Our Journey to the Border

Pick your point of entry

We went through the border at Nuevo Laredo. While researching where we should cross we found out that crossing closer to the Gulf of Mexico wouldn’t be as safe so we decided to go through the middle of the country toward Mexico City because it was the safest and most scenic route we could take. The GPS said it was an extra 5 hours but it was beyond worth it for the experiences. We highly recommend passing through Nuevo Laredo based on our experiences in 2019.

Mandy’s sister lives in Austin, TX so we stopped by to spend some quality time before our adventure. Plus we love her cooking. With love from our family, we left her house the next morning knowing that our lives would never be the same…

Customs, Immigration, Banjercito, and Insurance

Customs

It is not like flying. You do not get a Declaration form or an FMM to fill out once you cross, like you would get while on a plane or at the airport. You have 4 stops once you cross the border.

1. Show your passport
2. Customs (declarations search) a.k.a Aduana –
   • Show your Passport
   • Registration
   • Insurance
   • Paperwork Folder
   • Pay Import Taxes for anything you’re bringing with you that you must declare
3. Immigration
   • Show your Passport
   • Registration
   • Insurance
   • Paperwork Folder
   • Pay for your FMM Visa
4. Banjercito
   • Show your Passport
   • Registration
   • Insurance
   • Paperwork Folder
   • FMM Visa
   • Pay for your Temporary Import Permit (and deposit)

Be Organized. It shows respect to the officers that you took the time to research and learn what is needed to enter their country. Be polite; say “good day” or “good morning” to everyone and do not be scared. They are just sweet people doing a difficult job. The fact that you made an effort goes a long way. We had our car completely full with a projection screen running from the trunk, almost touching the rear window, to the dashboard, resting on top of it. However, we did everything we were supposed to do. We were directed to pull into a parking spot while going through customs and next us was a pickup truck that was unloading everything from their car for customs to search it. We thought this was going to be us too. The officer asked me to step out and over to the trunk and open it. He took a look at our game of Tetris that was all of our belongings crammed into this Dodge Caliber. We were packed to the ceiling to the point where, when I (Andy) was driving she (Mandy) had to look through her windows in order to determine if a right turn or lane merge was possible.

So the officer asked me (Andy) to take out one of the suitcases in the back and unzip it. He (Andy) handed one of our binders with all of our paperwork to the officer, with the inventory spreadsheets opened up, so he could see we had everything labeled as well as their respective market values. Once the first suitcase was opened, the officer looked back inside the car and paused. He asked us if the rest of our suitcases and boxes were the same and we said, “Yes.” He looked through our spreadsheets and noticed that we didn’t put a total for how much everything had cost (which we forgot to do) and we said “Maybe $5000 USD.” He wrote down $60 on a sticky note and passed it to me (Andy) so that he could head inside and pay. After a total of 10 minutes we started the car to pull away but we realized that the pickup truck next to was still in the process of pulling everything out of their truck. We smiled and chuckled because it occurred to us that since we were so organized with the spreadsheets we were in and out real quick.

Next, we were on our way to Immigration…

Immigtration

Our next stop was to immigration but we weren’t sure how to get there. We had it in our GPS but took us to some white warehouse looking building. We turned around and retraced our steps back toward customs and quickly realized we were in line to cross back into the U.S. At the first checkpoint we told them we made a wrong turn and wanted to go to immigration so they let us out of line to turn around. Again, the GPS took us to the warehouse and we parked and looked on our phones. It turned out that this white building was where the Banjercito was.

We went inside and got in line to get our Temporary Import Permit (TIP) but they told us we needed our Visas first so they could know how many days our permit should be. We told them we didn’t know how to get to the Immigration office and they told us it was just next door in the same building. Dumbstruck, we walked next door to Immigration to get our Visas.

This part was easy, just like at the airport. They asked where we were going and where we’d be staying, and for how many days? We got our Visas, paid and walked back over to the Banjercito office.

Banjercito

Also easy and straightforward, we got back in line and filled out the paperwork and paid. They took pictures of our car and told us to cross the border out of Mexico within the 180 days that our permit was for in order to have our deposit refunded back to us.

Fun Fact: Baja California and Quintana Roo are Free Zones where you do not need a TIP while driving.