David and Amy met me at the Houston Airport on Monday, about noon. After picking up my bag I headed for the exit, calling David on the cell phone to see where they were in lapping the terminal, in their Honda Pilot...I caught myself and did NOT ask him (in the midst of numerous airport people) "Hey, what color is your Pilot?" Still in the Houston area, we stopped at a Honda dealer to check out some remaining symptoms of the previous wreck and imperfect body repair. Very good folks at the dealer identified some possibilities, and said that we were quite safe to travel all the way to Guatemala, and then have the remaining repairs done there.
Sophie and Katie while we were waiting at the dealership:
We made it to Pharr Texas (next to McAllen) and the home of Warren Berkley for the night. Very hospitable, helpful people. Took care of various border crossing errands this morning, then went to the border not knowing if we would make it across today at all. All seemed to go quickly and smoothly, and we left the border area at about 3 pm. At a later checkpoint, some 30 miles (?) into Mexico, we discovered that the border folks had incorrectly marked our papers, indicating "transmigrantes" status instead of "Tourist"
status, but had not done other things necessary for "transmigrants". The cop at this checkpoint indicated that this is a problem. After much discussion he said if David paid a "tax," that we could go on even though our papers weren't quite right. Paid up, traveled on.
About 7 pm, an hour after dark, we reached the city of Ciudad Victoria (I think that's redundant), and we have a room at the Paradise Inn, and had supper in the attached restaurant, El Eden. Wireless in the Lobby!
Approaching sunset, a ways north of Ciudad Victoria:
My supper in the restaurant was Enchilades con Carne - very good!
Finally the map of our travel today:
