F@%K Mexico

This morning, I went to the Mexican Consulate in Austin to get a vehicle permit so the DL and I could enter Mexico. I figured that made more sense than trying to deal with it at the border at Brownsville tomorrow. For the record, I had tried to contact the Mexican Consulate in NYC several times before leaving NY and had gotten nowhere. Their telephone system would either direct me to dead ends or to voicemail that no one would ever bother to return. When I went to the consulate, they had arbitrarily closed the processing area early.

OK, no worries, I thought, I'll just take care of everything today.

I went to the address listed on their website and was met by a blank office door. Hmm, maybe they're trying to be discreet, with the war on terror and all...

So I knocked. And knocked. It was dead silent in there, and finally I saw someone go into one of the other offices down the hall and asked her if the consulate was indeed at that address. It turned out to be about five blocks away.

Things went downhill from there.

When I found the consulate, it was was easy to find the office that issues vehicle permits (thankfully). I sat down and told the consulate officer that I wanted to take my motorcycle into Mexico and wanted a permit.

"No problem," he said. "I just need a copy of your birth certificate or passport and a copy of your title or registration."

I proferred my passport and my temporary registration (which I was told by three different people at the Mexican Tourism Bureau would be fine for entry into Mexico). He looked at my temporary registration and said "Oh, no, this won't do. What else do you have?"

I explained that this was a new vehicle and that my official registration and title wouldn't arrive for at least another several weeks, and that I had been reassured on numerous occasions that my temporary documentation would be fine.

"No, no - this does not prove that you own this vehicle. We need something that proves you own the vehicle."

I offered up my insurance card and the receipt from the dealer for the bike. Even though it was handwritten and basically meaningless, the receipt seemed to satisfy him.

"OK, now you need to give me a copy of this and also your passport, and then we can give you the permit for your motorcycle. Go next door (pointing down the hall) and make a copy and then come back."

Not wanting to sacrifice one of the copies of my passport I keep on me and having to make a copy of the basically meaningless receipt anyway, I trotted off down the hall and found myself in Purgatory, with dozens of Mexican families milling around with official looking forms and crying babies in hand. I realized I had no change (and certainly wasn't going to spend this life and the next one waiting on the evil looking line to get any), so I left the building and went across the street to a UPS center to make the copies.

Five minutes later, I was back in the vehicle permit office with my copies. I sat down with the officer I had met with earlier and handed him my copies. The officer sitting next to him asked "What about a copy of your registration? You need a copy of that, too."

"Uhh, but..."

"Oh, I told him he needed to bring me a copy of that, too" the first officer said. What? When? You not only DIDN'T tell me to bring you a copy, you acted like I had made it that morning back in the hotel.

"I also told him he need to bring me his Tourist Card with a copy. Do you have your Tourist Card copy, too?"

"Uhh, no - I thought I could just get that at the border." Why the hell didn't you say anything earlier? Whatthefuck...?

"No, no - you need to go around the corner and get your Tourist Card and make a copy and then come back here. And bring a copy of your registration, too."

I explained that (having seen the line earlier) I would need to go back to the hotel and check out first, but that I'd be back shortly. Before I left I asked if this would be it, and if with these documents I'd be ok to travel throughout Mexico with my bike.

The two officers looked at each other and paused, then looked back at me and nodded. "Oh, sure - you'll be fine," the officer I was working with said, sporting one of the most insincere smiles I've seen since Andrew Card.

"Also, I was told that you had to enter and leave Mexico by the same border crossing. Is that still true?"

One of the officers was sure that wasn't true, and the other maintained that it was true only if you left your vehicle deposit ($400 to prevent you from illegally selling your vehicle while in Mexico) in cash. I told them I had been told by numerous Mexican officials previously that it was. They just shrugged.

I checked out of the hotel, had them hold my things (can't just leave my goodies strapped to the bike in downtown Austin for an hour or more, right?), and returned to the Consulate to get my Tourist Card. I looked around Purgatory for the right form, but there were no forms at all in the little form holders along the walls.

I asked a gringo couple waiting on the heinous Purgatory line if they knew where the forms were, and they told me I had to wait on line to get them. After filling them out, I would have the privilege of getting back on the end of the same line to hand them in for my Tourist Card.

Whatthefuck....?

I stood on the line with the infinitely patient gringos for about five minutes and finally said This is bullshit and headed outside to collect my thoughts.

Fuck this, I thought. No one knows what the fuck is going on, and I'll be damned if I'm going to have to explain the whole NY DMV situation to every damn Mexican cop who pulls me over (which apparently would be many, from what all my gringo friends who had driven their own vehicles through Mexico had told me). Is this even worth it?

I got on the phone with my good friend [name withheld pending admission to a law firm post-law school], who had traveled extensively and lived throughout Mexico.

"Dude, fuck Mexico. Why the hell would you want to want to go there instead of spending more time in Canada on this trip? I'd rather spend my time in Banff than Mexico this time of year. Fuck Mexico."

So I did. Instead of going back into Purgatory to beg those Third World bureaucrats to let me come into their country to spend my tourist dollars, I got on my bike, went back to my hotel, packed up my bike, and headed west out of Austin to points unknown.

I guess this is no longer "Ride the Americas," since I've now bailed on everything south of the Rio Grande, but I felt like a huge weight had been lifted as I rode out of Austin. All the unknowns, all the bullshit, all the pointless bureaucracy and meaningless headaches were now behind me. As I got on US 290 heading west, I felt really great. For the first time on this trip, I felt like I could just RIDE.

Fuck Mexico. Now we just RIDE!