2012 Mexican Roadtrip: Nogales, Sonora to Tucson, AZ

We were up early and had the (included) breakfast at the City Express in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. We wanted to get to the border crossing early to miss the crowds and in order to get to Tucson, AZ where we had been invited to brunch. It was 72° F when we left the City Express at 8:30 a.m.

When we got to the border and the dried flowers we had bought for gifts were inspected for insects.

The lady in the Jardin in San Miguel de Allende making the dried flower arrangements we bought as gifts

The border guards were actually sheepish about inspecting these flowers but rules are rules and we wouldn't have wanted to bring something bad into the USA. We looked for the Mexican border officials to return our “car permission sticker” and to get our US$400 deposit back. The US border guards told us that it was 21 km back on road into Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. We didn’t see it coming into town. We drove back 21 km and there it was in front of us. We did what we needed to (eventually getting the refund of the deposit on our credit card) and drove back to the US border. We had to wait in line (it was then crowded by that time of the morning). We happened to go through the same line with the same US border guard that we had started out with at 8:30 that morning. As we drove into his stall he recognized our car and clapped his hands! They remembered that they had already inspected our flowers and so at 11:30 a.m. we were finished going through the US border formalities. We got to Tucson at 12:30 a.m., 113 miles--the road was great.