DRIVING OUR VAN TO MEXICO (we made a mistake)

We have been stopped for an inspection.

They didn't even check our passports. I cannot believe we did this.

Today was just going way too well. It might be the best taco I've ever had.

Without a doubt the most beautiful place we have ever slept in the van.

Walmart. Good morning from our home away from home, the Walmart parking lot. We are about an hour north of the Mexico border and today starts our month long adventure down the Baja peninsula. In a couple hours we are going to be crossing the border into Mexico and we have a couple options. First we could cross in Tecate, which we've heard is the quieter, quicker, less eventful option. Or we could cross in Tijuana, which we've learned is the world's busiest land border with over 50 million people crossing every single year. So this morning we're driving to Tijuana. But first we need to grab some cash.

Got it.

Print out the Mexican car insurance that I bought last night. Got it. Fill up with diesel. This is going to be painful. When we bought this van in early 2020, I paid $40 to fill the tank up and it wasn't even completely empty this time. But if this is our small way of supporting Ukraine, I'm more than happy to do it. And now we have about an hour drive to the border.

In typical Karen Nate fashion, we are crossing the border today and don't know where we're sleeping. Guadalupe is about an hour south from the border and it's actually Mexico's wine region. We're part of this service called Harvest Host that lets you sleep at wineries for free to call and see if they have availability first. So let's hope that they do.

Hi, how can I help you?

Good morning. We were wondering if you had availability for us to park there tonight.

Great, thank you so much. You too.

Bye.

Woohoo.

Off to a good start.

We have smartest life in Mexico. Oh, I'm so excited. So far today has gone so smoothly. I know I'm jinxing us here, but.

Here we go. Yeah.

Go drive this van down to Mexico. Oh my gosh, there it is.

We have been stopped for an inspection.

No, you don't speak Spanish. No, no, don't worry, I speak English. Ah, perfecto. Trash can see. Nice. It's all.

Hey, you're all set to go. Lucias gracias. That was super easy. I think we're on our way.

The whole process was less than five minutes. If you wanna.

Are we here? I don't know what just happened. I don't think that was the world's busiest land border.

Are we in Mexico right now?

They didn't even check our passports. I am so confused. The biggest problem now is that we were supposed to get some tourist visas. We came across the border, and we obviously missed wherever they're handing those out.

We've been to Mexico several times, and we've never bought a tour tourist visa because we've always flown in. But apparently, if you're crossing the land border, you need this thing called an fmm and you can get in trouble if you don't have it. We didn't see anywhere to get it at the border, and now we're just here.

We're just driving in circles in Tijuana.

This says you must get your FMM stamped at the border. Yes.

Well, we already didn't do that.

Today was just going way too well.

All right. Heading back to the U.S. oh, this is where the line is. I cannot believe we did this.

I'm scared to even see how long this line is.

According to Google, it's an hour.

Are you serious? Yeah.

We were so close to tacos. According to the research that we did online, they used to issue the FMM cards at immigration offices, like, anywhere in Mexico. However, they've stopped doing that now, and the only place to get it is the border. So we are now in line to cross back into the US and then we'll cross back into Mexico, and we'll make sure we get our tourist card this time. Everything at the border happened so quickly, and it was so unexpected that before we knew it, we were in Mexico and we didn't have the car.

To be fair, we came to this border crossing specifically because we thought it would be an adventure. This is just not a weird picture.

As Kara said before, today wasn't going away too well. Also, it's pretty amazing all the things that are being sold to the cars waiting in line. I see army men with parachutes, ice cream churros, piggy banks, fried plantains. Oh, you can get a coconut statue of Jesus. Oh, gracias. I think I have too friendly of a face. I smile when I'm uncomfortable. And so all the people that come by wanting to sell us stuff, I'm smiling at them. And then they tend to hang out by our car a lot longer than other people's car. I just feel bad, like, not making eye contact and being nice. But it will get better. We just haven't traveled internationally much lately.

Our hearts will harden with time.

Well, this felt more like the world's busiest land border. An hour later, we are almost there.

Real quick, we want to say a big thank you to Better Help for sponsoring this video. BetterHelp is the world's largest therapy service. It's 100 online and available worldwide from the comfort of your own home. So the way it works is first you answer a few questions about yourself, and then Better Help will match you with one of their 20,000 licensed professional therapists who you can start communicating with within 48 hours. Then you can message them anytime from anywhere. Plus, you'll have scheduled weekly calls and video chats. All the therapists at Better Help have a doctorate degree or master's degree in their field. But if for some reason it's not working out, BetterHelp makes it easy and free to change therapists if need. Therapy is such an awesome tool that I love talking about and I love promoting and normalizing because it can change your life. That's exciting. So if you're ready to join over 2 million people taking charge of their mental health, you can get 10% off your first month at Better Help. If you go to our link in the description below, which is betterhelp.com K&N. That's better.

H, E L, P. He is attracted to our van.

The dog is now making a second circle around our van. Is he coming back around again?

Yeah, they're done.

I got my heart racing.

I can't imagine the stress.

Being a border person. No.

Of being a smuggler. Like, can you imagine sitting here knowing that you have something illegal in your car?

I would never get away with it. I'm nervous, and I'm like, 100,000% certain that we're not doing anything wrong.

Hey, how's it going? Good, thank you. What were you guys doing in Mexico? We've literally been there for 30 minutes. We forgot to get our tourist Visa card on the way in, so we're about to go back to Mexico. Do you know anything about that? No. They gave you a hard time about it or something? They haven't yet, but, like, just everything we read said, like, at the military checkpoints and stuff, you needed to have it.

Really?

Yeah. I think I know what you're talking about. I've seen it. Okay. They're so hit or miss whether they enforce anything, so we'll get it figured out. Yeah. All right. Good luck. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right, we're officially back in the U.S. that was the world's shortest trip to Mexico.

Okay, round two.

Nobody else is getting stopped. And I bet we get stuffed here. Okay, We're Going to get searched for a second time.

Hola. We're back.

Hola. Hablas ingles?

Oh.

This is fmm.

Can you see the bus?

The bus over there.

Okay, gracias. We just missed the parking lot the first time.

What makes you think this is the border?

So after the inspection area, take a hard right to the parking lot.

You're welcome. Yeah, there's no signs or anything that.

Tell you to come over here.

All right. Okay. So far, so good. Wish us luck.

Well, once you find the place, it's a super easy process.

We're official.

So it turns out this is the exact same form that you fill out when you come in on an airplane. But apparently the cost is included in your airline ticket when you fly to Mexico. It all makes more sense now. Now we eat tacos. Did you pour water all over yourself?

Ah, feels even better the second time. We were so confused the first time we were here. I just remember driving on this road being like, wait, where's the passport stand? So a girl who used to live in Tijuana emailed us and told us about the best tacos in the whole city. She said they're from a taco store stand that doesn't exist on Google Maps, but she sent us the GPS coordinates and she promised it would be there. So let the Mexican food adventure begin. I'm so excited. Whoa.

Look at this guy.

Wow.

There it is.

All right. This is just blind faith in a stranger on the Internet. Hola.

Wow.

Ah, muchas gracias.

I have no idea what we've ordered. This van is very nice and it looks so good. Look at all that fresh cilantro.

It might be the best taco I've ever had. He fried these corn tortillas with, like, the spicy oil. I think we need to order more.

Wow. Round two.

I can't believe this is our life right now. We just drove our van into Mexico and we're already eating tacos on the street. I'm so happy.

So according to the sign, which I did not see until after we were finished eating, there were only two things on the menu. Head tacos, cabeza, and tongue tacos. And I know we didn't have tongue, so I'm pretty sure we just ate four head tacos for $5.

And they were absolutely incredible.

It's been a very long time since we've had meat, so I didn't even notice.

From here, we have a two hour drive to the vineyard.

Adio.

Look at those barrel houses.

Those are crazy.

So we turned off the coastal Road and started going inland, went over this mountain, and now we're just in this valley with vineyards everywhere. If you dropped me right here and asked me where I was, I would not say Mexico. Kind of feel like I'm in Europe. Like a mountainous Eastern European place. Wow. Lined with olive trees.

This is not what I expected at all, but it is so beautiful.

All right. Home sweet home. Could not ask for a more beautiful place to camp for our first night in Mexico.

So the winery ended up being a little bit less of an experience than we anticipated because the tasting room was closed by the time we got here. But we got a bottle. A little bit less than $20 for one of their fancier wines. Looks nice.

Oh.

What?

I didn't hook up the propane.

What?

I forgot I moved the propane tank. I was scared.

You mean I have to reconnect the propane before I can cook popcorn? Before I can drink wine?

You know what? I'm just not even gonna hook this up right now. I'm gonna consider it done until it's time to cook.

Wine, popcorn.

Ow.

Not a bad way to enjoy our first sunset in Mexico. Or really properly break in our roof rack for the first time.

I never thought I'd be in the middle of Mexico, hearing birds chirping, surrounded by palm trees, mountains, and vineyards all in one place.

You better not spill wine on my new roof. Cheers.

Cheers.

To making it to Mexico.

We're actually doing it.

It was pretty good. This is amazing.

This is amazing.

I love my life.

I really just can't get over this right now. We just drove our home to Mexico. This is just such a crazy experience for us. Like, we've been traveling for. Oh, my gosh. Has it been seven years? We've had a lot of experiences. We've been exposed to a lot. But this specifically, we're getting to do all the things we love about travel. We're in a foreign place with a foreign language, with a different culture, different food, different experiences, but we have our home with us.

I said this in Morocco when I was with Eamon and Beck, and I'm having those same feelings all over again. It's two worlds that I'm intimately familiar with separately, Van life and international travel. But, like, combined together, it's this completely new foreign feeling experience.

I'd read a lot of emails and messages that we had been receiving when we said that we were driving over the border, people telling us that it's unsafe and to be super careful and this and that, and I'm a little embarrassed to Admit that some of them kind of got to me. And I was getting a little nervous this morning, the closer we got to the border. But you saw our day.

Also, just to make today even better, we just learned that our first nephew was born.

We're the first nephew on the Buchanan side of the family. Was born. Not our first nephew.

Y' all know Kayla and Barrett. They just had their third child.

Sorry to get you down off your soapbox. No, I totally agree. There were a lot of people who tried to talk us out of this trip.

Just think of it this way. Maybe it's just me, but when I make a purchase on Amazon, I read all of the reviews and say, 8 out of 10 times, I read enough bad ones that I talk myself out of buying whatever I need. There's always gonna be people.

How many incredible products you've missed out on Amazon because you read the bad reviews.

If we would have let those messages, like, truly get to us, and we would have canceled this trip, we wouldn't have this experience. I'm just really grateful. I love it here.

This wine is really growing on me.

I think it's amazing. Yeah. Drive this van down to Mexico. We've been singing that song for months, and we're finally here.

It's pitch black, and we had no idea it was about to start raining. Now we are frantically throwing everything off the roof and getting inside and hoping that all of the holes that have been freshly drilled don't leak into our van.

Good morning. It is officially our first full day here in Mexico. We have now been here for almost 24 hours, and our surfboards have yet to touch the water. So today's goal is to change that.

Wow.

These are beautiful. But first, we have to pick up some food, because the popcorn you saw us eating last night was our dinner. We just stopped on the side of the road at this cute little market, and he has beautiful produce that'll last.

Us the entire trip.

Do you want some bananas?

Which is crazy. Wow. We just bought all that fresh produce for less than $5.

He told us the price in Spanish, and Nate went with the strategy where you just hold out some money and let him take however much it's worth. And. And it worked.

To clarify, I don't just hold out money. I usually just give a bigger bill than what I think is needed to pay for it, and then just see how much change I get back.

Garlic, cilantro.

Oh, my gosh.

Look at all these ones.

15.

Look at these homemade chips. Might eat these for breakfast.

So we're at the big grocery store next door, finishing up our shopping. When I say big, this is pretty much it. We're grabbing stuff for tacos and guacamole. And check this out.

Oh, my gosh. These are homemade tortillas. They're warm for being in this cooler. This is the best day ever.

Guess how much I paid for this giant bag of chips? Homemade tortillas, our new favorite hot sauce. A bunch of cilantro, a whole head of garlic, and 15 limes.

200 pesos.

130. This would be $6 at Whole Foods by itself. I love Mexico. A lot of van lifers have a cute produce hammock. I don't have one of those. I have this small basket, but it will do the trick.

We lasted zero days as vegans in Mexico. We are eventually going to go surfing.

We passed a taco stand that we just could not pass up.

Wow. That's better than yesterday.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

Oh, my gosh. This is the best decision we ever made.

Oh, Mexico. Las Cole.

Mine is coffee with chocolate on the inside.

Wow. Mexico is amazing.

Cheers.

Let's go to the beach.

Let's go to the beach. Beach. Turn right.

I'm blessing this. Can we get.

Just 150? 250. Okay. Thank you so much.

This might be the best campsite we've ever had. It's so beautiful.

Literally. We can pull up right to the edge of the cliff.

Let's do it. Oh, my gosh.

Look at this.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. There's a puppy.

Come here, puppy. Come here, Come here.

This is amazing.

Look at this place. Without a doubt, the most beautiful place we have ever slept in the van. We're just parked up here on a cliff alone overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It's pretty much like being on the Pacific coast highway in California, except we paid $12 to Camp Oceanfront. But I'm not gonna lie. These waves are a little intimidating. Kara and I are very much beginner surfers, and I had read that this was a good spot, but currently, I don't see anyone surfing. There are just like, a million waves out there. How do you pick one? Hopefully we'll be a lot better at this by the end of this trip.

That was easy.

I feel like I'm putting the roof rack on again. It's like the same screws I used.

Okay, wish us luck. Your boy looks so good.

Yeah.

It is so cold. My feet are going to be numb for sure by the time we finished. All right.

Boards are wet. Goal achieved.

First time.

Oh, Got it.

Oh, my goodness. I can't feel my toes.

I can't feel my hands. The cold water was the least of my worries. It was cold and choppy and really hard to paddle out there. But we both stood up. Dave stood up twice.

I think that there was a reason that no one else was out today.

But I'm proud of us for doing it.

Okay, we've heard they have three cold showers at this campground, so yay.

Hey.

I'm not scary like you.

It's even colder than I thought it would be.

Fun fact. This Dr. Bronner soap that we've been using in the van to wash our hair and our bodies is actually, according to the label, supposed to clean vegetables as well. So we're gonna give it a try.

This is true multipurpose. If it cleans our body and vegetables also. I didn't think this would happen, but we currently have the heater cranking, and it feels so good.

A dash in a bowl of water to remove residue from fruit and veggies.

Rinse, clean. Oh, it's a dash. Are you rinsing every one of those?

Yeah. Do you want soapy veggies? They're sitting in soap water van.

Life is all about conserving water, so this is just painful to watch. This is all the water that was used, which is less than half a gallon and totally worth not having the poops.

Agreed.

Kara's in charge of the guacamole. I'm in charge of the margs. And if we time this right, we will be having happy hour right as the sun sets, which we will watch from our bed.

Now it's guacamole time. It's guacamole time. Oh, yeah.

Is this a real song?

No, it's peanut butter jelly time. I haven't made my own original guacamole song yet, but we do have lots of cilantro. Yes, I do. I love cilantro. I can't remember what came.

How about you?

I love that you knew the words and I didn't.

All right, we gotta hurry. We're gonna miss the sunset. Oh, tragic. 10 second rule.

I love Mexico.

Okay, so the margarita recipe that we've been taught is 2 ounces of tequila, 1 ounce of contro, and one lime.

Smells like happy hour.

These are the tiniest limes.

They'll be in mystery on. We got the ice cubes that fell on the ground.

Let me go open the doors.

How good is this?

Well, as you can see, we didn't quite get the guacamole made, but we do have margaritas.

Thank you.

Wow.

Cheers.

Wow. It does not get better than this. Look at that.

This is so awesome.

I've said this a few different times, but our life might have peaked. We are sitting in bed drinking margaritas in Mexico, watching the sunset over the Pacific Ocean. Here's my feet, here's the ocean.

This might have to be, like, our finale trip. We just might need to retire after this because it doesn't get any better.

There it goes. Two successful days in Mexico. Even the National Guard came out here to enjoy the sunset.

The National Guard is taking pics. He just handed him his phone to take his picture on his truck. They were all just humans trying to get the ground.

Any parting words?

I'm just so thankful that we're able to do this. Like, we've been through so much in this dang van. So many ups and downs, and I just feel like we made it, you know?

I love Mexico.

It's guacamole time. It's guacamole time.

We are indeed sleeping with the doors open tonight. Bug net is up. Are you eating guacamole with this thing?

The best guac you've ever had.

It's the best guac I've ever had.