When people hear what our current living situation is we basically get one of three reactions; âMan, I wish I would have done that when I was younger,â âGood luck with that,â or âMan you guys are living the dream, I wish I could drop everything in my life and travel too.â
I was, and still am, completely clueless about most of this stuff – but I write this from my bed, which happens to be parked a la playa in Mexico. So, thereâs that. We made it! Hereâs how we did it – and how we didnât do it, but definitely should have.
If youâre going to be in Mexico you have to have a tourist card. For this, youâll have to fill out an online form (here) and give your passport information, dates youâll be there, where youâre going and pay a fee of about $24. Iâve heard of it not being checked at the border, but ours were. Thatâs where we ran into issue #1: we didnât have all the forms we needed. When you complete the FMM application online, youâll submit it and then it will take you to another website where you pay your fee. Make sure you do it all at the same time, because as far as I can tell you canât access your application again and will have to resubmit a new one. Happened to me. Once you complete the application youâll get an email with a link to your tourist card, which you wonât be able to access until you pay. We didnât realize that, and had unknowingly just printed the receipts from our payment. Luckily, we were allowed to fill the form out by hand and our online fee was accepted that way⊠but not without a little bit of confusion and trouble. Make sure to click the email link and print your tourist card to bring to the border with you!
I honestly researched this so much, and still didnât get it right on the first try. I donât think that itâs because I necessarily did anything wrong, but that itâs not exactly standard across the board. AKA – depending on who is giving you the permit, they may want different documents than what we needed. Also, keep in mind you wonât need a vehicle permit if youâre only going to Baja, and youâll need something different if youâre only going to Sonora. The first thing I would do is gather ORIGINAL VERSIONS of everything listed below, and make 2 copies of each of them:
We were able to get our permit ahead of time in Austin, which saved us a lot of trouble because if we had tried to do it at the Banjercito (over the border) we wouldnât have had everything we needed and probably would have been sent back to Texas. It is important to note that if you do make an appointment with a Mexican Consulate in the states there is a link in the email youâll receive to a form youâll need to print and bring with you to the appointment. Forms on forms on forms!!!
For us, they took a copy of my passport, driverâs license, registration, and the pre-auth form. Didnât check if I had a tourist card or insurance, but who knows if someone else might find those things to be more important.
You CAN also do this online 10-60 days before you plan to enter Mexico, but youâll have to have it mailed to you, which as we all know, if youâre living in a van gets complicated.
The permit costs around $52, but youâll also have to put a deposit down on a credit card, which youâll get back when you cancel your vehicle permit at the Banjercito upon exiting the country.
This is something we actually did good with! We waited until we were in Texas to get our dog papers figured out. We just looked up a USDA Certified Veterinarian, and for around $150 they will check your pup out and give you all the paperwork you need. Not that anyone will check it, but again better safe than sorry.
Don’t plan to be able to drive at night. At all. Not only are the roads absolutely terrifying on their own, but the trucks are absolute maniacs. Passing is a death wish, but necessary at times. I would just avoid it completely if possible.
Add about 2-3 hours to any GPS estimation of how long it will take you to get somewhere. We definitely did not realize this and what we *thought* was a 13 hour drive turned into a 2 day fiasco. Don’t try to rush things if you’re driving through Mexico. Keep stress levels low by planning to take your time and make a few days of 4-5 hour drives if at all possible. Our biggest regret is trying to make long ass miserable drives across the country.
If you’re going to take toll roads, make sure you have Pesos, and lots of them. In short, the toll roads are expensive AF. I’m talking 300-400 Pesos for some of them, and you pay all. the. time. Some of them take cards, but most don’t. Also, some of them are taken over by locals and you definitely don’t want those guys after you. The toll roads were honestly more stressful for us than taking the free roads, just because we never knew when a toll would pop up, how much it would be, if we would have enough money or if we would have to beg someone to exchange dollars for us. On that note…
We had a lot more fun and enjoyable time staying on the free roads (for the most part). We were able to see really cool towns and had a lot more viable options for passing a night. That being said, we also were stuck on extremely questionable roads (Proof Here) that I would never ever recommend to anyone in a Sprinter or RV. So, be wary. Check your route beforehand and if it looks like it’s taking you into the literal middle of nowhere – chances are it probably is.
We would recommend having some sort of back up light for if you get stuck driving at night. The speed bumps, pot holes, and stray animals are really hard to see with your regular headlights. Having something like an LED bar would have been a huge help for when we were forced to drive at night.
Get your GPS going on more than one device, if possible. There were times when one of our phones would randomly drop navigation and we would have been totally screwed if we didn’t have both our phones GPS going because the service is extremely spotty during the long drives cross-country.
No matter how safe an area you think you’re in, don’t leave anything you want to keep outside of your van. We left our surfboards strategically hidden and shoved under our van one night while in a very nice neighborhood and still had it stolen. We got it back, so it’s all good, but don’t leave your stuff out people!
Talk to people, wave at people, say Hola! We noticed that a lot of people would stare at us when we drove by. For a while we thought they had angry faces, but turns out a lot of Mexicans just kind of have RBF (like me). We started waving at people and they all always waved back and got super stoked! We met so many super nice people just being parked somewhere. Way more than you could ever hope to meet here in America. Don’t be scared to say hi! In general, we found that Mexicans were very very friendly!
ENJOY! RELAX! Please, don’t rush Mexico. One thing I wish we had in Mexico was more TIME. If we didn’t have to force long drives, wait in places for car repairs, etc. we would have had so much more fun. If we could do it again, I would go into Mexico with no hard end date and just take our sweet, sweet time exploring.
I would love to keep this blog post ever-evolving. If you have any questions about an upcoming trip into Mexico we would absolutely love to help! Shoot us a comment and I’ll do my best to answer!
The middle of the Forest. Birds singing, the smell of earth, crisp fall air, the faint sound of water gushing through a creek in the distance. Not another human soul for miles. Exactly where Iâd dreamt of being for the past 3 months. I should be ecstatic but instead I feel… disheveled, stressed, definitely not carefree and adventurous as Iâd imagined I would be. I got sick, basically the day I lost the health insurance through my work. Our renters were giving us problems we werenât anticipating. Driving the van on curving mountain roads was more nerve-racking than I thought it would be. My thoughts were constantly racing… Is this not all that itâs cracked up to be? Should we have just sold the house instead of dealing with tenants? How am I going to pay to see a doctor?
What an absolute whirlwind August has been. If you donât follow us on Instagram or YouTube it might come as a surprise that we are currently fully living out of the van. Yeah, that escalated quickly. Allow me to try to wrap up this insane month for you in as short of a time as possible.
At the beginning of August we were starting to get a little concerned about getting the house rented in time. I had already given my notice to work that I would be leaving the last day of the month, and getting the house occupied was the only thing keeping us from experiencing, as my dad said, âfailure to launch.â After debating for a few weeks we finally decided to allow the rental company to put the house up for a year lease instead of the 9 months we had originally planned. That meant we were fully committing to 1 year in the van. THE NEXT DAY, I got a call that the house was rented. We were completely blown away, grateful, jumping for joy, ecstatic. Also, pretty much panicked to get the van and house ready in time. In short: Shit just got real.
There’s something that has been weighing on my heart for a while now. It’s something news outlets and social media don’t really want you to believe. It’s something that as we continue to progress on the van and share more of our lives to the public we are starting to see a lot more of. It’s something I hoped was true, but never really witnessed enough of to truly believe.
Last night was such a great night. I got home from work, and even though I was dealing with the remnants of a migraine I got a really good workout in. Then, my good pal Tim messaged me and said the waves were on so I grabbed my longboard which I haven’t ridden in probably 2 months and got some super fun clean waves on it. It felt so good to be back on that thing. Then I met Zach for sushi, and got to ride behind the van on the way home and see it in action.
I was sitting there taking a picture of the back of it because looking at it made me feel so good. Like I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. Like my dream of traveling this country was finally coming true. Then a car pulled up to me, windows all down, with a couple just absolutely screaming at each other. Horrible stuff. Stuff I wouldn’t say to my least favorite human in the world. It hit me like a brick. Not everyone is having such an amazing experience in their life. I felt really lucky to have the opportunity that lies ahead of me, but also really really sad.
As I sit on this airplane making my way home from Prague, I canât help but smile. Itâs a long way from the anxiety, stress, and sadness I felt a few months ago on the flight home from Paris. Itâs a long way from the trepidation I felt as I left home just a week ago for this trip.
I was scared to leave again. I didnât want to spend my entire trip wishing I was somewhere else. Wishing the opportunity away. I sat on the couch when I should have already been in the car, wishing that some circumstance or another could keep me home where I feel safe and happy and loved. Unfortunately for me at the time, there was no family emergency I needed to stay home for, no inclement weather keeping the plane from taking off, and no illness that would keep me bedridden until the event was over. I had to go.
A voice in the back of my head was telling me to trust. Trust that things would be better this time. A small voice, but a voice nonetheless. I listened. I went. It was so good.
If you’re reading this, that means we reached 100 subscribers on our You Tube Channel and our link isn’t 50 letters long and hideous anymore! Woo! We wanted to sincerely thank each and every one of you for following along with and supporting us as we push for our dream to become a reality.
Plumbing, ya’ll. Plumbing was a little scary. Luckily, before Zach had to go full-fledged plumber in the van he was able to get a little bit of experience by working with my dad to put in the outdoor shower at the house. To be honest, though, he still had to figure a lot of it out by just getting his hands dirty. I wanted to go into depth about everything we did with our plumbing system since we are now celebrating the fact that we have a working shower!
Do you ever feel like your life is just a whirlwind of events and you’re stuck trying to catch up all the time? Same. Especially lately between the van build, trying to get the house ready to be rented for the winter, working full time, traveling overseas for another job, all the while trying to find time to workout, eat well and enjoy summer a little bit. Woah, writing it out actually makes it seem even more overwhelming.