The weather finally cleared enough for us to attempt the border crossing. But first, there was a tougher challenge to overcome: Eitan´s special registration. Despite previous assurances that this would not be a problem at Laredo (which was the reason we chose this crossing in the first place), combining special registration and small airplanes was a bit more than our brave brother protectors could handle. They said it´s never been done before, and weren´t quite sure how it can be done.
Hours of phone calls later, they were happy to announce that the problem can be creatively solved: First, we should go to the land border crossing, where special registration is normally done, and then another CBP officer can finalize the process at the airport by watching us leave. A no-brainer.

So we borrowed the crew car and drove to the Rio Grande bridge, through downtown Laredo which looked increasingly more like Mexico, complete with the sounds, smells, language, and most noticeably, the traffic. Finally, we found the right tired old building, and using the secret pass code "I spoke to Agent Reinas", Eitan was able to skip the long standing lines, and go straight to the special room. At least special in the sense that all the other guests were adorned by handcuffs. Very exciting.
Some questioning later, and we were good to go. We rushed back to the airport, two hours late now, only to wait—this time for a stamp. Finally the stamp arrived and was ceremoniously applied to the passport, allowing us to depart—feels like Mexico already! Little did we know that this was just the tip of the stamp-ede.

So only three hours late, at 3pm we took off and headed south. We were on an instrument flight plan, which meant that we were always under radar control and talking to a controller.  We were approaching the Mexican border, when all of a sudden—nothing happened! Except for a change in controllers accent, absolutely no changes occurred: no F-16s shot us down, no flurries of hurried warnings came over the radio, no change in scenery—not even a wavering of the airplane (except for the annoying turbulence). This is what it looked like:



After more than four hours of flying and an exciting instrument approach, we landed in Tampico, an industrial city by the Atlantic ocean (click here to see satellite image). We were promptly greeted by a serious-looking entourage of public health officials that were there to ensure we didn´t try to smuggle in any foul-tasting Gringo food. Once they were satisfied (or at least stopped frowning), we were handed off to a series of hard-working officials with immigration, customs, flight-ops, and maybe one or two more helpful souls. All the officials shared two traits: they all went out of their way to be helpful and efficient (within the system), and all wanted to know when we´re going to get married.
We had answers for most other questions, so it took no more than two or three hours to sort out all the paperwork, in five carbon copies and 17,543,643 stamps. And we have the paperwork to prove it, if you´ll just sign here and here, initial there, and fill form no. 47a, in five copies.

One of immigration officers, Hector, was exceptionally helpful. He not only offered to give us a ride to the hotel (a daunting task in the pot-holed, muddy side roads), but also checked out the hotel for us to make sure it´s safe (considering that it probably set the low bar for the rest of our trip´s accommodations). So we proudly checked in to Hotel Texas, where "everything is smaller and worse". Although it doesn´t look half that bad if you close one eye and take a picture from a distance, in the dark and rain:



So to wrap up the day we went with Hector to a local Mexican restaurant, where we were shocked to discover that (Old) Mexican food can taste actually much better than (New) Mexican food.