My Christmas roadtrip from Mexico to Miami
Discussion
Disclaimer: I’m writing this whilst bored on a long flight so it’s probably not going to be the most concise post you’ve ever read: scroll down to avoid the wall of text and just see the nice pictures.
This road trip, as with all good road trips, was the result of extreme man maths. I’m a British national, living in Mexico, and I wanted to go to the UK with my girlfriend for Christmas in order to see my parents. I searched for flights on all the usual sites, but didn’t have a lot of luck. Prices seemed to be £1500+ per person, many involved convoluted connections, or arrived / departed on Xmas day / NYE, which I really wanted to avoid.
I regularly travel to Houston and Dallas, so began looking at flights from there instead, but I still couldn’t find anything decent for a sensible price. Cynics such as virtually everyone I spoke to about it would say this was entirely my own fault for leaving it too late to book the tickets, but that’s another matter.
I began idly scrolling through Skyscanner and Kayak, looking at flights departing from airports further and further afield, until I struck gold. Direct flight from Fort Lauderdale to Gatwick, leaving on the 23rd December, £350 return per person with Wamos Air. I’d flown with them before, and they’re the best airline in the world if you like travelling on old planes. In every other aspect, they don’t stack up so well, but I’ve never particularly cared about such things - I prefer to spend my money at the destination rather than on the flights.
A plan began to form: I reckoned we could drive to Miami and back, making a few stops along the way at various cities, and still be better off than if we’d booked the £1500 per person flights. The only slight snag was selling the idea to my girlfriend, who hates cars, spending time in cars, and most of America.
Surprisingly, it only took an hour or so of arguing, and she reluctantly agreed, mainly as she’s always wanted to go to New Orleans, which was going to be one of our stops.
We decided on the following itinerary:
Finish work at 12:30 and drive straight to Houston, spending the night at a motel there.
Wake up early in the morning the next day, drive to New Orleans and spend the rest of the day there, staying at another motel that night.
The following day, drive straight from New Orleans to Miami, and spend two days in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, flying to the U.K. on the evening of the second day. We’d book an Airbnb for this to avoid Miami hotel prices.
As you can see, it’s a fair distance: around 5500km return.
In terms of vehicle choice, I decided to take my Range Rover Sport. Not the most popular car on the forums, and certainly not the most economical (20MPG on a good day!), but I’ve taken it all over Mexico and Texas since I got it, and have grown rather attached despite its questionable image. Plus, the other choice was a Dodge Caliber, so......
If you want to read more about the RRS, I did a thread a while ago.
The day came: we left work on time, took advantage of Mexico’s relaxed speed enforcement, and made it to the border in just over a two hours. There’s always queues at Laredo, so we took the Columbia bridge, which is generally deserted due to being a little shooty and druggy at times. I’ve never had any problems though, and this trip was no exception: we passed through with no fuss.
We got to the motel around 8PM, having adopted a rather slower pace through Texas: the locals seem to fly along, but I didn’t fancy making a donation of several hundred dollars to the local police. I was also conscious that continually driving at 90-100+ would mean I’d be stopping for fuel every couple of hours, which gets annoying after a while.
The motel stay in Houston proved to be..... eventful. It was a Days Inn: a chain I’ve used many times before and found to be adequate, if a bit run down. As soon as we got to the room however, I could hear the lady in the next room talking to herself in a loud, rambling manner that reminded me very much of the drug addicts I used to deal with when I worked for a US law firm. Sure enough, after an hour or so, I started hearing the loudest snorting I’ve ever heard in my life: it sounded like she was trying to snort a golf ball rather than a few lines of coke. Even worse, several minutes later, she brought an equally “out of it” sounding guy back to the room, and I decided I’d had enough.
Thankfully, the guy at reception was understanding and upgraded us to a better room, on the other side of the hotel. We had a good night’s sleep and left early the next morning.
We got to New Orleans in time for lunch, and I’d already planned where we were going to go. Having grown up in SE London, I’ve always had a soft spot for fried chicken, and Andrea, having grown up in Mexico, has a soft spot for any sort of unhealthy food whatsoever. The place was called Willie Mae’s, and it didn’t disappoint.
After stuffing ourselves, we drove into the centre of town and started to explore. It’s a beautiful city and we had a great time, despite the weather.
We had drinks at the famous Carousel Bar (their Vieux Carré signature cocktail is great), and made friends with a very drunk, very rich local guy called Jimbo.
We then took a walk around the main streets,
Followed by dinner in the form of a local speciality called Gumbo at the imaginatively named Gumbo Shop. It tasted far better than it looked.
Our motel for that night was thankfully drug addict free, for which I was very grateful as we had a seriously long drive the next day.
I was a little concerned about this part of the journey: I used to drive considerably less comfortable cars for very long distances in a previous job, but it had been a while since I’d done it, and I definitely didn’t want to fall asleep at the wheel. Thankfully, it all went smoothly: we didn’t even hit any traffic so we were able to take some leisurely stops for lunch and fuel (can highly recommend Ted's Montana Grill, Tallahassee). I thought we might have been the only people crazy enough to drive such a long distance, but on this section of the trip I saw plenty of cars registered as far away as Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Minnesota, so Florida is obviously a popular roadtrip destination.
We made it to the Airbnb in Miami at 22:15 that night, and I was pleased to discover it was definitely one of the nicer ones I’ve stayed in.
We awoke a lot later than previous days, and decided to go to the zoo in the morning. Most people get excited by the elephants and crocodiles, but I’m a weirdo so was far more interested in the Victoria Crowned Pigeon. I mean, it’s a giant blue crested pigeon, what’s not to like?
We then drove to Miami Beach and had some excellent Cuban sandwiches for lunch.
Then sat near the beach, watching the exotic cars go by. I was pleased to see one of the best cars in the entire world, and a Porsche 918 behind it at well!
We then drove to Midtown for Mojitos: I never really knew that whole area existed and I really enjoyed it - it’s not what you first think of when someone says Miami, but it was pretty cool to see Maybach S600s outside graffiti covered walls and bars, and the Mojitos were great.
After finishing our drinks, we went back into the downtown area for lunch at Farfalle, which was excellent and surprisingly cheap.
The next day, we decided to go to Fort Lauderdale, which turned out to be a great choice: we actually preferred it to Miami. It’s a lot quieter, with stunning beaches, yachts and boulevards, and some of the houses have to be seen to be believed. I would absolutely love to live there, but as long as we’re earning in Mexican pesos it’s probably unlikely to happen!
It was starting to get towards the end of the day, but there was one last thing I wanted to see: the Native Realty headquarters painted by the amazing Adele Renault. I have a couple of her paintings at home, but always wanted to see one of her murals, and it definitely lived up to my expectations.
It’s based on the iridescent neck feathers of a pigeon, so I accept I’m probably one of the few to appreciate it.
We still had a couple of hours before my flight, so we relaxed on the banks of a local lake, before dropping the car off at it’s home for the next couple of weeks: a hotel car park near the airport. They provide a free shuttle to the terminal, which works out a lot cheaper than using the airport parking.
Despite all the horror stories of Range Rover reliability, the car didn’t miss a beat and averaged a fairly respectable 21MPG: that’s with sitting at 80-85, with the occasional stretch at 95-100 (when I got tired of cars in front of me changing their speed every 5 seconds - wish I had adaptive cruise control!), plus a fair bit of city driving as well. Naturally, it’s still a fair amount of fuel, but at US prices it felt almost cheap.
Of course, it’s got to do it all again in a couple of weeks, so hopefully it continues to perform well. The return journey will be rather less interesting: we need to be back at work ASAP, so I’m just going to aim to return as quickly as possible, without massively exceeding speed limits / driving incredibly tired. I’ll update the thread when I’m back in Mexico but if it’s anything like the outward journey, it should be plain sailing all the way. Ideally, I'd have taken more time to do both the outgoing and return trips, but unfortunately we can't have endless time off work, so there had to be an element of compromise. I'm really happy with how much we managed to fit in, anyway!
So, I guess that’s everything I have to say about the trip: if you made it this far, congrats: it’s a lot of text to read!
Merry Christmas
This road trip, as with all good road trips, was the result of extreme man maths. I’m a British national, living in Mexico, and I wanted to go to the UK with my girlfriend for Christmas in order to see my parents. I searched for flights on all the usual sites, but didn’t have a lot of luck. Prices seemed to be £1500+ per person, many involved convoluted connections, or arrived / departed on Xmas day / NYE, which I really wanted to avoid.
I regularly travel to Houston and Dallas, so began looking at flights from there instead, but I still couldn’t find anything decent for a sensible price. Cynics such as virtually everyone I spoke to about it would say this was entirely my own fault for leaving it too late to book the tickets, but that’s another matter.
I began idly scrolling through Skyscanner and Kayak, looking at flights departing from airports further and further afield, until I struck gold. Direct flight from Fort Lauderdale to Gatwick, leaving on the 23rd December, £350 return per person with Wamos Air. I’d flown with them before, and they’re the best airline in the world if you like travelling on old planes. In every other aspect, they don’t stack up so well, but I’ve never particularly cared about such things - I prefer to spend my money at the destination rather than on the flights.
A plan began to form: I reckoned we could drive to Miami and back, making a few stops along the way at various cities, and still be better off than if we’d booked the £1500 per person flights. The only slight snag was selling the idea to my girlfriend, who hates cars, spending time in cars, and most of America.
Surprisingly, it only took an hour or so of arguing, and she reluctantly agreed, mainly as she’s always wanted to go to New Orleans, which was going to be one of our stops.
We decided on the following itinerary:
Finish work at 12:30 and drive straight to Houston, spending the night at a motel there.
Wake up early in the morning the next day, drive to New Orleans and spend the rest of the day there, staying at another motel that night.
The following day, drive straight from New Orleans to Miami, and spend two days in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, flying to the U.K. on the evening of the second day. We’d book an Airbnb for this to avoid Miami hotel prices.
As you can see, it’s a fair distance: around 5500km return.
In terms of vehicle choice, I decided to take my Range Rover Sport. Not the most popular car on the forums, and certainly not the most economical (20MPG on a good day!), but I’ve taken it all over Mexico and Texas since I got it, and have grown rather attached despite its questionable image. Plus, the other choice was a Dodge Caliber, so......
If you want to read more about the RRS, I did a thread a while ago.
The day came: we left work on time, took advantage of Mexico’s relaxed speed enforcement, and made it to the border in just over a two hours. There’s always queues at Laredo, so we took the Columbia bridge, which is generally deserted due to being a little shooty and druggy at times. I’ve never had any problems though, and this trip was no exception: we passed through with no fuss.
We got to the motel around 8PM, having adopted a rather slower pace through Texas: the locals seem to fly along, but I didn’t fancy making a donation of several hundred dollars to the local police. I was also conscious that continually driving at 90-100+ would mean I’d be stopping for fuel every couple of hours, which gets annoying after a while.
The motel stay in Houston proved to be..... eventful. It was a Days Inn: a chain I’ve used many times before and found to be adequate, if a bit run down. As soon as we got to the room however, I could hear the lady in the next room talking to herself in a loud, rambling manner that reminded me very much of the drug addicts I used to deal with when I worked for a US law firm. Sure enough, after an hour or so, I started hearing the loudest snorting I’ve ever heard in my life: it sounded like she was trying to snort a golf ball rather than a few lines of coke. Even worse, several minutes later, she brought an equally “out of it” sounding guy back to the room, and I decided I’d had enough.
Thankfully, the guy at reception was understanding and upgraded us to a better room, on the other side of the hotel. We had a good night’s sleep and left early the next morning.
We got to New Orleans in time for lunch, and I’d already planned where we were going to go. Having grown up in SE London, I’ve always had a soft spot for fried chicken, and Andrea, having grown up in Mexico, has a soft spot for any sort of unhealthy food whatsoever. The place was called Willie Mae’s, and it didn’t disappoint.
After stuffing ourselves, we drove into the centre of town and started to explore. It’s a beautiful city and we had a great time, despite the weather.
We had drinks at the famous Carousel Bar (their Vieux Carré signature cocktail is great), and made friends with a very drunk, very rich local guy called Jimbo.
We then took a walk around the main streets,
Followed by dinner in the form of a local speciality called Gumbo at the imaginatively named Gumbo Shop. It tasted far better than it looked.
Our motel for that night was thankfully drug addict free, for which I was very grateful as we had a seriously long drive the next day.
I was a little concerned about this part of the journey: I used to drive considerably less comfortable cars for very long distances in a previous job, but it had been a while since I’d done it, and I definitely didn’t want to fall asleep at the wheel. Thankfully, it all went smoothly: we didn’t even hit any traffic so we were able to take some leisurely stops for lunch and fuel (can highly recommend Ted's Montana Grill, Tallahassee). I thought we might have been the only people crazy enough to drive such a long distance, but on this section of the trip I saw plenty of cars registered as far away as Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Minnesota, so Florida is obviously a popular roadtrip destination.
We made it to the Airbnb in Miami at 22:15 that night, and I was pleased to discover it was definitely one of the nicer ones I’ve stayed in.
We awoke a lot later than previous days, and decided to go to the zoo in the morning. Most people get excited by the elephants and crocodiles, but I’m a weirdo so was far more interested in the Victoria Crowned Pigeon. I mean, it’s a giant blue crested pigeon, what’s not to like?
We then drove to Miami Beach and had some excellent Cuban sandwiches for lunch.
Then sat near the beach, watching the exotic cars go by. I was pleased to see one of the best cars in the entire world, and a Porsche 918 behind it at well!
We then drove to Midtown for Mojitos: I never really knew that whole area existed and I really enjoyed it - it’s not what you first think of when someone says Miami, but it was pretty cool to see Maybach S600s outside graffiti covered walls and bars, and the Mojitos were great.
After finishing our drinks, we went back into the downtown area for lunch at Farfalle, which was excellent and surprisingly cheap.
The next day, we decided to go to Fort Lauderdale, which turned out to be a great choice: we actually preferred it to Miami. It’s a lot quieter, with stunning beaches, yachts and boulevards, and some of the houses have to be seen to be believed. I would absolutely love to live there, but as long as we’re earning in Mexican pesos it’s probably unlikely to happen!
It was starting to get towards the end of the day, but there was one last thing I wanted to see: the Native Realty headquarters painted by the amazing Adele Renault. I have a couple of her paintings at home, but always wanted to see one of her murals, and it definitely lived up to my expectations.
It’s based on the iridescent neck feathers of a pigeon, so I accept I’m probably one of the few to appreciate it.
We still had a couple of hours before my flight, so we relaxed on the banks of a local lake, before dropping the car off at it’s home for the next couple of weeks: a hotel car park near the airport. They provide a free shuttle to the terminal, which works out a lot cheaper than using the airport parking.
Despite all the horror stories of Range Rover reliability, the car didn’t miss a beat and averaged a fairly respectable 21MPG: that’s with sitting at 80-85, with the occasional stretch at 95-100 (when I got tired of cars in front of me changing their speed every 5 seconds - wish I had adaptive cruise control!), plus a fair bit of city driving as well. Naturally, it’s still a fair amount of fuel, but at US prices it felt almost cheap.
Of course, it’s got to do it all again in a couple of weeks, so hopefully it continues to perform well. The return journey will be rather less interesting: we need to be back at work ASAP, so I’m just going to aim to return as quickly as possible, without massively exceeding speed limits / driving incredibly tired. I’ll update the thread when I’m back in Mexico but if it’s anything like the outward journey, it should be plain sailing all the way. Ideally, I'd have taken more time to do both the outgoing and return trips, but unfortunately we can't have endless time off work, so there had to be an element of compromise. I'm really happy with how much we managed to fit in, anyway!
So, I guess that’s everything I have to say about the trip: if you made it this far, congrats: it’s a lot of text to read!
Merry Christmas
I enjoyed reading that.
Nearly all of my travel these days is business trips but I do try to visit interesting places wherever I go. I spent quite a few weeks in Houston this year and didn’t manage to make it to New Orleans, which I’d really hoped to do. Maybe next time...
Look forward to reading more of your roadtrip(s), OP.
Nearly all of my travel these days is business trips but I do try to visit interesting places wherever I go. I spent quite a few weeks in Houston this year and didn’t manage to make it to New Orleans, which I’d really hoped to do. Maybe next time...
Look forward to reading more of your roadtrip(s), OP.
Glad people enjoyed the thread. We just got back to our home in Monterrey: we were delayed slightly at Fort Lauderdale border control due to the government shutdown, so couldn't make quite as good time as we wanted. We started the drive back from Fort Lauderdale at 5PM on 6th January, and arrived in Monterrey today (8th January) at around 1:30, so I'm still very happy with that. Our longest day of driving is the picture below, which was very good in terms of traffic and therefore allowed us to make good time. I sure was tired by the end though!
Was funny to see this in a carpark on the way: I'm consistently amazed by the amount of cars with veteran stickers / plates whenever I drive through the US, it's all very strange to me, coming from a British perspective.
I didn't take many photos on the way back as we were in a bit of a hurry to get back to work, but here's a couple of the scenery around Monterrey, from the highway we took back from the border. We were followed for a while by a little old Pontiac hatchback registered in Quebec, being driven by an old couple: maybe a future destination for us!
Happy New Year!
Was funny to see this in a carpark on the way: I'm consistently amazed by the amount of cars with veteran stickers / plates whenever I drive through the US, it's all very strange to me, coming from a British perspective.
I didn't take many photos on the way back as we were in a bit of a hurry to get back to work, but here's a couple of the scenery around Monterrey, from the highway we took back from the border. We were followed for a while by a little old Pontiac hatchback registered in Quebec, being driven by an old couple: maybe a future destination for us!
Happy New Year!
Geekman said:
I thought we might have been the only people crazy enough to drive such a long distance, but on this section of the trip I saw plenty of cars registered as far away as Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Minnesota, so Florida is obviously a popular roadtrip destination.
snow birds or snow flies escaping the winter would account for a fair numberThanks for sharing - we've not done Texas yet but have done a fair few holidays in Miami in November (mainly for the last race of the season at Homestead) and I recognised places in many of your pictures if FL and Miami - great part of the world
B'stard Child said:
Geekman said:
I thought we might have been the only people crazy enough to drive such a long distance, but on this section of the trip I saw plenty of cars registered as far away as Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Minnesota, so Florida is obviously a popular roadtrip destination.
snow birds or snow flies escaping the winter would account for a fair numberVery interesting posts, OP. That's a hell of a drive in 1 day, almost 15h. I'd really struggle with that on miles and miles of concrete interstate. I doff my cap!
Most of the snowbirds ship their cars down for the ‘season’ down here.Except RDmcG, who seems to drive south every year, car on trailer. Again, his posts are really good on what to see en route. 
The Moose said:
B'stard Child said:
Geekman said:
I thought we might have been the only people crazy enough to drive such a long distance, but on this section of the trip I saw plenty of cars registered as far away as Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Minnesota, so Florida is obviously a popular roadtrip destination.
snow birds or snow flies escaping the winter would account for a fair numberGassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff