A Carthago in Mexico
Our customers Hartmut and Marion were on the road in Mexico with their chic c-line and wrote a great travel report.
Of course, we don't want to deprive you of this one.
Experience a piece of Mexico by motorhome!
Starting with the ship transport from Hamburg to Halifax (Canada) via Canada, Alaska, the American Midwest and the Californian coast, we crossed the Mexican border in Tecate on November 3, 2022 after 4 months of travel and 25,000 km of driving.
Although the driving route was not always a pure pleasure, our chic c-line, which has 117,000 km on the clock after 5 years, survived the journey without damage.
For us personally, travelling in our motorhome is very pleasant, because since we no longer work, we also live in our rolling home in Europe 300 days a year. We exclusively use our own shower, toilet and sleep in our own bed. We also cook elaborate meals almost every day because we like to eat well.
Moreover, with our current solar and battery equipment (400 wp solar/400Ah lithium), we don't even need electricity from outside for our travel behaviour and energy consumption.
Mexico is now the 26th country we have visited with our Carthago. Our stay was limited to the peninsula of Baja California, which is the preferred wintering area of Canadians and Americans (the so-called "snowbirds") who, just like us, want to escape the winter. Baja California is a narrow peninsula in western Mexico, 1200 kilometres long and 80 to 220 kilometres wide.
The border crossing from the USA to Mexico at the small Tecate crossing was surprisingly relaxed. A casual, friendly check of the vehicle's interior and the normal passport formalities, which ended with a 180-day visa for a fee. Getting a prepaid SIM card and withdrawing the first pesos from an ATM was just as easy. We also met our first, very friendly Mexicans in the process. Our first overnight stop was at a large Mexican winery that also offers a free overnight campsite for motorhomes. After a very professionally conducted wine tasting, we spent our first night in Mexico among vines and palm trees.
There are not many trunk roads on the peninsula, which is why you really only stay on the M1 in the north-south direction. The condition of the lanes is usually good, but they are very narrow, which is why the two-lane roads also have to be shared with large trucks. You have to drive carefully on the far right, because the edge of the road is not always well paved. If the road or a bridge needs to be repaired, it doesn't take long: There is then a parallel sand track that is more or less compacted over many kilometres. At the beginning, this takes a lot of getting used to, but here, too, we had no problems despite front-wheel drive and semi-automatic.
Although we were well prepared, we did not expect Baja California to be so hilly or mountainous: Whenever the road changes from the Pacific coast in the west to the east coast to the Californian Gulf (or vice versa), the Sierra de California has to be crossed. On the way south, we overcame this several times. In between, there are desert landscapes with huge areas of cacti that look exactly like you would imagine Mexico to look like. The weather was uninterruptedly fantastic, we had around 25 °C every day with a light breeze and sunshine.
The shopping facilities are sufficient for our purposes: we get everything we need. We have mostly spent the night on designated RV (as motorhomes and caravans are called) sites, which cost between €5 and €20. As soon as it is warmer again in the southern states of the USA, we will leave our winter quarters in Mexico and slowly drive along the south and east coast of the United States towards Canada.
If you'd like to find out even more about our year in a motorhome in North America, you're welcome to visit our site at www.herr-geheimrat.de.