The Ultimate Overland

  Like a dog with a bone, Chris has his eyes on seeing Sophie and Amelia in New Orleans so we agree to push on early. Barbara is also returning to the team. Unfortunately early morning torrential rain and lightning made departure challenging to say the least. Instead we settled in for an excellent breakfast curtesy of the Hotel general manager, a Brit, who loved the cars. He also kindly slipped Hobnobs, digestives, marmalade and other critical comfort foods from home into Chris’ car before we left. As I have said before and will say again, the kindness of strangers.   We left as the rain abated, Lagonda roofs up, Chris dressed head to toe in waterproofs. In the event we started right at the tail end of the rain and didn’t really get hit by it for the rest of the day. The worst that happened was Ham got soaked by a car coming alongside to take pictures and going through a large puddle, most of which seemed to hit him.   We had a choice of either t...

  We have decided to push on through this part of Texas. The roads are good and there are acres and acres of long grained rice growing in the fields, oil and gas offshore and not a lot else. Corpus Christie to Galveston for the all important celebration of Nigel’s 60’th birthday.   We left the Best Western Hotel on the marina at Corpus Christie after probably the worst breakfast we have had on the entire trip. Breakfast sustains you through the long morning drive and when you are faced with a buffet of inedible options it saps morale somewhat. We left Galveston dribving past the USS Lexington, now a museaum. Lexington was one of the World War two carriers which was missed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbour and now sits in Galveston as a floating museum. Although at the time she was a mighty ship of war, compared to modertn US carriers she looks very modest.   We made good progress to Huston and then things got very busy indeed. The traffic on the H...

  We departed from San Fernando after Nigel had done some essential fettling and headed for the US border at Matamoros. We wanted to get through the border town and into Texas as quickly as possible, however as the saying goes “the best laid plans of mice and men”.   It was 145km to the border and took about two hours, we also went through a time zone losing another hour so we arrived in Matamoros at 10:00am. The signs on the Mexican side were absolutely hopeless and Nigel went to the cargo crossing whilst Chris and ham went to the tourist crossing. There were no queues for Nigel and he went quickly through Mexican migration, sadly by the time he got to the stage of surrendering his Temporary Import Permit there was a power cut and everything ground to a halt. Chris and Ham on the other hand got into a 45 minute traffic jam, where there was absolutely no Mexican migration and no ability to surrender the TIP. As they entered the queue the heavens opened an...

  We were up and off early today with a plan to get close to San Fernando, the last discernible town before the border at Matamoros. The plan was to make an early break for the border tomorrow morning . The alternative is to cross at Reynosa but that it is the murder capital of the world, and best avoided me thinks. The quicker we are in to the border crossing and out the better.       We drove from Poza Rica to Tampico on good roads. Chris and Ham had lost Nigel and stopped for coffee as they were exiting Tampico,. Up popped Nigel! Ham has been experiencing ignition problems that are traced to the main ignition switch and as they passed through Tampico there in-front of their very eyes was the auto part store to die for! Halford’s on steroids. They stoked up with all the necessary electrical components to fix the ignition switch issue if it gets any worse.       The afternoon we stuck together. The north of Mexico is bandit ...