Friday Nov 3, 2023 - Bisbee to Banamachi MX

Walking across the border for lunch in Mexico is easy-peasy, but driving our car to Mexico is something new so it’s time to figure this out. There is a motorcycle ride every year to Banamachi and last year I opted out, but this year Deb signed me up. Three other friends were going to ride down but they all canceled at the last minute. Deb already made the hotel reservation so we figured we would both go down but in the car. But what paperwork do you need?

Deb asked our in-town insurance guy about car insurance and he said go online since there are a few choices, all comparable. Our friend Frank said the same, he uses Sanborne. So sure enough they all give about the same thing for about $60-70. So now we have insurance for the three days we will be down there.

The hotel sent a detailed description of the other two things we needed. The first is a visa for each of us and the second is a permit for the car. So we decided to just drive down to Douglas, walk across the border into Agua Prieta and ask the folks at the visa permit place. Once we got there, it took some searching and asking people that spoke no English, and we discovered that the visa people didn't speak any English either. Thanks to Google translate, we discovered that there is a free 7 day pass that you cannot get in advance and since we were leaving more than 7 days in the future, we would have to return. The Banjercito  rep did speak a little English and explained the car permit. I should mention we did not read the detailed instructions the hotel sent us, duh!

So we returned home, read the directions and returned 2 days before the trip. I had typed up exactly what we were doing and translated it into Spanish (Google Translate again) and drove back to Douglas, walked across the border to the visa place (we now knew which alley it was in) and sure enough, they now spoke English.

So you can get a free 7 day visa or spend $55 for a 180 day visa. We did the free one, one for each of us. Next window over you pay the person who speaks fluent English $2 for copies of the visas, and then the next window is the car permit person. They do not want you to drive cars into Mexico and leave them there. Must be some black market issue. It all kind of makes sense. You can choose a Sonora only permit which is $55 and you pay no deposit, or you can get an all-Mexico permit which is $55 and a $200-$400 deposit ($400 for our 2017 Toyota). You need the visa, car registration, car title and they make copies and hand you back a paper with a receipt which you must hand back in when you return. When you return they come out to the parking lot and take pictures of the car,  number, license plate, VIN number, etc. So very confusing the first time but the next time it will be less confusing.

Now all this is for the part of Mexico we are going to but all of Mexico west of here is in the “free zone” which does not require any of this, just car insurance.

So on Friday we drove across the border at Naco, which is a tiny crossing and the border guys did not want to see passposrts or any papers or check the vehicle. They just asked if we had guns or more than $10K. 

We drove through Naco, Sonora, which we had only walked in before and being a small town we were south of it in about 10 minutes. We drove until we hit Rt 12 and the followed Rt 12 until we hit Rt 89 south which is the scenic road that follows the Sonora River (Rio Sonora).

The roads are narrow with no shoulders to speak of so you have to pay attention. The signage is sparse so you can’t really tell what the speed limit is half the time. People said don’t speed as it's an excuse to get stopped, but we did not see any police all the way down.

What they do have a lot of is speed bumps and the first one just about launched us. They were painted some time in the past but many are invisible and you have to keep an eye out. Every railroad crossing has a speed bump on either side of it instead of a gate, so there is a stop sign at every railroad crossing.

The desert landscape slowly gives way to more and more greenery as we traveled south and soon the road turned twistier and twistier and the small quaint towns began to appear. As we discovered, these towns were all established by the Spanish around 1639 and each one has a town square and a church. When the Mexicans kicked the Spanish out, a lot of the churches were damaged but most have been rebuilt.

This part of Sonora is pretty sparse population wise. Rt 89 hits all the towns along the Rio Sonora but they are pretty small towns and many are organized with the town and town square a couple of blocks from Rt 89.

We arrived in Banamachi mid-afternoon and checked into our hotel, La Posada, and there were a couple of bikes parked out front. The young woman who greeted us on the front steps spoke perfect English and as we found out she was from Agua Prieta, the border town next to Douglas. The place is beautiful and well kept. Classic Mexican adobe architecture with lots of handmade structural features. Our room was upstairs, #7, and it had hand made beds. As it turned out, this place has the nicest open air balcony upstairs so over the weekend a lot of the biker guys came over to our hotel in the evening. The town square is right across the street and was recently redone and the teens hang out there in the evening. A true town square.

The other hotel, Los Arcos, that actually hosts this annual motorcycle event, is only a couple blocks away and an American named Tom and his spouse Lynn are the owners and the movers and shakers in town as far as promoting tourism. These towns are off the beaten path so they try really hard to get tourists here. It seems that Tom and the Americans that own our hotel renovated a four block area and everything is in good repair and freshly painted with nice murals here and there in the streets. The streets are tidy which is a little unusual from the other hotels in Mexico as we passed a lot of towns that are kind of run down.

There were already a dozen bikes or so parked in front of the other hotel and there were another 8-10 still coming in. There seem to be three groups: one from Phoenix, one from Tucson, one from Bisbee and a few folks from Mexico. Mostly BMW’s, no Harleys, a couple of Triumphs and a couple of Hondas.

Both hotels have nice areas to lounge, talk and drink and that was already going on when we got there. The mayor seemed to be everywhere the entire weekend so he was a busy guy. I got a chance to talk with him and learned he is a rancher and a high school math teacher,  but is doing the mayor gig for one term or three years. His father was a mayor and I think he said his grandfather may have been as well.

The rest of the afternoon was spent kicking tires, swapping tales and getting to know each other. Great guys.

We did hear that one of the Bisbee guys went off the road, cracked a few ribs and was being transported back north to Douglas. Went too wide on a turn.

Tonight everyone met for a carne asada buffet with plenty to eat and the party continued into the night. We hit the balcony and swapped yarns the rest of the evening. Lots of new friends.