Passport to Puebla -- Part 1

A three-hour delay at the border due to a paperwork problem. Hundreds of sinister speed bumps that tried yet thankfully failed to obliterate our shocks and alignment. Five consecutive hours of precarious S-curves through the Mexican mountains. An inaccessible suitcase containing all our clean underwear. And one angry orange tabby that, throughout the three-day journey, masticated and slashed at the mesh walls of his cramped carrying case while repeatedly meowing “motherfuckers!” at his road-weary mom and dad.

Despite all these obstacles and annoyances, Miranda and I arrived at our destination – Puebla, Mexico – still enthusiastic about our 5-6-month adventure, still friends with our feline, and still married.

Now, I’ve never been one to dwell on the negative, unless I’m awake. However, some of the misadventures – humorous in hindsight – that marked our journey are odd and entertaining enough to warrant elaboration.

First, a little build-up.

Those of you who know me well know that, while I have my shining moments of spontaneity and free spiritedness, I’m a fan of planning and preparedness when it comes to the big things. Weeks prior to our departure, I contacted just about every organization and agency one could contact to obtain information on trouble-free Mexican border-crossing with a cat and a car. I spoke to three people from the Mexican consulate in Austin, several Mexican car insurance agencies, AAA, the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, CarMax Auto Financial (the folks who actually own our Honda CRV and from whom we needed a letter of permission to drive over the border), and our veterinarian (from whom we needed a certificate stating that our cat, Dingo, was unlikely to infect or eat anybody in Mexico).

I checked and double-checked what documents Miranda and I needed to present to the border bouncers in order to gain easy access to their motherland, as well as what fees we could expect to pay upon arrival in Nuevo Laredo. Prior to packing up and exiting Austin, I boasted to Miranda that I had gained enough knowledge to write an e-book on "Moving to Mexico".

Only, as it turns out, had I written said e-book, it would have been missing one vital page – the one that clearly explains that you must have an original copy (isn’t that an oxymoron?) of your vehicle registration if you hope to gain access to the big fiesta below our border. We did not have said document in our glove compartment because my wife, who shall remain nameless, unwittingly threw it out when it came in the mail with the registration sticker for the vehicle months back.

Fortunately, my fluency in Spanish enables me to beg and plead quite proficiently with Mexican public officials. Unfortunately, the Mexican public officials with whom I begged and pleaded in the Nuevo Laredo vehicle permit department didn’t give two tacos about our plight, and callously sent us back to the Obama side of the border to obtain a temporary vehicle registration. Lucky for us, the Laredo DMV was located just a few blocks from the border. (Don’t think I’m not aware of how absurd it is to combine “lucky for us” and “DMV” in the same sentence.)

So Miranda and I joined the line of Mexicans who were heading north en masse. We stood out in the crowd not only because we were the only Americans crossing the U.S. border by foot (no hung-over college kids were to be seen), but also because I was the only person in line carrying a cat. In addition, since it was drizzling lightly, I had popped the hood of my black hoodie over my head, causing many a Mexican to watch and wonder why Eminem would be crossing the border as a cat-carrying pedestrian.

Of course, the U.S. border patrol folks wondered the same thing when it came time for us to flash our passports. But the woman who eyed our little blue booklets must have been either too tired to bother to make full sense of our story, or must have been a big rap fan, as she gave us the green light to pass through, cat and all.

We quickly learned that carrying a cat into a DMV will generally elicit even more raised eyebrows than carrying one over the U.S./Mexico border. First there are the suspicious looks of the guards working the security checkpoint, then those of the always jovial DMV employees. Nevertheless, we got the document we needed in exchange for a mere $10, let out a huge collective sigh of relief, left the DMV and got on line to cross back over to the Mexican border. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Half an hour later we had our vehicle permit and our tourist visas, jumped back into the Honda and continued on our journey down to Puebla, which we – quite mistakenly – estimated to be roughly 12-13 hours away.

(Part 2 of our journey down to Puebla will be coming soon -- I just wanted to give readers something to chew on while we are busy unpacking and bribing members of the Puebla police department. More on the latter in a later installment.)