Came across this on RV'ing in Mexico. Not my post but they asked to share and the issue may be relevant if you have a bigg rig going North.
We made the trip from San Carlos Sonora Mexico to Green Valley AZ USA today in 8.5 hours, with a half hour for lunch, departing at 7am from Totonaka RV resort.
Some notes:
1. With a lot less traffic than before Xmas, the trip was not particularly stressful, in spite of construction. We don’t travel fast, just “steady as she goes.” The trip north was a lot less stressful than the trip south just 5 weeks earlier.
2. To risk sounding like a broken record, do NOT travel this road at night. There is so much construction activity that cannot be signed or lit, with huge risk.
3. We were not inspected at the vehicle check point south of Benjamin Hill. Good, that saved a half hour.
4. Our lunch stop was the parking area at the Pemex just north of Magdelena del Kino. Lots of space to pull off the road.
5. The US border crossing was a problem. What we believe is the intended way to cross the border (and has been in the past) is as follows:
a. After the last toll gate on the truck route at Nogales (several kilometers before the border, get in the RV and auto lane, the furthest most left.) On the right, there is a Fast Lane for trucks, and a truck lane, both behind concrete barriers. The RV lane has only a double yellow marker lane on your immediate left, separating you from south bound traffic.
b. At the bottom of a long hill, right at the US border, we thought we should move right (and have in the past few years) and get in the “Bus” lane, since the lanes for autos are not wide enough to accommodate most RVs including coaches, 5th wheels and some Class A’s towing.
This has worked well for us in the past. HOWEVER.... today on the US side, concrete barriers have been erected (recently we think since they weren’t there last year) to separate the Bus lane from the auto lanes. NOT ENOUGH ROOM for rigs of any size has been provided to make the transition from the RV lane on the Mexican side to the BUS lane on the US side. We scraped our truck bumper and fender on the right wall of BUS lane, nearly tore out the last 10 feet of our 5th wheel on the barrier and mounted the curbs with both truck and trailer (miraculously without damage to tires or rims that we know of) in order to execute the transition to the BUS lane. We reported the problem to our customs agent who was going to report the issue to management. The problem isn’t on the Mexican side; it’s on the US side.
So far as I understand, solutions may lie in two areas:
1. The Auto lanes may have been widened and height clearances raised to allow coaches, 5th wheels and so on to access the Auto lanes. This should mean we should no longer need to access the BUS lane to enter the US. I don’t believe this has happened, but would be happy to be wrong.
2. One or two concrete barrier sections on the US side must be removed to allow transition from the Mexican RV lane to the US BUS lane. A sign saying “BUSes and RV to the right” (of the barrier) would facilitate an easy timely transition.
3. A third but extremely unpalatable solution is that RVs use the truck lanes, specifically the “Fast Lane” to cross the border. (Often far too much truck traffic to facilitate a crossing in anything less than a few hours.)
I think we may have been some of the early travelers heading back north so we may have accidentally pioneered this newly barriered BUS lane. There are many rigs south who will remember their experience from last year, which will place them in the same pickle as we encountered today, i.e., trying to transition from the Mexican RV lane to the US Bus lane, immediately at the pint of entry into the US.
If you know what we did wrong, please get the info out on the RVing sites ASAP to reduce the stress travelers crossing at Nogales might experience.
Our 5 weeks in Mexico was a such a good experience, with only this one small but baffling and frustrating encounter trying to return to the US. If anyone knows where we went wrong let’s share the right answer ASAP.
