One Point for Mexico!

Buen dia. I cannot tell you how glad we are to be back in Alamos. We have decided that Hermosillo is off our to do list, tomorrow, next year, the year after. Of course, one has to drive through it to get to the states. We will put the truck in drive and close our eyes.



Below is the much dreaded Immigation building there. We arrived at 8 sharp, when the doors are supposed to open and there were already 4 people ahead of us. Below, the felow, on the right sitting down, has been told he has to fill out an application online. His Mexican girlfriend stormed out of the building and drove off. We have no idea what that was about. The man at the counter, in the picture below, left as well.



Okay by us, we were that much closer to standing at the counter ourselves.

Once we did get to the counter, we thought things were going well. There is another new form to fill out there and the attendant does it online.



There are alot of questions on this new form. They include your height and weight and where you work and the number of children you have.



Then, place of birth, place of residency (OMG WE HAVE ALREADY GIVEN ALL THAT TO THEM). I could see we were actually going to get our cards, so I made no complaints.



Fingerprints, signatures here, signatures there, they do not make it easy.



There are some errors on Senor's form, but we did not catch it until after the attendant had clicked the save button. One line states that he moved to Mexico from Minnesota, which is not the case. When it came to my form, it was printed that I moved to Mexico from Germany. I started my ranting about then and spent several minutes explaining I was only born in Germany and never lived there. This appeared to be very confusing to all 3 people who by now were helping us. The 3 included Nurse Ratchet whom we had hoped would be on sick day. Finally I got them to get Germany off the form and Washington State on. But I do not think they like to change anything once they have typed it in.

This application was attached to the old FM3, put in a big stack of other papers and we did not see it again.


I am going to try not to go into any more details over this. But after 2 hours we left with our new cards. Parting words from immigration were that we must show this card upon leaving and re entering Mexico. We waved and smiled and left the building.



Below is the link to the new online application should you need it and front and back photos of the new little card. Under the juicy fruit wrapper is a photo of Senor and then, dates of birth and card numbers and signatures hidden under the other areas.




http://setram.inami.gob.mx:8080/solicitudes-web/estancia.html



We drove straight to the hotel and crashed.

Later, after watching the delayed broadcast of the 3 World Cup games of the day, we made a quick jaunt to the Plaza and the church. I think we were each secretly looking for something to rekindle our feelings about Hermosillo, looking for something that would make us want to come back again.

We were surprised to find the church locked up, that never happens to any of the churches we visit in Sonora. The Plaza was as non descript as we remembered it, no water fountains flowing, hot and dusty sidewalks, very few vendors, old women begging for pesos. So, a few more reasons to not go back.

Only the church and a beautiful iron gazebo were worthy of a photograph.

We spent another day watching World Cup Soccer, which is the only reason we decided to turn this trip into a 4 day, 3 night stay. The 3rd night we drove to San Carlos. Eager to watch more soccer, we had the television on for the early Sunday game at 4:30am, only to find that the sports stations being broadcast in that area were more interested in rollerblade boxing, car racing, tennis, baseball and the americas cup. We packed up and left.

At the Wal Mart in Obregon, we watched Germany play Australia. Senor wanted to go to the camping section and get 2 chairs, but I convinced him that might look wierd.



I would say the highlight of this trip was eating in the taco stand below, on Saturday in Hermosillo. The 2 brothers are watching a re run of the Mexico SudAfrica game. Their faces and their creative game sign tell the rest of the story.

One point for Mexico!