Day 4 - Crossing into Mexico

OR who the hell planned THIS trip?

First off, Elaine and Phil, you are not driving to Mexico. Nor do I know anyone else who is driving to Mexico.

Slept too late and missed the breakfast. Not a good start.

We were going to cross at Los Indios. Easier, they said. Nobody had even heard at Los Indios. So we ended up crossing at the International Bridge. We were actually headed for the Brownsville-Metamoros bridge, but ended up at the International Bridge. Now, try to keep up here.

Crossed over.
Parked.
Went inside.
They sent us to the Tourist Visa counter, where we wait for 10 minutes. Nobody else was in line.
Finally, she came out and handed us the forms and told us to go over to the counter and fill them out and get back in line. Now, I have filled out forms like this many times when I flew to Mexico. However, they always had the boxes labeled in Spanish and English. So I/we filled out as many boxes as we could. We went back and waited in the non-line for about 10 minutes again. She helped us (not happily) finish filling them out.
She then sent us to the vehicle registration window. Sorry, she said. No power. We could go back across the bridge or somewhere else down the road and 2 turns to the right to the International Bridge. Holy crap. I thought we were at the International Bridge. No wonder there are absolutely no Americans here. Uh oh.
So we decided we would handle the customs declaration. Now, this customs official (cute girl) was as helpful as could be. She loved my spreadsheet. Finally I got something right. I love Excel. She apologized for making us pay $167.00 in taxes. I was gonna be happy with anything under $250. She just took my grand total from my Excel sheet and charged us the 13% tax.
Now, we head to the money changer because the bank won't take pecos and we don't know whether our hotel will take pecos or not.
Then to the bank to pay our tax in pecos.
Back to the vehicle registration window just in case the power is back on. Lucky lucky us. We have copies of our registration, etc., but need 1 set of copies, so she sends us with the guy in red back to the store next to the bank for 1 copy.
Then back to the now line for the vehicle registration.
Then we have to go back next to the money changer to buy mexican insurance.