us had his wiper blades replaced in moving traffic in about 3 seconds. I was too bewildered by everything around me for the first 30 minutes to even think to take pictures.

Once we got a little further up we started seeing all the vendor carts stationed out in the middle of the road between lanes. After about an hour, we had to turn the air conditioning off because we thought we might be having some car trouble. The thermostat read 101 degrees, no AC, and the windows were rolled all the way up because people were constantly trying to give things to us.



By around 3:30 pm we got to a point where we could actually see the border in the distance. By this point there were actual shops all along the side of the highway.
They also had people trying to entertain by juggling or dancing, we even saw someone dressed up as Shrek!

We really tried to make light of it in anyway we could. But after 6 hours in stopped traffic (to move a total of 1.5 miles), I was never more excited to be back in the States!

2 comments:

  1. Enough to make me never want to drive to Mexico! But the restaurant and hanging bridges looked awesome!!!

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  2. Oh my gosh...6 hours in 101 degrees with the windows rolled up in a hot car!! Painful indeed. Glad you guys made it home safe and sound! Luckily after a while you just remember the fun stuff and beautiful beaches.

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