We left Merida the next morning after breakfast and a little sightseeing. We had pretty fully recovered from our adventure in Valladolid the day before and Jana and I were looking forward to continuing on to Carmen. I had the movers arranged to come early the next day and I looking forward to continuing our travels without any more time restrictions or SLB related stress.
It was stepping out of the Cathedral in Merida that I received an email that suddenly changed all my plans. I had a job offer! I had taken the chance and flown up to Houston from Playa del Carmen the week before to interview on the off chance it might lead to something. Turns out I was exactly what they were looking for. I still had some negotiations to do, but an offer in hand less than a month after being laid off was a serious miracle given the times. They later told me they received around 750 applications for the position.
Job offer or no, we still had to head to Carmen and pack up my house. We said goodbye to Hugo and headed out, two American girls driving 385km to Ciudad del Carmen. We expected it to take about 4 1/2 hours with a stop or two. Instead we got stopped by the Campeche police at every damn road block on the way and the trip in it’s entirety took us almost 20 hours.
At the first road block, they made us present our passports and visas along with the car registration info. My registration was terribly out of date and so I paid the ‘fee’ of 500MX ($35US at the time) that went directly into the pocket of the state policeman. On to the next stop. Once again, we had to present our passport and visas. At the previous stop I had just shown my FM3, as it’s my official Mexican state ID and proves I’m in the country legally. My passport doesn’t have a visa in it. This time I had to get out my passport even after explaining that my work visa was fine. I was already annoyed and so when they started telling me I had to pay a fee again, I got upset and yelled at them that I already paid a fee and they were only pulling us over because we were white. At that, they got defensive and finally let us go without an fees and a reassurance that they do not profile drivers.
