How We Travel Mexico: Look Inside our Car!

We get lots of questions about our travel logistics, so here’s a peek inside our car. This is how we’ve traveled over 9,000 miles through 21 Mexican states! I’ll be totally honest, once the ball was rolling to sell our home, we didn’t have much time for planning. But this is what we came up with!

First, I’ll note: we have a few boxes in storage, with a company that will eventually ship them to Mexico or Japan. This is less than a half-pallet of boxes, mostly containing irreplaceable items, childhood memories, vintage collectables, and rare books. Everything else we own is in our car, packed like a well-played game of Tetris.

The trunk has items that won’t be damaged by heat, and are lower value or importance. We don’t always unpack it, except for my iMac, which is in the trunk to avoid attention. Everything else can stay in the trunk, like storage. We have some tools, a machete, and of course, a spare tire. A decent amount of kitchen items (wok, cookware, French press, dishes, most of this hasn’t been needed). One milk-crate of books. A few shoeboxes of extra toiletries, first aid, flashlights, sewing box. A few small boxes of art and hobby supplies. My light-gear bag and tripod. A yoga mat and blocks. And one large bag of extra clothes and shoes, which will likely be downsized soon, except for the rain jackets.

The backseat items need to stay cool, or we want easy access to, or we unpack at every stop. One backpack for toiletries: shower, face, and hair stuff, clippers for my monthly buzz-cut. One small bag each for a week’s worth of clothes, one jacket and one hat each, and a bag for dirty clothes. One box of important documents: immigration papers, taxes, passports. One box I call my “instant desk” with chargers, cables, pens, markers, notebooks, reading lights, and two board games (Boss Monster & Terraforming Mars). We also have a cooler bag for food, my heavy camera backpack, my photo archive system, and Evan’s banjo.

We have just a few items in the front seat with us, for easiest access. In the glovebox, we have our car’s paperwork to be in Mexico legally. On the front window, we have a visible dash-cam. Also, one backpack for car essentials: water, CDs, dashcam, books, vitamins, purse, laptop.

Some things we haven’t used at all (PS4), and some things we wish we’d brought: More tools, more entertainment (like a GameBoy or an e-Reader), and nostalgia (actual photos).

What would you pack, if you were going to live out of your car? Let’s discuss!

Our YouTube video with a more in-depth look at how we travel, and look inside our car ⌄