We are in Mexico!
17 November 2010 | Ensenada Mexico
Ellen
So we made it to Mexico! A dream has been realized after 15 + years of planning and saving. We left San Diego at 3am on November 16 at 1:30 am in the fog. We left in the middle of the night so that we would arrive in Ensenada during daylight hours. We motored in fog all through the night which cleared up during the day. There was no wind so we motored all the way 65 miles. We arrive in Ensenada at 3pm which was too late to go to clear customs but we were told at the marina that we had 48 hours to clear in so we were free to roam around town.
With us on board were our good friends Pat and Les from Rossland, BC. We enjoyed a yummy seafood dinner and then were back at the boat and asleep before (get this) 8pm. We had not had much sleep the night before during our passage as we were all too excited to be heading south to Mexico.
This morning we were up early and did a few chores like dropping off our laundry and such and then headed to immigration to do all of our paperwork. Roger at Bahi Naval, our marina was extreamly helpful and before we went to immigration, he helped us with organizing and copying our documents as well as talking us through the procedure. When we got there, there was no line up and it took us about 2 hours to do it all. It's all in one building and you just go from one desk to the next and it all gets done Mexican style. So now we are legal and our boat has it's TIP (temporary Import Permit) which is good for 10 years. This allows us to bring parts in duty free for the boat should we need to.
We still need to do the HAM radio license thing but can't do that here. Also we want to apply for a FM3 which is a visa which we can stay in Mexico for more than the 180 days which we have at the moment.
After that we did our provisioning for the next week or so and now we are just hanging out at the dock until tomorrow morning when we will untie the lines and head even further south. Destination unknown. We are just going to see how the winds are, how we feel and decide if we want to stop somewhere or keep going. No hurry! No Rush! Manana Kasasa. We get there when we get there!