Brownsville TX ?

[Doyle Phillips]

Brownsville seems to be the closest American city to GTO. I consider going there to apply for Temp Residency. Any comments appreciated.

[doncoulter]

Assuming you're driving, Laredo is only about 40 miles farther. And the highways to Laredo are much better and, I think, safer. Also, I believe you know Laredo pretty well, which might be an advantage.

I've driven the route to Brownsville, many years ago, but I wouldn't hazard it today. It takes you through a huge chunk of Tamaulipas, a.k.a. Mataulipas, and right past Ciudad Victoria, which at last count had the eighth highest murder rate in the world. Some victory.

[DonJuane]

The collective 5 year consensus of the major Facebook Mexico groups is that Matamoros (Brownsville neighbor) is not a suggested "drive to" and "drive from" location due to various safety issues (if you are driving there via Mexico). Traveling is always luck of the draw and I don't have any personal evidence to back that up or argue against it. Just conveying my reading experience. The dangers come and go as the days, hours and minutes do as well. I would not personally go that way, partially because I spent a childhood visiting Matamoros a couple of times a year and watched it deteriorate over 20 years time to a place I no longer wanted to visit. Not sure what it's like today but as I said, people on the forums suggest avoiding that route. I haven't visited it in 20 more years since I stopped going, so I personally have no experience in that route and am sure I am just blowing smoke but that's all I know about it.

P.S. Nostalgia fans.... forty years ago, the place my family and I used to always visit in Matamoros while combining a stop-over there with our twice yearly fishing trips to S. Padre island and Port Isabel was a really cool restaurant called "The Drive Inn", shortly across the border into Mexico. The white table cloths, elegant dining and live music was something very unique to this small town boy during that time period. My dad was a wild game hunter as well as a good fisherman and as a child I loved discovering a restaurant that served something that I was familiar with, frogs legs and quail breasts. This was the only restaurant I'd ever seen this type of fare on the menu at the time. I loved finding this bit of history on the place recently. I never really figured out if the restaurant is still open or closed from the article. https://bronsbilestacion.blogspot.com/20...-menu.html

[DonJuane]

To aid or hinder your decision ..... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/trave...order.html